Maxine Peake will star in a new production of John Patrick Shanley’s Tony-winning Doubt: A Parable at Theatre Royal Bath’s Ustinov Studio next year.

Lindsay Posner will direct the limited engagement, set for February 7–March 8, 2025. Additional casting and creative team members will be announced.

Set in 1964 in a Catholic school in the Bronx, Doubt follows Sister Aloysius, the strong-minded principal who suspects that one of her teaching fathers is abusing a vulnerable pupil. 

Peake shot to fame in Victoria Wood’s Dinnerladies and has subsequently appeared in Shameless, Silk, The Village, The Hollow Crown, Inside No. 9, Black Mirror, Three Girls, Anne, The Village, See No Evil, Peterloo, The Theory of Everything, and Funny Cow. On stage, she played the title role in Hamlet, Miss Julie, Blanche Du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, and Hester Collyer in The Deep Blue Sea. Her theatre company MAAT, co-founded with Sarah Frankcom and Imogen Knight, has now produced five plays that Peake has starred in.

Doubt: A Parable opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre March 31, 2005, and ran for 25 previews and 525 regular performances. The original Broadway production was nominated for eight Tony Awards, winning four, including Best Play; Best Actress for Cherry Jones; Best Featured Actress for Adriane Lenox; and Best Direction for Doug Hughes. Shanley was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The work received a film adaptation in 2008 starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, all receiving Academy Award nominations for their performances. Amy Ryan and Liev Schreiber starred in a 2024 Broadway revival for Roundabout.

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