ANNIE WOBBLER (REVISITED): FROM EDINBURGH FESTIVAL TO THE FINBOROUGH THEATRE
In the Finborough Theatre’s very first full co-production, Annie Wobbler (Revisited) will play at the Pleasance Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival, and then transfer to the Finborough Theatre for a strictly limited four week run, opening on Wednesday, 2 September 2026 (Press Nights: Thursday, 3 September 2026 and Friday, 4 September 2026 at 7.30pm ).
In 1981, playwriting legend Arnold Wesker (the Roots trilogy, Chips With Everything, The Kitchen ) wrote Annie Wobbler especially for his friend, Olivier Award winn er Nichola McAuliffe. Two years later, it was produced in Birmingham, on the London Fringe and transferred to the West End.
Nichola McAuliffe in Annie Wobbler. Image Credit: Finborough Theatre.
And now 45 years later, Nichola McAuliffe returns with Annie Wobbler (Revisited), a new version of the original play cycle for the 21st century.
In three short plays, Nicola McAuliffe’s tour de force performance presents us with three very different Annie’s:
Anna – a Gen Z graduate battling her anxiety…
Annabella – the fey hit novelist who becomes an uncompromising cougar…
Annie – a homeless geriatric revisiting her past late at night in a railway station. Without natural or constructed beauty to smooth the way, each Annie constructs a mask to present to the world, confronting their ‘Imposter Syndrome’ with defiance, courage and, above all, humour…
Nichola McAuliffe returns to the Finborough Theatre after acclaimed performances as Sybil Thorndike in Nicholas de Jongh’s Plague Over England and Wallis Simpson in Lena Farugia’s Untitled. Her many other credits include the title role in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Kiss Me Kate for which she won an Olivier Award. She was also nominated for an Olivier Award for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (London Palladium). She won the Clarence Derwent Award for her performance as Queen Victoria in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Poppy (Adelphi Theatre), and the Manchester Evening News Award for Best Actress for her performance as Gina Ekdal in Peter Hall’s production of The Wild Duck . She is the only person to have won the Edinburgh Stage Award twice – for Alan Bennett’s Bed Among the Lentils and Katy in her own play Maurice’s Jubilee.
Her play A British Subject, produced by The Pleasance, played Edinburgh, London and New York and was nominated for an Amnesty Award. Her play Maurice’s Jubilee has recently opened at the National Theatre of H ungary, and has been presented at the National Theatre of Belarus and the Moscow Art Theatre starring Oleg Tabakov where it won the Stanislavsky Award for Services to the World of Theatre. Television credits include seven series; as Sheila Sabatini in ITV’s Surgical Spirit, and, more recently, Hugo Blick’s The English as the iconic Black Eyed Mog, The Man Who Fell to Earth , EastEnders, Coronation Street and the film Living starring Bill Nighy. Her film adaptation of Maurice’s Jubileeis in pre-production.
https://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions/annie-wobbler-revisited