A new video has been released featuring Molly Lynch singing the haunting song ‘All the Dead Poets’ from the world premiere of major new musical Killing The Cat, accompanied by musical director Billy Bullivant.
Molly Lynch is joined by Madalena Alberto, Tim Rogers, Joaquin Pedro Valdes and Kluane Saunders in Killing The Cat, directed by Jenny Eastop, at London’s Riverside Studios from 17 March to 22 April 2023 (press night is 22 March).
Marking a new transatlantic collaboration between an Anglo-American writing team and UK and US producers, Killing The Cat has book and lyrics by Walking With Dinosaurs writer Warner Brown and music by radical American composer Joshua Schmidt.
What happens when you’re falling for someone but don’t share their beliefs? What happens when you’re so sure you’re right you won’t move an inch? Does love stand a chance?
In the heady world of the romantic poets, scientific theories and certainties, can lust and love keep two polar opposites together beyond the first night?
Madalena Alberto has played some of the most coveted roles in musical theatre, including the title role in Evita, Nettie Fowler in Carousel, Velma Kelly in Chicago, Fantine in Les Misérables and Grizabella in Cats.
Tim Rogers’ many leading roles include Judas Iscariot in Jesus Christ Superstar, Alex in Aspects of Love, Tony in West Side Story, The Man in Whistle Down the Wind.
Molly Lynch won huge critical acclaim for her portrayal of Cathy in The Last Five Years at Southwark Playhouse and its subsequent West End transfer. She covered and played the role of Clara in Daniel Evans’ production of The Light in the Piazza at Royal Festival Hall, LA Opera and Lyric Opera, Chicago, and has appeared as Betty Schaefer in Sunset Boulevard (Curve, Leicester and UK tour).
Kluane Saunders has played Sheila in Relatively Speaking, Jill in Equus, Lynette in Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down and recently toured the UK in HMS Pinafore.
Joaquin Pedro Valdes covered and played Simba on the recent UK tour of The Lion King and was Ram Sweeney in Heathers at The Other Palace. His other musicals include the UK and international tours of The King and I and Miss Saigon.
Joining director Jenny Eastop in the creative team are movement director Lucie Pankhurst, set and costume designer Lee Newby, lighting designer Jamie Platt, sound designer Oscar Cotran and musical director Billy Bullivant. Arrangements are by Joshua Schmidt with orchestrations and additional arrangements by Jen Green. The casting director is Danielle Tarento.
Killing The Cat is produced by Mercurius Theatre, S&S Theatre Productions and Kent Nicholson.
Warner Brown (book and lyrics) has collaborated with composers as different as Jim Steinman and Michael Feinstein, Jenny Giering and Angelo Badalamenti. The Cole Porter Trusts granted him the stage rights to the Cole Porter catalogue for his dark original musical The Black and White Ball, directed by Matthew White, and his Dusty Springfield musical, Son Of A Preacher Man, directed by Craig Revel Horwood, toured to 38 UK venues. Wearing a completely different hat, for BBC Worldwide Brown wrote the $40,000,000 arena show Walking with Dinosaurs – the Arena Spectacular, creating an entirely new genre of theatrical presentation which has become ‘the biggest family show of all time’. His work on this has won many international awards, including the Billboard Magazine Creative Content Award. Two companies toured internationally – playing to nine million people in 250 cities worldwide; an episode of CSI: Las Vegas was based on the show and it even earned the ultimate honour of being parodied on The Simpsons.
Joshua Schmidt (music) is the award-winning American composer, lyricist, book writer and theatrical sound designer. He is know for Adding Machin3 (Lucille Lortel Award – Best Musical; Outer Critics Circle Award – Best Score & Best Off-Broadway Musical; Joseph Jefferson Award – Best Musical; as well as four Obie Awards, nine Drama Desk nominations and Drama League nomination for Best Musical). Adding Machin3 was also heralded as one of the year’s 10 best events in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Out NY and Chicago Tribune. Further credits include the critically-acclaimed Midwestern Gothic (Signature DC); A Minister’s Wife (Lincoln Center – Best Musical Jeff Award) and Whida Peru (59E59). Schmidt is currently writing the musical score for The End, a major movie musical directed by Joshua Oppenheimer and starring Tilda Swinton. He is a Sundance Theatre Lab UCross artist.
Jenny Eastop (director) is the multiple Offie-nominated director and producer for Mercurius Theatre, where her productions have included The Biograph Girl, Mr Gillie, The Alchemist, The Waiting Room and Anton Chekhov’s Vaudevilles, which has had three separate transfers. As a freelance director she has worked at venues such as Shakespeare’s Globe, National Theatre Studio, Riverside Studios, Soho Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, Paines Plough and Park Theatre. In the West End she directed Everlasting Rose at the Apollo Theatre for the London New Play Festival and Spirit of the Ogoni at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. Outside London she has directed at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Harrogate Theatre, Contact Theatre Manchester, the Tobacco Factory and Bristol New Vic. Eastop has been associate director to Michael Blakemore on The Life at Southwark Playhouse; Blithe Spirit with Angela Lansbury, both West End and US tour; Afterlife at the National Theatre; Embers with Jeremy Irons, West End; Democracy at the National Theatre, West End, on Broadway and at Sydney Theatre Company; Copenhagen at Chichester and Three Sisters, with Kristen Scott Thomas, in the West End.
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