A Handful of Stars

Coronation Street actor and Boyzone star Keith Duffy is to make his professional stage debut at the award-winning new writing venue Theatre503 in Battersea. Keith will play Stapler the Irish boxer, in Artistic Director Paul Robinson’s SECOND LOOK revival of Billy Roche’s 1988 play A HANDFUL OF STARS. The production will run at Theatre503 (the smallest venue in the UK to receive an Olivier Award) from Wednesday 30 April until Saturday 24 May 2014. First performed in 1988, Billy Roche’s A HANDFUL OF STARS is set in the Irish town of Wexford where ‘shot-gun’ weddings are outnumbered only by random acts of violence in the pool hall. The play was first presented as a stand alone in 1988, and then revived as part of the Wexford Trilogy at the Bush Theatre. The production is part of Theatre503’s SECOND LOOK series, introduced by Paul Robinson to give major productions to neglected modern classics. Keith Duffy is a singer, actor, and a radio/television presenter. He is best known as a member of one of Ireland’s biggest boybands - Boyzone, which he joined in 1993. Since then the band has gone on to release twenty-one singles and seven albums, resulting in twenty five million record sales and hundreds of sold out live tours. He moved into acting in 2002 joining the UK’s biggest soap opera’s -CORONATION STREET, where he played lovable Rovers Return barman Ciaran. A HANDFUL OF STARS marks Keith’s professional stage debut. Paul Robinson has been Joint-Artistic Director of the 60 seat new-writing venue in Battersea since 2006, before becoming sole Artistic Director in 2012. Theatre503 has built a strong reputation for staging plays by first time writers, launching the careers of playwrights such as Dennis Kelly, Anna Jordan and Chris Urch. In 2009 it became the smallest venue in the UK to receive an Olivier Award for Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, which successfully transferred to the West End and Broadway.