The Audience - new play with Helen Mirren as The Queen

Helen Mirren will play The Queen again, this time in 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.

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.

Helen Mirren won an Academy Award for playing Elizabeth II in the film "The Queen" in 2006. Her other film credits include "The Madness of King George"; "Gosford Park"; "Calendar Girls"; "The Last Station". TV credits include Jane Tennison in "Prime Suspect". Her London stage credits includes "Phedre" at the Lyttelton, NT in 2009; "Mourning Becomes Electra" at the Lyttelton, NT in 2003; "Orpheus Descending" at the Donmar Warehouse in 2000; "Collected Stories" at the Haymarket in 1999; "Antony and Cleopatra" at the Olivier, NT in 1998.