By George, Gatiss gets the crown

MARK GATISS will play the monarch who lost the colony known as America.

The actor, who cowrote and appeared in television’s Sherlock, has agreed to lead The Madness Of George III — Alan Bennett’s study of madness and 18thcentury pomp and circumstance — into the Nottingham Playhouse as the last production of Adam Penford’s first season as artistic director there. It will run from November 2, 2018.

Penford said he’d always wanted to direct the play, but ‘only if I could find the right king’. Gatiss came straight to mind when he was considering candidates. And luckily, ‘it turned out to be a role he’d coveted’, the director told me.

Penford said there are ‘no current plans’ to take George III beyond Nottingham — although that combination of play and star could earn it a spot in the West End for a season, or two.