The creative team bringing Helen Forrester play By The Waters Of Liverpool to stages across the UK this Autumn have revealed its full cast, with stars from Coronation Street and Emmerdale among the final trio of players.
Coronation Street’s Tom Roberts and Emmerdale’s Joe Gill, alongside newcomer Emma Mulligan who takes the lead role of Helen Forrester, are the final members of a nine-strong cast which also features also features Lynn Francis, Daniel Taylor, Lynne Fitzgerald, Joe Owens, Samantha Alton, and Roy Carruthers and will play over 50 roles between them.
Roberts has countless television credits to his name, including perhaps his best-known role as bad boy Scott Emberton in Coronation Street. He has also appeared as DS Flanagan in Emmerdale, in five seasons as Tony in 2point4 Children and in staples lincluding EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City, Waterloo Road, Brookside, Hollyoaks and The Bill. Film credits include The Bradford Riots and The Casebook Of Eddie Brewer, alongside extensive theatre and radio work.
Gill is best known for playing the role of Finn Barton in ITV’s Emmerdale and has also appeared in Brassic, Casualty and In The Flesh among other screen roles. He recently wrapped on his first leading feature film role in Treading Water, due for release later this year.
The highly anticipated By The Waters Of Liverpool Autumn 2023 UK Tour has been a long time coming – its inaugural 12-week 17-venue tour in Spring 2020 was abandoned two weeks in after visiting only three theatres due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now an eight-week tour will finally open in Liverpool on Monday, September 4 with four performances at The Auditorium at M&S Bank Arena before visiting a further 11 venues across the country.
The new production is based on the book of the same name by the acclaimed author Helen Forrester, who documented growing up in Liverpool during the Great Depression and WWII. Her touching portrayals of her life story continues to win her fans worldwide through four best-selling volumes of autobiography: Twopence To Cross The Mersey, Liverpool Miss, By The Waters of Liverpool, and Lime Street At Two.
Between Liverpool and New Brighton, another significamr location in Forrester’s life where the tour will close on October 29, the production will also visit venues in Crewe, Coventry, Sale, Rhyl, Darlington, Lichfield, St Helens, Southport, Halifax, and Lytham.
The creative team are producers Rob Fennah and Lynn McDermott for Pulse Theatre Productions and Bill Elms. The show is directed by Gareth Tudor Price and written by Fennah.
Writer and producer Fennah enjoyed a long friendship with Helen Forrester since adapting her first book, Twopence To Cross The Mersey into a stage musical in 1994. Forrester travelled from her home in Edmonton, Canada, to see her story brought to life on stage at Liverpool Empire. Rob later went on to develop Twopence into a straight play which has toured successfully since its first outing in 2015.
Since the author’s death in 2011, Fennah has remained friends with Helen’s son Robert Bhatia and the production is fully endorsed by the Helen Forrester Estate.
Fennah said: “Announcing the full cast is taking another major step forward in bringing By The Waters Of Liverpool to life on stage once again. Our outstanding cast will tell Helen Forrester’s remarkable life story in ways to make people stop and think, laugh and cry, but most of all to appreciate her incredible writing.
“It has been a long time coming since we were forced to close in March 2020, but in less than three months we’ll be back out there, on the road, taking Helen’s story to audiences across the UK.”
Bhatia, added: “The partnership between playwright Rob Fennah and my mother Helen, and her legacy, has been outstanding.”
