Rochdale’s own Katie McGlynn has confirmed she will be starring in a new play, presumably because she’s finally exhausted every soap opera between Salford Quays and Channel 5.
The former Coronation Street and Waterloo Road star is set to take the stage in Murder at Midnight, a so-called “comedy thriller” promising suspense, eccentric characters, and presumably at least one baffled audience member thinking it’s a reboot of Midsomer Murders with better lighting.
“I’m thrilled,” Katie said on Instagram, in the same tone usually reserved for supermarket meal deals or realising it’s bin day. “Coming to a theatre near you from September,” she added, giving thousands of people from Kent to Blackpool a full month to rehearse their polite clapping.
The play’s plot involves seven characters stuck in a rural house on New Year’s Eve, including a gangster, a clown burglar, and what one assumes is a suspiciously well-dressed corpse. Early reports suggest the play may be less “Agatha Christie” and more “EastEnders Christmas Special if everyone had access to chloroform.”
Joining McGlynn will be Jason Durr, last seen in Casualty trying not to swear at mannequins, Susie Blake, and Max Bowden from EastEnders, who’s clearly on loan from Albert Square as part of some gritty soap star exchange programme.
Playwright Torben Betts says it’s “a murder mystery with a difference,” which in theatrical circles usually means “contains a lot more screaming and fewer working doorknobs.”
The tour begins in Derby, the nation’s third most likely place to be murdered by accident during amateur dramatics, and will travel the country until early 2026 or until the clown burglar escapes, whichever comes first.
McGlynn previously appeared in Wish You Were Dead, a title that critics have since assured us is not autobiographical, and once starred in Strictly Come Dancing, although viewers mostly remember her for not being Greg Wise.
Local Rochdalians are already excited, with one woman saying, “It’s good to see someone from round here doing well, especially one who’s unlikely to turn up in a pub fight on TikTok.”
