THE highly acclaimed production of The King’s Speech will grace the Richmond Theatre stage before going to the West End for the final leg of its UK tour.
David Seidler wrote The King’s Speech as a play before it became a film. His story about how King George VI conquered his debilitating stammer with the help of maverick speech therapist Lionel Logue was one of 2010’s most successful films, winning countless awards including four Academy Awards and seven Baftas.
The cast includes Charles Edwards as King George VI, Jonathan Hyde as Lionel Logue, Emma Fielding as Queen Elizabeth, Ian McNeice as Winston Churchill, Michael Feast as Cosmo Lang and Joss Ackland as King George V.
A childhood stutterer himself, British-born David Seidler always wanted to write about King George VI after finding the surviving son of Lionel Logue, Dr Valentine Logue, now a retired brain surgeon, whom he wrote to in 1981. Logue agreed to share the notebooks his father kept, on condition he received written permission from the Queen Mother. Seidler wrote to her but was told not to pursue the project during her lifetime so he abandoned it in 1982.
The Queen Mother died in 2002, and Seidler returned to the story three years later.
