Daniel Rigby graduated from RADA in 2004, and his stage credits include Yukio Ninagawa's Hamlet for the Barbican, a version of Midsummer Night's Dream in New York and London.
He started comedy in 2006, and won the Laughing Horse new act of the year competition the following year. In 2009, he made his Edinburgh debut the following year with Mothwokfantastic.
His other TV work includes roles in The Street, Ideal and spin-off series Spooks Code Nine – but it was his portrayal of a young Eric Morecambe in the 2010 biopic Eric And Ernie which propelled him to prominence, and won him a Bafta for best actor.
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Tom Basden’s Accidental Death Of An Anarchist heads to the West End
The new version of Dario Fo’s classic farce will open in preview at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on June 12, following successful seasons at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and Sheffield Crucible.
It stars comic Daniel Rigby and Lead Balloon and Last Tango in Halifax star Tony Gardner.
Producers say comedian Basden has given the 1970 script ‘a bang up-to-the-minute reworking’ to take aim at the ineptitude of the police force, ruthlessly exposing the corruption and incompetence of the institution.
A four-star Guardian review of the Sheffield run said: ‘Daniel Rigby as the Maniac brings the dazzlingly funny script roaringly to life.’
The Spectator called the Hammersmith run ‘flawless’ and Rigby ‘a tour de force’ with ‘the explosive, feral energy of Adrian Edmondson, which he tempers with a cool, knowing intelligence and a polished external demeanour’.
And in its four-star review, Time Out said ‘Rigby is terrific as The Maniac in Tom Basden’s wickedly funny contemporary remake of the Dario Fo classic’.
The play is based on a real-life incident from 1969 in which anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli died after falling from the fourth-floor window of the police station where he was being interrogated over a terrorist bomb that killed 17 people in Milan.
The new version is directed by Daniel Raggett and staged by Playful Productions. Full casting will be announced soon. It will run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until September 9.
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