No theatre has been specified yet, but a West End premiere is expected on Sept. 27, with previews beginning on September 22. The play, by George S. Kaufman and Howard Teichmann, tells of a sharp-eared pensioner who happens to hold some shares in a large company. Deciding to go to the firm’s AGM, she proceeds to wreak havoc with the company’s fat cats. The Solid Gold Cadillac originally ran on Broadway in 1953, when it starred Josephine Hull and Loring Smith.

Routledge is best-known for her obsessively prim TV comedy character Hyacinth Bucket in the series “Keeping Up Appearances,” but has a distinguished stage record. She last kept up appearances in the West End as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest, and more recently starred in Jean Anouilh’s Wild Orchids at the 2002 Chichester Festival. Funny-man Hudd is another stage and screen veteran. He won an Olivier Award for his turn in the musical  Underneath the Arches in 1982, and last featured in Theatreland in 2000’s musical version of Dickens’s Hard Times.

The West Yorkshire Playhouse’s artistic director Ian Brown is set to direct the production. It will have warm-up runs at Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre from Sept. 1-11, and the Malvern Festival Theatre from Sept. 13-18.