Robert Hastie directs Jim Cartwright's The Rise and Fall of Little Voice in the Dorfman Theatre, 2 December 2026 to 23 January 2027.
Jim Cartwright wrote The Rise and Fall of Little Voice for the National in 1992, and he wrote it for one voice: Jane Horrocks, who could do note-perfect impressions of Garland, Bassey and Monroe, and who had never had a part built around that. The play is about a silent girl in a northern terrace who only speaks by singing in other people’s voices, her monstrous mother, and the small-time agent who hears her through a wall and sees money. It won the Olivier, became a film, and has been revived steadily ever since because the central role is one of the great tests in English theatre.
The difficulty is that it needs an actor who can genuinely sing like four dead stars and act being unable to speak. Cartwright had already written Road, which did the same thing for a northern street that this does for one house, and both plays are built on the assumption that the audience will recognise the place.
Robert Hastie directs a new production in the Dorfman from Wednesday 2 December 2026 to Saturday 23 January 2027, with Francesca Mills in the title role. Hastie made Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which is the best recent evidence that he can hold a northern setting and a score at once. The production tours nationally until March 2027, so these are the only London dates.