All aboard for a toe-tapping ride across America in the company of an eclectic band of musicians. It’s the 1940s, Hollywood’s booming, gasoline and nylon stockings are rationed, women are wearing their hair in Victory rolls, putting on red lipstick and jitterbugging with GIs. The music scene is booming with swing, jazz, crooners and everything in between and we’re on a train heading for… who knows? But wherever we’re going, it’s going to be one helluva ride!
Following last year’s sell-out show, The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea, a company of Watermill trade-mark actor-musicians, including Simon Slater and Julian Littman, take us on another musical journey featuring songs of the period including Chatanooga Choo Choo, Take The A Train, You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To and Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby.
Watermill Scratch Choir
Songs from Tuxedo Junction
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Musical Director Simon Slater
Musical staging by Lee Lyford
Sound designed by David Gregory
Alexander Evans
Theatre includes: Dessa Rose (Trafalgar Studios); The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and Honk! (Watermill Theatre); The Secret Garden in concert (UK Tour); Carousel (Barbican Theatre, Opera North); Masterclass (Vaudeville Theatre); Ragtime and Do I Hear A Waltz? (Landor Theatre); Sunset Boulevard (Harold Pinter Theatre and Watermill Theatre); Aspects of Love (UK tour); Hair! (Octagon, Yeovil); Spirit of the Dance (UK Tour); Fanny The Musical (Lost Musicals, Sadlers Wells).
Opera includes: L’Elisir D'Amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, The Merry Widow, The Magic Flute, Don Carlos, The Barber of Seville (Pavilion Opera); Mozart's Impressario, Cavalleria Rusticana, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro (Zeist Festival, Amsterdam).
Julian Littman
West End theatre credits include: We Will Rock You, Jailhouse Rock, 125th Street, Budgie, Hedwig & The Angry Itch, Pump Boys and Dinettes, Pilgrim, Fire Angel.
Recent theatre appearances include: Music supervisor and arranger for the current tour of Return to the Forbidden Planet, The Down and Out in The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea at The Watermill, MD for Lust at Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch.
Julian is is a member of folk/rock pioneers Steeleye Span and has written songs for Sheena Easton, Sister Sledge, Gerry Rafferty, Charlie Dore, Toto Coelo and Philip Bailey. He has played with Gerry Rafferty, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Pete Townshend.
Karen Mann
Theatre credits include: Fiddler on the Roof (Music & Lyrics Ltd.); Master Class (English Theatre Frankfurt); The Susan Boyle Story I Dreamed A Dream (Michael Harrison Entertainment/No. 1 Tour); Sleeping Beauty (New Wolsey Ipswich); Alice In Wonderland, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Animal Farm (all for the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Birmingham Rep.); The Talented Mr Ripley, Sense & Sensibility, Cabaret and Face (Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch); extensive work for The Watermill Theatre including Copacabana, Martin Guerre, Hot Mikado, Spend, Spend, Spend, Moonlight & Magnolias, Gondoliers, Fiddler on the Roof and Sweeney Todd.
Sophia Nomvete
Credits include: Much Ado About Nothing (Royal Exchange Theatre); The Color Purple (Menier Chocolate Factory); The Pyjama Game (Chichester Festival Theatre); Ragtime and A Midsummer Nights Dream (both Regents Park Theatre); Aladdin and Cinderella (both Lyric Theatre); Antony and Cleopatra (Nuffield Theatre); Grimm Tales (Library Theatre); England People Very Nice (Royal National Theatre); Our House (Cambridge Theatre); The Drowsy Chaperone (Gatehouse Theatre); Footloose (UK tour/Mark Goucher); Fame (Aldwych Theatre).
Simon Slater
Theatre includes: Bloodshot (St James’ Theatre, Vertigo Theatre, UK Tour and Vienna); Viva Forever (Piccadilly Theatre); Chariots of Fire (Gielguild Theatre, Hampstead Theatre); Honk!, For Services Rendered (The Watermill); Mamma Mia! (West End); The Wind in the Willows, Earth and Sky, Waiting for Godot, Jungle Book (Nuffield, Southampton and Tour); Song of Singapore (Chichester Festival Theatre).
Recent TV/film includes Scott and Bailey (ITV) Spooks(BBC) Monarch of the Glen (BBC) The Iron Lady, Passage, Angel Cake, Casualty. Recently won 2 awards for his audio book of Wolf Hall.