Departing EastEnder Charlie Brooks - Janine Butcher in the soap - joins the cast of The National Theatre’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane when it launches at The Lowry in Salford on December 12 (until January 8). A series regular in EastEnders, she has been in and out of the show several times and is due to end her current run on screen over the New Year, so her Lowry appearance is her first post-EastEnders engagement.
Charlie was the 2012 winner of I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Her theatre credits include Beautiful Thing (UK Tour and West End) and A Streetcar Named Desire (Leicester Curve).
Touring for a total of 38 weeks - the largest tour mounted by the National Theatre since before the pandemic - Charlie Brooks is scheduled to perform in Salford, Woking, Leicester, Plymouth, Sunderland, Bath, Belfast, Dublin, Bradford, Wimbledon, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham and Cardiff, with further venues to be confirmed.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman, was the winner of the Book of the Year at the 2013 National Book Awards and has sold more than 1.2 million copies worldwide. This first major stage adaptation blends magic with memory to take audiences on a journey to a childhood once forgotten and the darkness that lurks at the very edge of it.
Returning to his childhood home, a man finds himself standing beside the pond of the old Sussex farmhouse where he used to play. He's transported to his 12th birthday when his remarkable friend Lettie claimed it wasn't a pond, but an ocean – a place where everything is possible... Plunged into a magical world, their survival depends on their ability to reckon with ancient forces that threaten to destroy everything around them.