Cast Update for The Audience at the Gielgud Theatre 2012

Cast update for The Audience, a new play by Peter Morgan, directed by Stephen Daldry, which opens at the Gielgud Theatre 5 March 2013, following previews from 15 Feb - booking to 15 June 2013.

Joining previously mentioned Helen Mirren (Queen Elizabeth II), are Haydn Gwynne (Margaret Thatcher) Paul Ritter (John Major), Robert Hardy (Winston Churchill) .

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace - a meeting like no other in British public life - it is private. Both parties have an unsspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses. The Audience breaks this contract of silence - and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional - sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive. In turn, the Queen can't help but reveal her own self as she advises, consoles and, on occasion, teases.

It is designed by Bob Crowley, sound by Paul Arditti, and produced by Matthew Byam Shaw for Playful Productions, Robert Fox and Andy Harries.

Haydn Gwynne is reunited with Stephen Daldry having played Mrs Wilkinson in the world premiere of Billy Elliot The Musical, a role she later recreated on Broadway. Her other recent theatre credits include Queen Elizabeth I in Richard III in Sam Mendes' The Bridge Project, Susan in Becky Shaw at the Almeida Theatre and Mrs Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor in Greg Doran' s Royal Shakespeare Company production.

Paul Ritter has recently been seen at the National Theatre in Marianne Elliot's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. His other National Theatre credits include The Hothouse, The Reporter, The Coast of Utopia, Howard Katz and Coram Boy and for the Royal Shakespeare Company his credits include Troilus and Cressida and The White Devil.

Theatre, film and television actor Robert Hardy has previously played Churchill seven times including Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years and most recently in Celui qui a dit Non in Paris in French. His extensive theatre career includes four seasons in Stratford for the Royal Shakespeare Company and two seasons at the Old Vic.