The cast of the Chichester Festival Theatre’s hit 2018 production of Flowers For Mrs Harris has been reunited for the first official recording of Richard Taylor and Rachel Wagstaff’s award-winning musical.
Due for release on CD and download on 3 December 2020 by SimG Records, the cast album was recorded in July this year.
Unveiling details of the recording, the musical’s composer and lyricist Taylor said: “On 29 July 2020, the entire Flowers For Mrs Harris cast and orchestra reunited, and stepped once more onto the Chichester Festival Theatre stage, almost two years since the show was performed there, to make this recording. In the grip of the Covid-19 global pandemic, this was perhaps the only such endeavour happening anywhere in the country at that time.”
The production’s director Chichester Festival Theatre’s artistic director Daniel Evans added: “The making of this cast album, made possible by Richard Taylor, was not simply a wonderful opportunity to capture one of the most beautiful British musical scores of recent years; it was also memorable for having employed some of our finest musicians and actors at a time when almost none of them had any work or proper financial support – a situation that, sadly, persists.”
Taylor (The Go-Between, Tom’s Midnight Garden) and Wagstaff’s (Birdsong, Moonshadow), Flowers For Mrs Harris is based on American writer Paul Gallico’s best-selling novel. The musical received its world premiere at the Sheffield Crucible in 2016 where the show was Evans’ final production as Sheffield Theatres’ artistic director before moving to Chichester.
Two years later Clare Burt re-created her award-winning performance in the title role for the Chichester Festival production alongside Joanna Riding and Gary Wilmot. The 2018 production also featured Claire Machin, Louis Maskell, Mark Meadows, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Nicola Sloane, Luke Latchman and Rhona McGregor.
The cast returned for the album accompanied by the orchestra (Jon Laird, Kathryn James, Nicki Davenport, Vicky Lester, Abigail Burrows, Rhys Taylor, Laura Llewellyn-Jones, Owain Harries, Jane Salmon and James Turner) conducted by Tom Brady.
Produced by Taylor and Mike Walker, the recording was engineered by Mike Walker and orchestrated by Taylor. The album has been produced for SimG Records by Simon Greiff.
The original Sheffield Theatres production of Flowers For Mrs Harris won three UK Theatre Awards including Best Musical. The Chichester Festival Theatre production opened in September 2018 and was presented in association with Vicky Graham, Joseph Smith and Bob Bartner.
Angela Thomas
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