Graham Pountney to star at Apollo after 40-year lapse!

The Apollo, Newport’s small but perfectly formed theatre, is to welcome a well-established TV actor to star in its latest production, Suddenly At Home.

Graham Pountney, whose television credits include Howards’ Way, Peak Practice, Doctors, Hustle and New Tricks, will step into the lead role after a cast member had to withdraw. He last stepped onto the Apollo stage to rehearse his audition speeches for drama school, but although he has been a frequent visitor to the Isle of Wight he has never performed here since graduating from the Bristol Old Vic stage school in the 1970s.

Suddenly at Home is a classic thriller by Francis Durbridge, a master of suspense most known for the BBC Paul Temple series aired in the early 1970s. Graham Pountney plays the volatile, unfaithful husband who schemes to murder his wealthy wife before taking off with his lover. This is a ‘whodunnit’ with all the expected twists and turns of a master writer.

So what brought Graham Pountney to take the role in a small theatre on the Isle of Wight? He said: “My parents first brought me [to the Island] when I was three. Then we came every summer, my folks building their retirement home here. Now they have passed on, my sons come down too.”

This isn’t his first sojourn to an Island stage in recent years. He added: “Recently I brought to life two Anthony Minghella plays at the Quay Arts Minghella Theatre in June, and an evening of Alan Bennett plays the year before. I toured Richard II and Edward II to The Ventnor Fringe in 2017, and presented my solo show as Charles I in Carisbrooke Castle last year too!”

Suddenly At Home by Francis Durbridge
Apollo Theatre, Newport
6-14 September
www.apollo-theatre.org.uk