Orlando Wells


Orlando Wells is a Somerset-based actor and writer. He is married with four children, and is the son of actress Susannah York.

Career

As an actor, Wells has just finished playing defence barrister Miles Gastrell in The Jury: Murder Trial series 3 and the Home Secretary, Hugh Devereux, in Slow Horses series 5. On stage, he is best known for playing Irwin in Alan Bennett's History Boys and John Stonehouse in James Graham's This House.
As a writer, his latest play, , was recently broadcast on BBC Radio 4. A satirical take on the madness of living under a tyrannical regime, it tells the story of the two scientists tasked by Stalin to embalm Lenin in 1924.
He has also written five original plays: The Winter Room, Cold Enough, The Tin Horizon, The Woodcutter's Tale, and Four Days in Hong Kong, produced for the Orange Tree Theatre Festival.
Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian of The Tin Horizon, ' shows a wild imagination at work and displays unmistakable signs of talent...a play that proves Wells has a gift for gothic futurism... a name to watch...'
Wells revised and adapted Patrick Hamilton's The Duke in Darkness for a 2013 production at the Tabard Theatre, Chiswick, directed by Phoebe Barran. The following year Wells co-wrote, with Opera Erratica director Patrick Eakin Young, the libretto for the experimental opera Triptych, performed in 2014 at The Print Room and Wilton's Music Hall.
He has written the full-length feature Bait the Hook, and a short film, Shrike, longlisted for Channel 4's Coming Up.

Selected credits

Theatre

TV and film