NOW virtually a national treasure, Alison Steadman will be heading for the Malvern Hills later this month when she stars in what will be a thrilling new production of Therese Raquin.

Easily one of the country’s best-loved and most prolific actresses, she will be playing Madame Raquin when this passionate love story opens for a one week run at Malvern’s Festival Theatre from Monday, August 18.

For the past four decades she has been a regular face on our television screens and has plenty of cinema appearances to her credit too.

Her numerous film appearances include Shirley Valentine, A Private Function and Confetti, while she has hardly been off our TV screens – where in earlier years she reprised the monstrous Beverley in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party – after its huge stage success. She was also one half of the eccentric outdoor-loving couple in the brilliant Nuts in May, in Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, and in more recent times Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice and Pamela in the hugely popular and multi-award winning BBC comedy series Gavin and Stacey.

She is soon to be seen in a new BBC sitcom Grey Mates.

On top of all of this she has been just as hard working on stage where her numerous appearances – not to mention Abigail’s Party, have been in Entertaining Mr Sloane, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and an Olivier Award-winning performance in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, and many more.

Now she will be starring on stage again alongside Pippa Nixon, Desmond Barrit, Kieran Bew, Michael Mears, Charlotte Mills and Hugh Skinner in Therese Raquin.

This new version of Emile Zola’s passionate love story is by multi-award-winning writer Helen Edmundson, who has received acclaim for her work with the RSC, the National Theatre and Shared Experience. Written in 1867, Zola’s Thérèse Raquin is a story of lust, madness and destruction set within the backstreets of Paris.

Married off according to her domineering aunt’s wishes, the beautiful heroine becomes trapped in a loveless marriage to her cousin, Camille.

Every Thursday evening she watches her aunt, Madame Raquin, play dominoes, until one day Camille brings along an old friend, the alluring and athletic Laurent.

As he and Thérèse embark on an illicit affair, a turbulent passion is unleashed, sealing their fate with devastating consequences.

Pippa Nixon plays Thérèse. Her many highly acclaimed performances for the Royal Shakespeare Company include Titania in Nancy Meckler's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rosalind in Maria Aberg's As You Liked It and Ophelia in David Farr's Hamlet.

Desmond Barrit is also an Olivier Award-winning actor whose numerous stage roles include Alan Bennett’s The History Boys and The Habit of Art at the National Theatre.

The play will be directed by Jonathan Munby, who has worked in theatre extensively in both the UK and the USA. His recent productions include the RSC’s hugely acclaimed Wendy and Peter Pan; Antony and Cleopatra for Shakespeare’s Globe; and Julius Caesar for Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theatre.

In the UK, he is creative associate of the English Touring Theatre.