Julie Hesmondhalgh: UK theatres must stay '100% faithful' to local stories

Julie Hesmondhalgh has warned of "a loss of regional identity" in the stories staged across the UK, pointing to funding pressures that she says push regional theatres toward interchangeable co-productions.

The actor made the comments as she leaves the Traitors castle for a new stage role and a lifetime achievement award. Last week she became the fourth contestant eliminated from The Celebrity Traitors. She will next star in The Pelicot Trial, a stage dramatisation of the French rape case that gripped the world in 2024, at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, the theatre where she began her career.

What does this change for regional theatre?

Hesmondhalgh's argument is about money and what it does to art. She observed that, for financial reasons, regional theatres increasingly make co-productions with other venues. That model, she said, can lead to a "generic" product rather than a show that says something specific about the local area.

Her call is uncompromising: theatres should be 100% faithful to local stories. The alternative, in her account, is a stage culture where a play made in one city could tour to any other without anyone noticing the difference.

The timing gives her words weight. She accepted a lifetime achievement award this month, recognising a career built largely outside London. Her trajectory — from the Royal Exchange to national television fame in Coronation Street and back to regional stages — is itself an argument for the artistic value of theatre rooted in place.

Why co-productions spread

Co-production is a survival strategy, not an artistic preference. When several venues share the costs of mounting a show, each pays less and takes less risk. The economics have become standard practice across the UK regional network as councils cut subsidies and audiences recover unevenly after the pandemic.

Hesmondhalgh does not dispute the arithmetic. Her point is about the cost that never appears in a budget: the slow erosion of plays that could only have been made in Bolton, or Newcastle, or Plymouth, because they speak from and to those places.

A career spent proving the case

The Pelicot Trial offers a pointed example of her priorities. It is a story of global significance — the mass rape trial in Avignon that ended in December 2024 with the conviction of Dominique Pelicot — yet she brings it to a Manchester stage, in the building where she trained.

What does this change for audiences? In Hesmondhalgh's framing, everything depends on where a story is told and who tells it. If regional theatres keep chasing shared costs over local voice, she suggests, the map of British theatre will flatten into sameness. Her warning lands as a challenge to funders and artistic directors alike: finance the co-productions if you must, but do not let the local story become the price of the deal.