London cabaret Sondheim style

Rachael Louise Miller kicks off a new series of cabaret shows at the Leicester Square Theatre Lounge

London cabaret gets a new spin with the launch of a series of Stephen Sondheim Society presentations at London’s Leicester Square Theatre Lounge, teeing off with actress Rachael Louise Miller on Wednesday, 19 June.

These one-hour shows, starting at 7pm, will feature rising talents and more established names performing programmes in which Sondheim’s work will be the prime ingredient.

Miller trained at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts where she was the recipient of the Dame Judi Dench Scholarship. Her work in theatre includes the Les Miserables 25th Anniversary concert (The O2); Narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (national tour); The Wizard of Oz (Royal Festival Hall) and Eponine in Les Miserables (Queens Theatre).

The actress is also a highly sought-after voiceover artist and can be heard on numerous audio books, computer games and perhaps most notably as the voice of Alice in the cartoon series Angelina Ballerina currently showing on Nickelodeon Junior.

Also coming up are Charlotte Bradford, who sang at the Sondheim Birthday Prom at the Royal Albert Hall; Craig Rhys Barlow, a Sondheim Student Performer of the Year finalist who recently played The Arbiter in Chess at the Union Theatre on the London Fringe; The Rockabellas, three exciting ladies who sing close-harmony standards and are including new vocal arrangements of Sondheim classics; Simon Wallfisch, an opera singer who does funny parodies of musical theatre; Kate Hume, a newcomer keen to cut her teeth on Sondheim material in a cabaret enviroment, and Jamie Lee Pike, who has performed in cabaret at Lauderdale House in north London and in Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years at the Tabard Theatre (in Chiswick, west London).

For musical theatre fans, there’s a real live Broadway diva appearing at the Leicester Square Theatre in the same week as Miller launches the Sondheim evenings. Patti LuPone, famed for Evita, Sweeney Todd, Les Miserables and a Tony Award-winner for Gypsy, will be in the main auditorium, making a seven-performance visit running from 16-23 June.

Another artist with considerable Sondheim connections (Into the Woods, Passion) arriving soon is the Chicago actor/singer Gregg Edelman. not perhaps a household name in the UK but very big in the States. He’s at the Crazy Coqs in Piccadilly from 25-29 June and then, in a terrific coup, noted pianist and accompanist James Church has persuaded the four-time Tony Award nominee and Broadway star of Cabaret and Evita to stay on to do a 30 June one-off for his Norden Farm cabaret evenings in Maidenhead.

Jeremy Chapman