Deborah McAndrew (born 1967) is a British playwright and actor, known for playingAngie Freeman inCoronation Street in the 1990s. She is also co-founder and Creative Director of theStoke-on-Trent-based Claybody Theatre Company,[1] and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts atStaffordshire University.[2]
McAndrew was born inHuddersfield,West Riding of Yorkshire, and later moved toOssett and thenLeeds. She had two younger sisters. She had always wanted to write plays; the family regularly holidayed with another family with four children, giving her a cast of seven.[3]
She studied drama at theUniversity of Manchester and aPGCE in Drama and Special Education atBretton Hall College of Education.[2]
McAndrew joined the cast of the long-livedGranada television soapCoronation Street for four years across two periods in the 1990s, playing young designerAngie Freeman.[4] She has appeared in theatre, radio and television including theBBC Radio 4 detective seriesStone,[5] as Lily Gaskell in the 2013BBC Radio 4 Extra radio adaptation ofElizabeth Gaskell'sWives and Daughters,[6] and as Mrs. Dashwood inHelen Edmundson's 2013 Radio 4 adaptation ofJane Austen'sSense and Sensibility.[7] She first joinedNorthern Broadsides as an actor in 1995.[3]
In 2004 McAndrew adaptedLeopold Lewis's 1871 playThe Bells for Northern Broadsides.[8] Since then her adaptations have includedDario Fo’sAccidental Death of an Anarchist,[9]Nikolai Gogol’sThe Government Inspector[10] andNikolai Erdman’sThe Suicide, under the new titleThe Grand Gesture.[3][11]
Her first original script wasVacuum (2006, set in avacuum cleaner repair shop and performed by Northern Broadsides).[12] She wroteFlamingoland, about a woman withbreast cancer, in 2008, for theNew Vic Theatre,[13] and in 2013 she wroteUgly Duck, set among theStaffordshire pottery trade, for the Claybody Theatre Company which she co-founded in that area.[3]
Her 2014 playAn August Bank Holiday Lark,[14] a Northern Broadsides co-production with theNew Vic Theatre,Newcastle-under-Lyme, won that year's UK Best New Play award from theUK Theatre awards for regional theatre.[15] Set inSaddleworth at the start ofWorld War I, it features the village's traditionalrushbearing procession andmorris dancing.[16]
McAndrew has written several plays for theMikron Theatre Company, a touring company which in summer travels by canal boat. These includeLosing the Plot (2012, set amongstallotment gardeners),Beyond the Veil (2013, allotments again,beekeeping and murder),[17]Till the Cows Come Home (2014, onice cream making),[18] andOne of Each (2015, concerningfish and chips).[2][19]
Her playDirty Laundry, a mystery set in a small house in the heart of Stoke-on-Trent, was performed in the oldSpode factory in October 2017. Featuring a cast of professional actors accompanied by the community cast ofClaybody Theatre Company,Dirty Laundry received excellent reviews.[20]
Her 2017/2018 adaptation ofCharles Dickens'A Christmas Carol gained good reviews at theHull Truck Theatre in Hull, East Yorkshire.[citation needed]
In 2025 she adaptedArnold Bennett'sThe Grand Babylon Hotel into a play in which four actors played 15 parts, which was produced at theNew vic Theatre inNewcastle-under-Lyme.[21][22][23]
In April 2018, McAndrew was announced asLeeds Trinity University's new Chancellor, replacingGabby Logan.[24] She was installed as Chancellor in a ceremony in the University Chapel on 15 June 2018.[25]
McAndrew is married toConrad Nelson, actor, musician, former Musical Director ofNorthern Broadsides, and currently a director ar theStoke-on-Trent-based Claybody Theatre Company. They have a daughter.[3]
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