HEADING a cast of nine in the premiere stage production of the BAFTA-nominated Waiting for God, which will play at Malvern’s Festival Theatre for the rest of this week, is former Hid-de-Hi! star Jeffrey Holland and Nichola McAuliffe.

Holland will star as Tom Ballard and his co-star, Olivier-Award winner McAuliffe, as Diana Trent, his battle-axe cohort in an ongoing battle against the man running the Bayview Retirement Home.

Waiting for God delighted TV audiences across five primetime BBC series in the 1990s and this all-new script is penned by the sitcom’s creator Michael Aitkens.

The cast will also feature Joanna Bending as Sarah Chase, David Benson as Geoffrey Ballard, Peter Cadden as Dennis Sparrow, Samuel Collings as Harvey Baines and Emily Pithon as Jane Edwards as well as Corinna Marlowe and Anna Westlake.

All the favourite characters from the original series are reimagined for 2017, facing the challenges that come with growing old disgracefully in the era of the silver surfer.

At Bayview Retirement Home, battle-axe extraordinaire Diana Trent conspires with new resident Tom Ballard to give the conniving manager his comeuppance with unexpectedly heart-warming results.

Jeffrey Holland is still best known for his breakthrough role as Spike in Hi-de-Hi! He went on to create the stuffy footman James Twelvetrees in the popular Croft and Perry sitcom You Rang, M’Lord? and the starchy station master Cecil Parkin in Oh, Dr Beeching!

His latest TV role is as tax inspector Clive Drinkwater in Coronation Street.

On stage, he has toured in a variety of productions including several Ray Cooney farces, Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking and Confusions, Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical comedy, By Jeeves. More recently, Jeffrey starred as George Findley in Victoria Wood's play Talent, directed by the playwright, and with Ray Cooney and an all-star cast in Two Into One, both at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Actor, writer and novelist Nichola McAuliffe is well known for her role as Sheila Sabatini in the ITV sitcom Surgical Spirit, which ran for six years.  She is also the star of numerous stage shows and won the 1988 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in Kiss Me, Kate.  Most recently she starred in ITV’s Victoria and BBC’s Doctors.

Waiting for God is at the Festival from tonight through to Saturday, June 3.