Pictured: Kingsley Day

City Lit Theatre Artistic Director Terry McCabe has announced the cast for the company’s season finale, the British comedy LONDON ASSURANCE.

First produced in London in 1841, LONDON ASSURANCE has been one of Great Britain’s most popular comedies. Dame Judi Dench starred in a 1970 production of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a production that was later remounted in London’s West End and transferred to Broadway, where it starred the late Roger Rees. That was one of six Broadway productions of the play over a century and a half. The most recent Broadway production was in 1997, when it starred Brian Bedford and a young Rainn Wilson (who would later become famous for TV’s The Office). Inexplicably, given LONDON ASSURANCE’s enduring popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, it has not been produced in Chicago for 120 years.

The play concerns the 18-year-old Grace Harkaway, who considers herself immune to love and is planning to marry the 63-year-old Sir Harcourt Courtly for his money. Then she meets his son, Charles, who, unaware of his father’s engagement to Grace, begins to woo her. Things become even more complicated when Sir Harcourt meets and becomes taken with the domineering and horse-riding Lady Gay Spanker.

Appearing as Sir Harcourt Courtly is City Lit regular Kingsley Day with Cameron Feagin (Lady Day), Kat Evans (Grace Harkaway), Kraig Kelsey (Charles Courtley), Richard Eisloeffel (Dazzle), Edward Kuffert (Cool), Cooper Wise (Martin), James Sparling (Squire Max Harkaway), Jean Waller (Pert), T.C. Fair (James), Joe Feliciano (Meddle), David Fink (Adolphus Spanker), and Zach Bloomfield (Solomon Isaacs).

LONDON ASSURANCE runs June 9 through July 23 at City Lit Theatre, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood.