IT has more twists than a 1960s dance festival and – if done properly – a jaw-dropping surprise. Sleuth, which opens at Theatre Royal in Newcastle tonight, is a cat and mouse thriller which continually wrong-foots audiences – if they haven’t seen it before, of course.
Simon MacCorkindale, who stars in Anthony Schaffer’s award-winning play alongside former Dynasty actor Michael Praed, reckons there are still plenty of Sleuth novices around.
Thanks to Kathie – SMCFP’s Northern Correspondent 😉
Detective skills are hardly needed to work out why last year’s new film of Sleuth flopped while this year’s new theatre version is packing them in, but let the play’s star Simon MacCorkindale help work it out.
“They departed from the original material and most of the things that were attractive in the original got left out,” says the Casualty heart-throb.
(Mainly a Sleuth review – Contains spoilers) Thanks to SMCFP member Kerri
SLEUTH’S first night was at the Theatre Royal Brighton 38 years ago. I was there. A few seats along from me was Laurence Olivier, who, apparently, had some unflattering things to say about it.
Two years later, with the thriller a huge hit, Olivier himself starred with Michael Caine in a film version. Now it’s back on stage with Simon MacCorkindale and Michael Praed in the two key roles.
A screen and stage star raised the spirits of a group of brain injury survivors with an inspiring talk.
Thanks to maggiesangel at Holby.TV for this article
Ely- born Simon MacCorkindale – best known for his role as Harry Harper in the BBC1 hospital drama Casualty – visited members of Headway Cambridgeshire at Brookfields, in Mill Road, Cambridge.
Headway is a charity which provides support, services and information to brain injury survivors, their families and carers, as well as to professionals in the health and legal fields.
STAGE CLASSIC IS BRINGING OUT THE MANIMAL IN SIMON
He was the English aristocrat of choice a decade before Colin Firth emerged from a lake to become a housewife heartthrob and Hollywood star.
Simon MacCorkindale played the upper-crust cad in some of the most popular American television series of the 1980s – from The Dukes of Hazzard and Hart To Hart to Dynasty and Falcon Crest.
Now he’s taking to the Nottingham stage as a devious author in the revival of psychological thriller Sleuth, alongside his Dynasty co-star and former TV Robin Hood Michael Praed.
SIMON LEAVES CASUALTY TO TAKE ON OLIVIER’S KEY ROLE
One of television’s best-loved doctors has marched out of accident and emergency and into a stage play that has become a modern classic.Simon MacCorkindale, whose character Harry Harper left Casualty two episodes ago, takes the leading role of Andrew in Sleuth which comes to the Theatre Royal, Bath, next Monday.
A DARK psychological thriller featuring top television stars will be on stage at the town’s theatre this week.
Sleuth, one of the greatest ever stage thrillers, is being performed at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking until Saturday.
The play, written by Anthony Shaffer, promises to baffle even the most proficient sleuth so budding Miss Marples and Poirots should grab their magnifying glasses and book their seats.
Busy Simon MacCorkindale chats to Viv Hardwick about leaving BBC1 ‘s Casualty, taking on a stage tour and finding time to breed expensive Arabian horses
YES sighs Simon MacCorkindale with mock irony, “I have gone down in history as the man who sacked Charlie Fairhead in Casualty.” The plot of the Christmas episode of the BBC1 drama made the right kind of headlines for the programme as actor Derek Thompson became the last member of the original cast to leave after 21 years.
IT was typical of a doctor to keep you waiting. When have they ever kept their appointment times?
But as my consultation was with one of Holby City’s finest medics, the stoical Harry Harper, I was prepared to wait.
In the four years that actor Simon MacCorkindale has worn the lead stethoscope and a furrowed brow in the BBC’s flagship Saturday night soap he has set more than a few hearts fluttering on and off set.
But can the 54-year-old actor cut the mustard while temporarily back in civvie street on stage at Milton Keynes Theatre this week in Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest?
