SWANSEA: Hannibal Lecter is coming to the Grand as Silence of the Lambs hits the stage

One of cinema’s most terrifying villains is heading for a Swansea stage, as the first theatrical adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs comes to the Grand Theatre on its debut UK and Ireland tour.

The production runs at the Grand from Tuesday 16 to Saturday 20 February 2027, with John Partridge, known for Cats and EastEnders, as Hannibal Lecter, and Coronation Street’s Mollie Gallagher making her stage debut as FBI trainee Clarice Starling.

Adapted from Thomas Harris’s novel by Pulitzer Prize finalist Gina Gionfriddo and directed by Nikolai Foster, the show premiered at Leicester’s Curve this month before setting out on tour.

The story follows Starling as she interviews the imprisoned Lecter, hoping his brilliant mind will help catch a serial killer, made world-famous by the Oscar-winning 1991 film with Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster.

Partridge said he found his way into the role after reading how Hopkins drew on Truman Capote, Katharine Hepburn and the computer HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. His own three inspirations are Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor and John Malkovich.

“Lecter is intelligent, mocking and acerbic, but also serious and malevolent,” he said. “Now, I try to forget any other version of Lecter and just put myself firmly in that cell.”

Spending most of the play in a glass box brought its own discovery. “Rather than trying to push, I have to pull the audience into the box,” he said, adding that it helped him understand a man of grace, music and art confined to a cell.

The film’s most quoted line, involving fava beans and a nice chianti, is not in the play. “If I had a pound for every person who’s come up to me and done that line, I’d be a rich man!” Partridge said.

He is most looking forward to the show’s moments of sudden violence, including Lecter’s attack on his guards. “I love all the stunts, getting stuck into those shocking moments of sudden, dynamic physicality. Our production is very visual and striking.”

For Gallagher, who has played Nina Lucas in Coronation Street since 2019 and won a National Television Award for the role, the tour is a leap into the unknown. “I’m definitely diving in at the deep end, but I’m loving rehearsals so much,” she said.

The part carries a family joke: her family tease her father that he looks like Hopkins’ Lecter, and she always imagined her mother resembled Jodie Foster in her youth. “Now I actually get to be Clarice,” she said.

“She’s such an iconic heroine, everyone loves her. You can’t get much cooler than Clarice,” Gallagher said. “Now, in any situation in life, I can just think ‘What would Clarice do?’”

The pair say their rapport drives the show. Partridge describes their scenes as “a dance” and “a tight tennis match”; Gallagher said: “Sometimes we’ll be chatting, and he’ll do this look, and I’ll be like ‘Oh no, Hannibal’s here!’”

Gionfriddo’s adaptation also reworks the story’s second killer, Buffalo Bill, moving away from the original’s portrayal of the character, a change Partridge says has made the story stronger.

The Swansea dates come in a busy stretch for the Grand, which reopens this autumn with wider seats and a new cooling system, and the tour later calls at Cardiff for those who miss the February run.