Who’s playing who? A case for Wagatha Christie
A WHIRLWIND of designer clothes, WhatsApp transcripts and accusations of libel, the Wagatha Christie trial in May was occasionally hard to follow.
And it may be difficult to make heads or tails of the West End version too – as it’s not immediately clear who’s playing who in the first-look pictures.
Starring Lucy May Barker as Rebekah Vardy and Laura Dos Santos as Coleen Rooney, the eagerly awaited show is now running at Wyndham’s Theatre – just six months after Mrs Rooney and Mrs Vardy sensationally faced off at the Royal Courts of Justice.
The production already has rave reviews despite the lack of resemblance to the real characters.
While she might not look much like the Wag, Miss Dos Santos can at least do Mrs Rooney’s Scouse accent thanks to her upbringing in Liverpool.
In the play, titled Vardy V Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, the actress is wearing an Aircast boot a la Coleen, who fractured a bone during a fall at her mansion earlier this year.
The play professes not to take sides in the £3million libel trail, which saw Mrs Vardy’s claim dismissed after reams of WhatsApp messages were released and one phone was conveniently dropped into the North Sea.
The script was impressively knocked up in just a few weeks by playwright Liv Hennessy – West End plays usually take years to come to fruition. Director Lisa Spirling said of the real- life drama: ‘It gripped the media; it gripped the legal world.
‘We were going, “This is inherently theatrical. You have conflicts, and you have big personalities, and you have great oration and drama”.’
She told The Evening Standard: ‘Obviously we now know the outcome of the trial, but it was a genlead, uine whodunnit, with evidence and trying to work it out. And so lots of people were going, “Someone should put this on stage”.’
According to Miss Dos Santos, the director didn’t want the actresses to try to emulate the Wags.
‘This isn’t Spitting Image,’ Miss Dos Santos said. ‘And we’re not trying to do impressions.’
The actress has appeared on the small screen in shows including Wallander, Doctor Who and Bad Girls.
She was also nominated for an award for her performance as Rita in Educating Rita in 2010. Her comeanwhile, starred in Mamma Mia and Sweeney Todd in the West End, as well as in the film version of Woman in Black opposite Daniel Radcliffe.
Mrs Vardy, wife of England footballer Jamie Vardy, lost her case and was ordered to pay 90 per cent of Mrs Rooney’s legal costs.
She had sued her fellow Wag after Mrs Rooney, wife of England footballer Wayne Rooney, revealed on Instagram that leaks about her personal life to The Sun had come from ‘Rebekah Vardy’s account’.
Despite her libel defeat, Mrs Vardy maintains she was ‘framed’.