Fool for Love

Julie Walters' first professional engagement was on a Pub Tour for the Liverpool Everyman, for whom she also appeared in The Taming of the Shrew, Funny Peculiar (in which she made her first London appearance), and Breezeblock Park.

Her other theatre work includes: The Glad Hand (Royal Court), In at the Death Revue (Bush Theatre), As You Like lt, The Changeling (Bristol Old Vic), Mike Leigh's Ecstasy (Hampstead), Flaming Bodies (ICA), Good Fun (Sheffield Crucible), Jumpers (Royal Exchange Manchester), and Educating Rita (Royal Shakespeare Company, at the Warehouse and in the West End, for which she won the Variety Club Award and the London Critics' Award). Educating Rita was also made into a film, and for her performance in this Julie Walters was nominated for an Oscar, and received the BAFTA Best Actress Award, the Variety Club Award and a Hollywood Golden Globe.

TV includes: Club Havana, Watchwords, Soldiers Talking Cleanly, Empire Road, Days at the Beach, The Family Man, Alan Bennett's plays Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Say Something Happened, and Intensive Care; and Victoria Wood's Talent, Nearly a Happy Ending, and Happy Since I Met You (she also worked with Victoria Wood on the series Wood and Walters); Help, The Boys from the Blackstuff, and Unfair Exchanges.

She has made many radio broadcasts, including Edward Bond's Bingo and Week Ending, and has recently completed another film: She'll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas.

lan Charleson trained at LAMDA, and then went straight to the Young Vic for two years. The productions he appeared in there include: The Medieval Plays, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Scapino, Comedy of Errors, Look Back in Anger, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Incredible Vanishing, French Without Tears, and The Taming of the Shrew. He made his New York debut with the Young Vic Company in their season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1974.

Other theatre work includes: The Prince and the 45 (Edinburgh Festival), the title role in Hamlet (Cambridge Theatre Company), Mrs Grabowski's Academy (Royal Court), Otherwise Engaged (Queen's), and, with the Royal Shakespeare Company: The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost, Piaf (also in the West End), Once in a Lifetime, and The Innocent.

For the National Theatre he appeared in Julius Caesar, Volpone, and was Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. His television appearances include: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Hopcraft lnto Europe, A Private Matter, Churchill's People, Intimate Strangers, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, All's Well That Ends Well, Something's Got to Give, Make It Double, Scotland's Story, Reilly Ace of Spies, A Month in the Country, Oxbridge Blues.

Films: Chariots of Fire, In Search of Alexander the Great, Gandhi, Ascendancy, The Devil's Lieutenant, Greystoke, Louisiana, The Master of the Game, The Sun Also Rises.

Theatre includes: Macbeth, The Changeling, Carnegie (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh), Final Wave Sheffield Crucible), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Bugler Boy (Traverse Edinburgh), The Catch (Royal Court), Sorry for Tomorrow (Soho Poly), and Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites (1984 Edinburgh Festival). His many television appearances include the series Weir of Hermiston, The New Road, The Mackinnons, The Mourning Brooch, The Standard, Hunting Tower, Annals of the Parish, The Aphrodite Inheritance, The Camerons, The Happy Warrior, The Nightmare Man, Take the High Road, King's Royal, Killer, The View from Daniel Pike, The Main Chance, Churchill's People, Village Hall, Oilstrike North, Sutherland's Law, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, and Me and My Girl; and the plays Should He Call Back Tomorrow, The Physicists, Benny Lynch, Drummer, and The Slab Boys. Films include: Duna Bull, The Key, Fahrenheit 451, Haunters of the Deep, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and Another Time, Another Place. He is a frequent radio broadcaster, and is currently recording a new comedy series for Radio 4.

David Troughton began his career at the Unicorn Theatre for Children. Other theatre work includes repertory at Leeds, Manchester, and Bromley; Loot and The Fool at the Royal Court; and The Change/ing at Riverside Studios. At the National Theatre he appeared in Don Juan. Two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including Ross in Macbeth, Bouton in Molière, and Korolenko in Maydays. TV appearances include: Chips with Everything, David Copperfield, Crime and Punishment, The Norman Conquests, Braces High, Man of Destiny, Wings, Hi-De-Hi and Molière (for the RSC). Films: Dance with a Stranger, and The Chain (both to be released this year).

Work at the Royal Court, where he was Associate Director from 1970 to 1972, includes A Collier's Friday Night, The Local Stigmatic, The Ruffian On The Stair, A Provincial Life (which he also adapted), A Soldier's Fortune, The Daughter-in-Law, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, Life Price, The Duchess of Malfi, Crete and Sergeant Pepper, The Merry-Go-Round (which he also adapted), and his own plays Over Gardens Out, The Sleepers' Den and Small Change. RSC: Twelfth Night. Riverside Studios, where he was director from 1976 to 1980, directed As You Like It, Small Change, The Cherry Orchard, The Changeling, Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, Scrape off the Black. Work abroad includes: Much Ado About Nothing (Stratford Connecticut), Hedda Gabler, Macbeth (Stratford Ontario), Landscape, Silence (Lincoln Center, New York), Fishing (Public Theater, New York). National Theatre A Month in the Country, Don Juan, Much Ado About Nothing, Danton's Death, Major Barbara, his own plays Small Change and Kick for Touch, Tales from Hollywood, co-directing Antigone, Venice Preserv'd. Peter Gill is an Associate Director of the National Theatre, and is Director of the NT's Studio.

Work includes designing over 40 plays at Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent. In London: Old King Cole (Stratford East), Ecstasy, Uncle Vanya (Hampstead), Measure for Measure, Julius Caesar, Plays Umbrella Season (Riverside). Member of the British theatre designers group who won first prize at 1979 Prague Quadriennale Exhibition. National Theatre: A Month in the Country, Don Juan, Much Ado About Nothing, The Prince of Homburg, Danton's Death, Major Barbara, Kick for Touch, Tales from Hollywood, Antigone, Venice Preserv'd, She Stoops to Conquer. Royal Shakespeare Company: Tartuffe, Breaking the Silence.

Lit shows at Oxford Playhouse, New End Hampstead, King's Head, Arts. National Theatre: Overruled (Young Vic), Crossing Niagara, Bloody Neighbours (ICA), Emigres, Troilus and Cressida (with David Mersey), Bread (all Young Vic), Strawberry Fields, The Camilla Ringbinder Show, Bow Down, The Passion (with William Dudley), Half Life, Love Letters on Blue Paper, Herod, Don Juan, Much Ado About Nothing, Danton's Death, Major Barbara, Kick for Touch, Small Change, Tales from Hollywood, Antigone, Venice Preserv'd, She Stoops to Conquer. In the West End: Boogie.

As Chief Executive of Stoll Moss Theatres Ltd., Louis Benjamin is responsible for the eight West End Theatres, including Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the London Palladium. He began his showbusiness career in 1937 and worked in various capacities before being appointed Managing Director of Moss Empires in 1970. His career has also encompassed many facets of the music business and stretched from 1959 to 1980 both as Chairman of Pye Records Limited and a founder member of ATV Music. He has presented many Palladium pantomimes and was instrumental in bringing the Las Vegas type Variety policy to the Palladium in the seventies. He heads numerous charity activities in the entertainment business including the Royal Variety Performance, which he has presented for the past six years.

Has produced and co-produced: National tour of Harold Pinter's Betrayal, also taken to Switzerland and Portugal by the British Council; Penelope Keith in Noel Coward's Hay Fever and Paul Eddington in Alan Bennett's Forty Years On at the Queen's Theatre; the American company of Bob Fosse's Dancin' at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and Helen Mirren in Extremities at the Duchess Theatre.