Picture: Tristram Kenton
Jake Sharp will be back at the head of the class when the eagerly-awaited first major UK and Ireland tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Olivier award-winning School of Rock – The Musical launches at Hull New Theatre in September.
The actor who previously played Dewey Finn in the West End will return to take charge of the Class of 2021 with Alex Tomkins taking on the role at certain performances. The adult cast will also include Rebecca Lock as Rosalie Mullins, Matthew Rowland as Ned Schneebly and Nadia Violet Johnson as Patty Di Marco with Ryan Bearpark, James Bisp, Joanna O’Hare, Samuel Haughton, Tom Hext, Harveen Mann, Richard Morse, Annell Odartey, Amy Oxley, Helena Pipe, Michaela Powell, Richard Vorster and Craig Watson.
Three teams of children are now preparing to share the roles of Dewey’s young student musicians. Following countrywide auditions the young cast is made up of: Eva McGrath (13 years old from Birmingham), Emerson Sutton (13 years old from the West Midlands), Thomas Harvey (12 years old from Cheshire) and Isaac Forward (12 years old from Buckinghamshire) who will play Freddy; Chloe Marler (10 years old from Essex), Marikit Akiwumi (12 years old from Guildford), Daisy Hanna (13 years old from Surrey) and Ivy Balcombe (nine years old from Surrey) who will play Katie; Oliver Forde (12 years old from London), Angus McDougall (13 years old from Buckinghamshire), David Gluhovsky (12 years old from London) and Oliver Pearce (11 years old from North Wales) who play Lawrence; Joseph Sheppard (12 years old from the West Midlands), Harry Churchill (nine years old from Devon), Hanley Webb (10 years old from Northamptonshire) and William Laborde (12 years old from Surrey) who will play Zack; Wilf Cooper (12 years old from Surrey), Logan Matthews (11 years old from Berkshire) and Alfie Morwood (10 years old from South Wales) who play Billy; Keira Laver (11 years old from Essex), Florrie May Wilkinson (10 years old from London) and Saffia Layla (11 years old from Hertfordshire) who will play Summer; Jasmine Djazel (11 years old from London), Souparnika Nair (10 years old from Bury St. Edmunds) and Angel Lucero (11 years old from London), who will play Tomika; Hadlee Snow (10 years old from Brighton), Darmani Eboji (12 years old from Essex), Devon Francis (11 years old from London), Riotafari Gardner (10 years old from London) who will play James; Lily Rose Martin (11 years old from Kent), Elodie Salmon (11 years old from London) and Paris Banyong (nine years old from London) who will play Marcy; Caelan Wallington (11 years old from Watford), Alex Shotton (12 years old from Buckinghamshire) and Nesim Adnan (10 years old from Kent) who will play Mason; Kyla Robinson (11 years old from Surrey), Eden Anthony (12 years old from London) and Elisha Kerai (11 years old from London) who will play Shonelle; and Ophelia Parsons (12 years old from London), Jemima Newman (nine years old from Bedfordshire), Ava Masters (11 years old from Kent) and Inez Danielak (12 years old from Essex) who play Sophie.
Originally due to launch at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham in February, the kids will be back in Dewey’s classroom for an opening run in Hull from 7-18 September before heading for Wolverhampton, Woking, Sunderland, Southend, Stoke, Bradford, Northampton, Belfast, Nottingham, Llandudno, Torquay and Oxford this year.
With the Oxford run ending on 1 January, the 2022 leg of the tour will begin in Manchester, before the tour moves on to Crawley, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Aberdeen, Ipswich, Glasgow, Norwich, Wimbledon Newcastle, Leeds, Eastbourne, Canterbury, Plymouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Dartford, Dublin, Liverpool, Southampton, Sheffield and Bournemouth.
School of Rock – The Musical is directed by Laurence Connor with choreography by JoAnn M. Hunter, set and costume designs by Anna Louizos, lighting design by Natasha Katz, sound design by Mick Potter and music supervision by John Rigby with Matt Smith as musical director. The UK and Ireland tour of School of Rock–The Musical is produced by David Ian Productions.
A hit with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, the record-smashing show which features 14 new songs by Lloyd Webber and lyricist Glenn Slater with a book by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, was the first new musical from a British composer and producer to make its debut on Broadway.
The world premiere Broadway production opened in November 2015 where it helped Lloyd Webber become the first composer in 60 years to have four shows on Broadway since Rodgers and Hammerstein. Sunset Boulevard joined School of Rock, Cats and The Phantom Of The Opera on the Great White Way. The Broadway production ended its run at the Winter Garden Theatre in 2019 while a US national touring production ran from 2017 until 2019.
Inspired by the 2003 Jack Black film, the show’s West End debut featuring TV comedy star David Fynn as Dewey Finn, the wannabe rocker turned teacher originally played by Black on screen, opened at the New London Theatre (now the Gillian Lynne Theatre) in November 2016 and went on to win the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music. The curtain came down on the West End production in March last year just a few days after plans for the first UK and Ireland tour were unveiled. An Australian production opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne in October 2018 before heading for a national tour in China and a short season in South Korea. The production returned to Australia to play seasons in Brisbane and Sydney and had been due to move on Adelaide before the pandemic hit.
Angela Thomas
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