THE WICKER HUSBAND

Joseph Alessi

Cobbler

Theatre credits include: Moonlight & Magnolias (Playhouse, Nottingham); Road, Europe, A Christmas Carol and Around The World in 80 Days (Playhouse, Leeds); Fatherland (Frantic Assembly, Royal Exchange, Manchester International Festival and Lyric Hammersmith); The Lorax (The Old Vic and Toronto); The Plague (Arcola and BBC Radio 3); Adding Machine (Finborough); Monster Raving Loony (Drum Theatre, Plymouth and Soho); The One That Got Away (Ustinov, Bath); The Hook (Royal & Derngate, and Everyman, Liverpool); Brief Encounter (Kneehigh: UK, USA, Australian Tours and Studio 54, Broadway); A Midsummer Night's Dream (Royal & Derngate); Tartuffe (Playhouse, Liverpool and ETT UK Tour); Absurd Person Singular (Leicester Curve); Privates on Parade (West Yorkshire Playhouse and Birmingham Rep); The Drowsy Chaperone (Novello); Antony & Cleopatra, Julius Caeser, The Tempest (RSC, West End and USA); The Postman Always Rings Twice (West Yorkshire Playhouse and Playhouse); The Play Wot I Wrote (UK Tour); Light (Complicite, Almeida and UK Tour); The Colour of Justice - The Stephen Lawrence Enquiry (Tricycle) and Animal Crackers (Royal Exchange, UK Tour, Barbican and Lyric).

Recent TV credits include: Coronation Street (ITV); Eastenders (BBC); I live with Models (Comedy Central); Mummy’s Boys (Comedy Central) and Mr Selfridge (ITV).

Nisha Anil

Wicker Husband Feet

Nisha Anil’s career includes live performance, theatre, film and TV. She works as an actress, theatre-maker, arts manager and children’s TV presenter for CBeebies Worldwide Asia.

Nisha studied Contemporary Dance and Mime and holds an Honours Degree in Experimental Theatre. Nisha has also sung with Australian band The Herberts and often performs as a children’s storyteller.

Recent credits include: Rhia and The Tree of Lights (Quirk Theatre); Dr. Dolittle (Illyria Theatre) and devised work and commercials.

Rachel Barnes

Onstage Band

Rachel is an Actor-Musician and Composer from Hull. She trained at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and studied English at the University of Hull.

Theatre credits include: Ladhood (BBC); Sugar Coat (Vault); Joan of Leeds (New Diorama); Canary And The Crow (Arcola Theatre); I Hate Alone (Middle Child); The Sicilian Courtesan, and Kasimir and Karoline (Gate Theatre).

Angela Caesar

Cobbler’s Wife

Theatre credits include: Ensemble in Rags (Park); Moon in Caroline or Change (National, Chichester, Playhouse); Amanda in Astronaut (The Other Palace); Annie/Church Elder in KING (Hackney Empire); Grace in Orlando and The Three Graces, Head Teacher in Clown, Grandmother in Into the Forest and Mama Li in The Magic Paintbrush (Theatre Peckham); Mrs. Sander in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Understudy Serena/Ensemble in Porgy and Bess (Regents Park Open Air); Carlotta Giudicelli in The Phantom of the Opera (UK Tour); Ensemble/Soloist in Showboat (Royal Albert Hall).

Opera credits Include: Chorus in La Boheme, Macbeth, Samson Et Dalila, Tosca and Nabucco (Royal Opera House); Butterfly in Shaw Goes Wilde, Alice Ford in Falstaff and Gianetta in L’Elisir D’Amore (Pegasus Opera); Water Nymph and Understudy Foreign Princess in Rusalka (English Touring Opera); Kathryn in Dream Lovers (Syncopation); Chorus in Lucia Di Lammermoor (Baltimore Opera); Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Emily in Edgar and Emily, Gertrude in Hansel and Gretel, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni (Peabody Opera Theatre) and Girl of Mahagonny in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (English National Opera).

Jonathan Charles

Innkeep

Jonathan trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Theatre credits include: A Christmas Carol and The Butterfly Lion (Barn, Cirencester); Warhorse (National and UK Tour); Cinderella (Queen's, Hornchurch); Peter Pan In Scarlet (Oxford Playhouse and New Vic Theatre, Stoke); Robin Hood & Marian, The Borrowers and Dracula (New Vic Theatre, Stoke); Sunset Five (Edinburgh Festival, Pleasance and Greenwich); Juno & The Paycock (Bristol Old Vic and Liverpool Playhouse); The Revenger’s Tragedy (Gentleman Jack Theatre); London Road (Bristol Old Vic Studio); The Merry Wives Of Windsor and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Redgrave Theatre, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School).

Sebastian Charles

Wicker Husband Heart

Sebastian Charles trained in Physical Theatre at East 15 Acting School and was nominated for the Spotlight Prize in 2014.

Theatre credits include: Puppeteer for Amal in The Walk (Good Chance and Handspring Puppet Company), Puppeteer and cover Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Bridge) Topthorn Heart in War Horse (UK Tour), Narrator in Sleeping Beauty (Peacock, English National Ballet). A Clockwork Orange (Park); Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (National Theatre River Stage and Latitude Festival); The Selfish Giant (Arcola); Gobsmacked The Show (International Tour), Club Red (Highly Sprung); Humming Bird (Imagineer Productions) and 60 Hugs (Frantic Assembly).

TV credits include: Red Sharkey in Half Moon Investigations and various guest lead roles in Doctors (BBC).

Julian Forsyth

The Old Basketmaker

Theatre credits include: Local Hero (Lyceum, Edinburgh); An American in Paris, The Go Between, Sunset Boulevard, The Woman in Black, Stephen Ward, Wicked, Gone With The Wind, A Midsummer Night's Dream, St Joan, Les Misérables, Martin Guerre (all West End); Cyrano de Bergerac and The Miser (Chichester); Down By The Greenwood Side (Royal Opera House); Tangier Tattoo (Glyndebourne); The Wizard of Oz (Royal Festival Hall); Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (National); Measure for Measure and The Blue Angel (RSC); Follies (Royal & Derngate); Pacific Overtures (Leicester Curve); Blue/Orange (New Vic); The Silver Tassie, Lulu and Scenes from an Execution (Almeida); Salieri in Amadeus (Derby) and Fagin in Oliver! (Sadler's Wells, Leicester Curve and Sheffield Crucible).

Television credits include: Father Brown; Casualty; A Touch of Frost; The Curse of Steptoe; Dalziell and Pascoe; Diamond Geezer; Footballers’ Wives; Holby City; Doctors; EastEnders; Poirot; Through Lotte’s Lens and Adolf Hitler in Nazi Megastructures.

Film credits include: The Children Act

Claire-Marie Hall

Innkeep’s Wife

Claire-Marie originates from Newport, South Wales and studied at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.

Previous Watermill credits include: The Wicker Husband (2020 cast).

Theatre credits include: Operation Mincemeat (Southwark Playhouse), The Grinning Man (Trafalgar Studios), The King and I (Leicester Curve and UK Tour), High School Musical (Hammersmith Apollo and UK Tour), Les Misérables (Queen’s), On Hostile Ground (Online, Northampton Royal & Derngate), The Wonderful Storybook (Theatre Peckham), The Colours (Soho), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Scoot Theatre), The Sorrows Of Satan (Tristan Bates), Between Empires (St James’ and Edinburgh Festival), Aladdin (Jordan Productions, First Family Productions and Hackney Empire).

Television credits include: Just Up Your Street and Aladdin (BBC Wales).

Radio credits include: When the Dog Dies and My Brilliant Divorce (Radio 4).

George Maguire

Wicker Husband

George is the winner of the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his performance of Dave Davies in Sunny Afternoon.

Theatre Includes: Buck Barrow in Bonnie & Clyde in Concert (Theatre Royal Drury Lane); Alan Dangle in One Man, Two Guvnors (New Wolsley and Nuffield Theatre); Orsino/Malvolio in Twelfth Night (Bridge House Theatre); Marc Bolan in 20th Century Boy (UK Tour); 35mm (The Other Palace); The Buskers Opera (Park Theatre); Dave Davies in Sunny Afternoon (Harold Pinter); Lift (Soho); Tad in Bright Lights Big City, Berger in Hair (Piccadilly); Joe Vegas in Fame (Shaftesbury) and Angel in Rent (European Tour).

Television credits include: Felix in Eastenders (BBC), Duke in Prime Suspect (ITV) and Ferrante D’este in Borgia (Lionsgate).

Davina Moon

Tailor's Wife

Theatre credits include: Yellow Face (National and Park Theatre); Privates On Parade (Noël Coward); Annie Get Your Gun (The Young Vic); Miss Saigon (Theatre Royal); Bombay Dreams (Apollo Victoria); Around the World in Eighty Days (Sadler’s Wells London and The Mint Theatre NYC); The Last Temptation Of Boris Johnson (Park Theatre);The Mirror Crack’d (Salisbury Playhouse and Wales Millennium Centre); Double Act (Polka Theatre); Britain’s Got Bhangra (Rifco Arts) and Wuthering Heights (Tamasha).

Pat Moran

Onstage Musical Director

Pat trained at the California Institute of the Arts, earning a Performer/Composer dual-focus MFA. He relocated to the UK in 2015 and has worked extensively as a theatre multi-instrumentalist and musical director. Recent credits include Cinderella (Hall for Cornwall); The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (Bridge Theatre); Brief Encounter (Kneehigh); Hireth (O Region); Tristan & Yseult (Kneehigh); 946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips (Kneehigh); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare’s Globe); Sleeping Beauty (Bristol Old Vic) and An Audience With Meow Meow (Berkeley Repertory Theatre, USA).

Pat served as resident composer, lyricist, musical director and multi-instrumentalist for the San Francisco Mime Troupe from 2007 to 2013. He is an active composer with recent work for BBC Ideas, visual artist Adébayo Bolaji, Wyldwood Arts, PM Syndicate, Unreliable Witness and Yesterday’s Camel.

Tom Norman

Wicker Husband Swing

Tom studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, gaining an MA in Musical Theatre.

Tom was a Double Heart puppeteer in the National Theatre’s War Horse, performing in the UK and Ireland, South Africa, Holland and Belgium.

Other theatre credits include: Circus 1903 (Royal Festival Hall); Swing puppeteer in The Magic Flute (Glyndebourne); Doctor Dolittle (UK Tour); 12 Tenors (European Tour); Salad Days (Union); The Steadfast Tin Soldier (Pleasance); 13 Objects (Manchester Fringe Festival); Dinosaur World (UK and US Tours) and Project Campfire for Will Tuckett.

Jack Quarton

Tailor

Jack trained at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA).

Previous Watermill credits include: Assassins

Theatre includes: Amélie (Criterion); Assassins (Nottingham Playhouse); Wonderland (Nottingham Playhouse/Northern Stage); Coram Boy (Nottingham Playhouse, also Associate Director); Great Expectations, Hansel and Gretel, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland (Derby); Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Swallows and Amazons (Storyhouse/Grosvenor Park Open Air ); An August Bank Holiday Lark (Northern Broadsides); Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Pants on Fire); On the Mend (Everyman, Cheltenham); Alice in Wonderland (Octagon, Bolton) and The Master & Margarita (Unity, Liverpool.)

Film credits include: Mike Leigh’s Peterloo (Thin Man Films/Film 4)

Jack is also a multi-instrumentalist, musical director, composer, arranger and lyricist. He was recently Composer and Musical Director for Derby Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, Musical Director for the revival of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with Pants on Fire (Earl Haig Hall, London), and Assistant Musical Director for Wonderland (Nottingham Playhouse/Northern Stage).

Gemma Sutton

Ugly Girl

Gemma is from Macclesfield in Cheshire and trained at ArtsEd.

Previous Watermill credits include: Charity in Sweet Charity.

Theatre credits include: Kate Draper in Girl From The North Country (Gielgud and Toronto); Annie Londonderry in RIDE (Garrick); Annie in Annie Get Your Gun (Betley Court Farm); The Girl in Blues in the Night (Kiln); Young Sally in Follies (National); Angel in The Rink (Southwark – Offie Award for Female Performance in a Musical); Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol (Lyceum); Fran in Strictly Ballroom (West Yorkshire Playhouse and Princess of Wales, Toronto); Marian in The Go Between (Apollo); June and Louise in Gypsy (Chichester and Savoy); Julie in Carousel (Arcola); Roxie in Chicago (Leicester Curve); Drunk (Leicester Curve and Bridewell); Amber in Hairspray (UK Tour); Me and My Girl (Kilworth House); Enid and Understudy Elle in Legally Blonde – The Musical (Savoy); Gone with the Wind and Imagine This (New London); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Lady Be Good and The Boy Friend (Regent’s Park Open Air) and Children Will Listen (Theatre Royal Drury Lane).

Television credits include: West Side Stories (BBC); Gypsy: Live at the Savoy Theatre (Netflix/BBC/PBS); Doctors (BBC) and Cilla (ITV).

Other work includes: Soloist in The Music of James Bond (Barbican), recordings for Grant Olding, Theo Jamieson and Jennifer Whyte and new musical workshops with Dominic Cooke, Rupert Gould and Susan Stroman. Gemma’s latest project is The Voice Box – a horse trailer turned live mobile music and theatre stage, which has recently been featured on George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces. For more information, visit www.voiceboxmusic.co.uk

Jon Whitten

Hammered Dulcimer and Onstage Band

Jon has performed, written and recorded for artists including Alt-J (Mercury Album of the Year, three-time Brit Award Nominee and Ivor Novello Award Winner), Sam Lee (Mercury Award Winner, BBC Folk Award Winner), Charles Castronovo and City of London Sinfonia, and companies including the Royal Opera House, Blind Summit, Little Bulb and Shakespeare’s Globe.

Television credits include: Later… with Jools Holland and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts

Performance credits include: Glastonbury Festival’s Acoustic Stage, The Barbican, festivals across Europe and the Americas and an unlit crypt beneath Paris.

In his personal time, Jon is writing a life-changing drag cabaret called Deeply Personal, Sweetly Soulful, Searing and Brave.