Paul Unwin's play about the pioneering post-war Labour government, The Promise, will première at Chichester's Minerva Theatre 19 July to 17 August, directed by Jonathan Kent.
The cast comprises Suzanne Burden as Violet Attlee, Clare Burt as Ellen Wilkinson, Reece Dinsdale as Herbert Morrison, Martyn Ellis as Winston Churchill, Felixe Forde as Joan Vincent, Peter Hamilton Dyer as Richard Stafford-Cripps, Richard Harrington as Nye Bevan, Allison McKenzie as Jennie Lee, Majid Mehdizaheh-Valoujerdy as Thomas Merriman, Miles Richardson as Hugh Dalton, David Robb as Lord Moran, Clive Wood as Ernest Bevin and Andrew Woodall as Clement Attlee.
1945, in a country exhausted and crippled by debt after six years of war, time is up for Winston Churchill's Tories. With a rallying cry for change, Labour wins an astonishing landslide election victory.
Clement Attlee and his cabinet of competing heavyweights—from the loyal Ernest Bevin to scheming Herbert Morrison—argue furiously about how to realise their manifesto to make a welfare state, build millions of homes, reorganise dilapidated schools and, most dramatically, create a National Health Service that is free at the point of need.
The Promise has set design by Joanna Parker, costume design by Deborah Andrews, lighting and video design by Peter Mumford, music composed by Gary Version, sound design by Christopher Shunt and casting by Annelie Powell CDG.