Lee Evans returns to the West End

Essex comedy for 2013

Lee Evans is to star in a new West End play set in his native Essex.

He will play Darnley Packer a hapless gangster, described as the ‘village idiot of the criminal underworld’ in the comedy Barking In Essex.

Evans stars alongside Sheila Hancock, who plays the fierce matriarch of the crime dynasty. The plot involves the panic that spreads through the family before their relative Algie is released from prison, in search of the £3.7million in untraceable notes he squirrelled away.

The comedy was written by Clive Exton, who wrote scripts for Poirot, P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster, and Rosemary & Thyme. He died in 2007, but this is the first time Barking In Essex has been staged.

Evans is no stranger to the West End stage. From 2004 to 2005 he played Leo Bloom in the London production of The Producers along with Nathan Lane; and in 2007 he appeared in Samuel Beckett's Endgame and the 50th anniversary production Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. Although born in Bristol, Evans has lived in Essex since the age of 11.

Barking In Essex opens at Wyndham's Theatre from September 6 next year.

Published: 30 Nov 2012

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