Panto dame Tucker in new one-man play

You'll know him best as the outrageous dame, stealing the show of the Everyman and Playhouse pantos. But comic actor Francis Tucker will be showing another side in Robert Farquhar’s new comedy Di Is Dead, coming to the Playhouse Studio in April.The Peccadillo Theatre Company production "takes an affectionate, deeply scurrilous, and very funny look at the aftermath of the death of the ‘People’s Princess’" and runs at the Playhouse Studio from April 17 to 27.It’s September 1997, and a wannabe Britpop hanger-on is struggling to write a book about the excesses of the time. And then it happens. Princess Diana is killed in a car crash in a Parisian subway. The country goes into grief frenzy meltdown. He goes in search of a subject to say something about something about where we’re at.It's another big project for Robert Farquhar, who this year alone has staged The Art of Falling Apart as a member of Big Wow theatre company, and scripted Spike Theatre's Sink or Swim, which is currently on tour.  His play Dead Heavy Fantastic was a charge through Liverpool’s nightlife staged at the Everyman in 2011 and Bad Jazz won critical acclaim when it premiered in 2006.Aside from panto, Francis Tucker has appeared in Brick Up the Mersey Tunnels, Good Golly Miss Molly, and Reds & Blues at the Royal Court. Other stage credits include Pistols (Brighton Royal), Twelfth Night (Birmingham MAC), Romeo and Juliet (Lodestar) and he will play Lucifer in Chester Mystery Plays later this summer. On screen he has appeared in Coronation Street and Dave Kirby’s 15 Minutes That Shook the World.Francis Tucker said: “I’m very excited we are bringing Di Is Dead to the Playhouse Studio and working with Bob Farquhar again. We performed it last year at The Lantern Theatre and each night was a fantastic unique experience so hopefully we can repeat the same at in the Playhouse Studio.”Tickets are £10 with no booking fee, from the box office on 0151 709 4776 or online on   www.everymanplayhouse.com.