Jeffrey Holland will star as Tom Ballard in the premiere stage production of the BAFTA-nominated WAITING FOR GOD which is on a 12 week run from the 20 April. He replaces Roy Hudd, who has withdrawn from the production due to ill health.

Holland and his co-star Olivier-Award winner Nichola McAuliffe will head a cast of nine directed by Tony Award winner David Grindley. WAITING FOR GOD delighted TV audiences across five prime time BBC series in the 1990s and this all-new script is penned by the sitcom’s creator Michael Aitkens.

The cast will also feature Joanna Bending as Sarah Chase, David Benson as Geoffrey Ballard, Peter Cadden as Dennis Sparrow, Samuel Collings as Harvey Baines and Emily Pithon as Jane Edwards as well as Corinna Marlowe and Anna Westlake. WAITING FOR GOD is produced by James Seabright.

All the favourite characters from the original series are reimagined for 2017, facing the challenges that come with growing old disgracefully in the era of the silver surfer. At Bayview Retirement Home, battle-axe extraordinaire Diana Trent conspires with new resident Tom Ballard to give the conniving manager his comeuppance with unexpectedly heart-warming results.

Jeffrey Holland is still best known for his breakthrough role as Spike in Hi-de-Hi! He went on to create the stuffy footman James Twelvetrees in the popular Croft and Perry sitcom You Rang, M’Lord? and the starchy station master Cecil Parkin in Oh, Dr Beeching! His latest TV role is as tax inspector Clive Drinkwater in Coronation Street. On stage, he has toured in a variety of productions including several Ray Cooney farces, Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking and Confusions, Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical comedy, By Jeeves. More recently, Jeffrey starred as George Findley in Victoria Wood’s play Talent, directed by the playwright, and with Ray Cooney and an all-star cast in Two Into One, both at the Menier Chocolate Factory. He has also completed to two successful runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and numerous performances around the country in his one-man show …and this is my friend Mr Laurel, written with Gail Louw.

Actor, writer and novelist Nichola McAuliffe is well known for her role as Sheila Sabatini in the ITV sitcom Surgical Spirit, which ran for six years. She is also the star of numerous stage shows and won the 1988 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in Kiss Me, Kate. Most recently she starred in ITV’s Victoria and BBC’s Doctors. She was also the voice of James Bond’s BMW in Tomorrow Never Dies. As well as writing several plays, McAuliffe has published two novels, The Crime Tsar, based loosely on Macbeth; and A Fanny Full of Soap, a comic novel about the pre-West End run of a stage musical, plus a children’s story, Attila, Loolagax.

Michael Aitkens is a writer for the screen and stage who was Bafta-nominated for Waiting for God. He has worked all over the world and had over 200 scripts produced for film and television. He is a core writer for Midsummer Murders and also wrote Class Act for Joanna Lumley.

David Grindley’s production of Journey’s End won the 2007 Tony Award for Best Revival. Most recently he directed The Heiress at The Gate Theatre Dublin and Sideways at the St James Theatre and other credits include the world premiere of Daytona at Theatre Royal Haymarket, Our Boys at the Duchess Theatre and the UK tour of Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell with Robert Powell.

James Seabright is an Olivier Award winning theatrical producer and general manager. Recent productions include The Boys In The Band (Vaudeville, Park and UK tour), world tours of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, Trainspotting, Shakespeare Untold and Potted Potter, UK tours of Apphia Campbell’s solo show inspired by Nina Simone Black Is The Color Of My Voice, Adam Kay’s show The Remains Of Tom Lehrer and William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) with the Reduced Shakespeare Company.

“Waiting for God proved less a bittersweet elegy of old age decline than an affirmation of the adage that while there’s life, there’s hope.” BFI