Ruth Jones has landed a rare stage role in new comedy ‘The Nightingales’.
The ‘Gavin and Stacey’ actress will play Maggie in the production, which will open at the Theatre Royal Bath on October 31st, and tells the story of the eclectic local acapella group who gather weekly to rehearse.
They are looking forward to their meeting as usual but one day newcomer Maggie knocks on the door and turns their worlds upside down.
As well as acting and co-writing ‘Gavin and Stacey, and starring in ‘Stella’, Ruth recently turned to novel writing and her debut ‘Never Greener’ topped the Sunday Times Best Seller List for several weeks.
She said: "I originally wrote ‘Never Greener’ as a screenplay and nothing came of it.
"Then a couple of years ago I went for a spa break and, flicking through my laptop, I came across the screenplay and 1,000 words I’d forgotten I had written trying to adapt it as fiction.
"I picked it up again and started writing, just for the love of it really, and found I really enjoyed it.
"The original idea came to me back in 2002. Facebook and Twitter weren’t around then, but everybody was into Friends Reunited.
"So you heard all these stories about people contacting not just old friends but also old loves, and thinking that if only they’d stayed with them then everything would have been fine in their life. That was the impetus."
Ruth recently admitted it was a challenge to write the sex scenes in the novel.
She said: "I hope I’ve done it elegantly without making it twee.
It was quite a challenge. But it was an enjoyable challenge, to keep the sexiness but not rely upon the graphic. Having said that, I am still worried about my mum reading it."
Ruth Jones will star in stage comedy The Nightingales
