Award-winning Jodie Jacobs (Rock of Ages) is to lead the cast as strike leader Rita O’Grady in Pimlico Opera’s prison production of the musical Made in Dagenham which runs from 5-9 March 2025 at HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Surrey. Tickets are selling fast and the Saturday and Sunday performances are almost sold out.
Also in the cast: Jack Butterworth as Rita’s husband Eddie, Christopher Howell as prime minister Harold Wilson/factory boss Jeremy Hopkins, Jacqueline Hughes as secretary of state Barbara Castle, Chris Jenkins as union leader Monty Taylor, Steven Serlin as the Ford US executive Robert Tooley and Dale White as a factory worker. The other parts will be played by prisoners. Lizzi Gee directs and choreographs with Bethany Reeves as MD.
Made in Dagenham is based on the true story of the sewing machine workers’ strike action for pay equality at Fords in 1968 and was first a 2010 movie, then turned into a musical which ran for six months in the West End in 2014. The show has music by David Arnold, lyrics by Richard Thomas and a book by Richard Bean. The women’s strike action led to the creation of the Equal Pay Act of 1970.
Professional actors and creatives have been working and rehearsing for five weeks with the inmates of Europe’s largest all-women prison in what will be Bronzefield’s sixth collaboration with Pimlico, the last one being Betty Blue Eyes two years ago. Those prisoners who don’t get a part get the chance to do backstage work and Pimlico help where they can in finding employment for them after their sentences are served.
This will be Pimlico’s 26th musical in prisons around the UK and Ireland since 1989.
So far more than 2,000 prisoners have taken part in the project, some acting for the first time in their lives, and 10,000 have acted as audience, though not at performances open to the public which take place in a pop-up theatre situated inside Bronzefield.
For tickets, call the Pimlico box office on 01962 737373.
Jeremy Chapman
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