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PADDINGTON the Musical announces its West End cast... but who is playing the bear?
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More and more lately I find myself approaching people within the theater industry and saying the following words, can we please talk about Paddington Bear? And that is exactly what you and I are about to do. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a professional theatre critic here on social media and today we are going to be discussing an exciting update about what I have been unashamedly calling anticipated new West End musical opening of 2025. The background may give you some hint as to what we are going to be talking about today. And in terms of addressing what I would call the elephant in the room if it weren't specifically in reference to another animal. Until such a time as I get an actual Paddington the Musical plush bear to sit in the background of these videos, you are getting all of these bears just to really labor the point. That's right, we are talking about Paddington the Musical based of course on Paddington Bear opening at London's Savoy Theatre later this year, but already in I believe, and with this finally, after months of anticipation and building excitement, we had an announcement of some of the show's principal cast members. I say some, but not all, because amidst this revelation of newcomers and veteran performers alike, we still do not know by whom and in what capacity Paddington Bear himself will be brought to the stage. And I don't believe we are going to find out until the show's first preview performance in a few months time. We are going to have to wait until Saturday 1st November when the show will have its first public preview performance, after which there is a month of previews before it officially opens on the 30th, after which point I hope to share my full review of the show here on social media. Make sure that you are subscribed, turn on notifications or follow me on podcast platforms so you don't miss that or any additional updates between now and then about the Paddington Musical. In the meantime, let us talk about those cast members who have been announced and after we've done that, I will share a tiny bit of insight into what I have heard about the way that Paddington is being created on stage. I am not willing to spoil it for you at this stage, but I am willing to dispel a couple myths that I have been hearing and if you feel like speculating wildly in the comments section, then maybe I will steer you slightly more in the right direction. Anyway, before we get into that conversation, let's talk about the human characters in this musical and who is going to be playing them in the West End. So this was announced a couple of days ago. I am reading from the press release Meet the principal cast bringing the world premiere of Paddington the Musical to the West End this autumn. Additional members of the creative team have also been announced who I found very exciting actually. Now this was made public in conjunction with rehearsals beginning for the world premiere of Paddington the Musical. At the time of filming it is late August. I am currently sitting here on Saturday 23rd August. This was emailed to me two days ago. The first public performance is not until 1st November, so we have upwards of two months of rehearsals for this show before they even begin preview performances and then a month of previews. It seems as though there is a huge amount of work, a really extraordinary and in many ways unprecedented amount of work going into bringing this show to the stage. But one of the lead producers here is Sonja Friedman along with Studio Canal and Eliza Lumley Productions on behalf of Universal Music uk and Sonja knows More than a little something about bringing these massive productions to West End and Broadway stages. Sonja also being the producer behind such huge productions as Stranger Things, the First Shadow, which she not too long ago went on record to say didn't quite have enough time to achieve everything that it could have done in its initial West End run that continues to play at the Phoenix Theatre. So I understand the mindset behind, you know, giving Paddington as much time as he needs to get ready. Now, they nod here to the fact that they are announcing the principal cast, but maybe not quite all of them just yet. As well as further members of the creative team. They remind us that it's adapted from the much loved books written by Michael Bond and the award winning films by Studio Canal. The cast members that have been announced in the roles that they have been assigned to do seem to indicate that it is very much an adaptation of the first Paddington film. There are currently three, and as a reminder, music and lyrics by Tom Fletcher, book by Jessica Swale by Luke Shepard. So let's talk about those cast members, beginning with Mr. Brown, who is going to be played by Adrian Dare Gregorian, who I have seen on stage a while ago, but not for some time in the West End. He has been in shows like Maiden Dagenham, a little further back in Le Cage aux Fall, in the Woman in White, which is, I believe, where he met his now wife, Maria Friedman. Brilliant actor, terrific vocalist. At one point I was hearing his name attached to the show and there was speculation as to whether or not he was going to be providing the singing voice of Paddington Bear. Because if you listen to Adrian sing, it sounds very much like a sort of a gentle Ben Whishaw type of a voice. Ben Whishaw, of course, being the voice of Paddington in the films. But now that we know that he's playing Mr. Brown, there's going to be a nice parity, I think, between those two vocal types and hopefully we might get a Paddington and Mr. Brown duet at some point. That's one of the main relationships to emerge in the film as Mr. Brown, initially indifferent to Paddington, eventually softens his resolve. Hopefully they get a duet if indeed Paddington is going to sing with other characters on stage. There are still so many question marks about this bear. Mrs. Brown, meanwhile, is going to be played by the wonderful Amy Ellen Richardson. I cannot begin to list all of her many, many credits because she's done so many shows. I've seen her in so many shows. She has been a Mrs. Wormwood in Matilda. She's done your dancing shows like Sweet Charity and Chicago. She's also been a really terrific character actress. She's been in Beautiful, the Carole King musical and Everybody's Talking About Jamie. A whole host of projects, really versatile, wonderful performance and I'm very excited to see her in this. Now, the Brown family who Paddington goes to live with are completed by two children. The older of the two is going to be played by one actress whose name is Delilah Bennett Cardy. She is playing Judy. Her theatrical credits include the UK tour of Bugsy Malone and A Christmas Carol at the Dominion Theatre, which I saw. Perhaps I saw her in it. Presumably I did, as well as School of Rock at the Gillian Lynn. Few actors are as talented as the kids who did School of Rock, let me tell you. But the younger of the two children is going to be played by a rotating cast of I actors whose names I did find. And now I've lost them. Oh, here we go. The role of Jonathan Brown is played by Joseph Bramley, Leo Collins, Stevie Hare and Jasper Rouse. That's four actors I can't count. And when the casting emerged, those were the first names that I wanted to know about. I was like, who is playing the Brown family? Because I think these are probably going to be some of the largest human roles other than the bear ones in the show. And it's really nice to see the hard working veteran actors who haven't necessarily had these huge, big, splashy West End starring moments getting these kinds of opportunities. Paddington is going to be huge regardless and you could absolutely court big, big names for these roles. But it's nice to feel as though these roles have gone to, you know, very deserving veteran actors who are probably just sensationally brilliant in them. That's very encouraging. But it's not to say that we don't have some surprisingly big names in there as well, including Bonnie Langford, dame of musical theater, that she ought to be recently seen on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, known to audiences for her work on stage and on screen. The Aunt, the Strahlin Sisters. If that's how you know her, you ought to know her in her own right because she is a fantastic veteran performer. Bonnie is going to be playing the role of Mrs. Bird. I believe this is the Julie Walters role from the film. It's been a little bit since I have seen the Paddington movie, but I feel like this is the housekeeper character. And my immediate question whenever I see Bonnie Langford cast in a new role is at which point is this character going to drop into the splits because she can and she should listen. Not too long ago she toured with the arena concert version of Les Miserables as Madame Thenardier found a way to drop into the splits. So you know the opportunity's there. And Bonnie isn't the only face that a broader audience to the theater may recognize from their time spent on screen. There is also TV star Brenda Edwards. Brenda is another performer known for stage and screen. She has been in Chicago in White Christmas, in Hairspray. She has, I believe, directed the most recent UK tour of Hairspray. She is also well known as a panelist on Loose Women. She is going to be playing a character called Tanya, who I am anticipating. Being a resident of the neighbor, Paddington meets a lot of the local people. From the way that the initial image that we have been sent is set up, it looks as though she is perhaps a mother to another character called Tony, played by Timiya Kenyosade, who is going to be making his professional stage debut. That's very exciting and immediately just with those two, that kind of typifies the initial casting that we have seen for these principal roles. You have brilliant newcomers and established veterans, but for Brenda Edwards to be taking on this role, I'm a little bit curious if there's more to this character or more to what she's doing throughout the show than initially meets the A. And you know, admittedly it's a lovely brand and a lovely project to be a part of. Paddington is beloved within British culture. And so if I as an actor had the opportunity to do any kind of a role within Paddington the Musical, I would probably also say yes.
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Now, there are a few more principal cast members I need to tell you about, but in the initial press release as well as in many of the articles I have seen covering it, I feel like they've been burying the lead a little bit here because the headline news, in my opinion, is the one piece of casting I already knew about a few months ago. I had heard about this since one of the workshops and this is that Victoria Hamilton Barrett, currently starring as Persephone in Hadestown, is going to be playing Millicent Clyde. For those of you who haven't seen the film or aren't familiar with the film, this is the Nicole Kidman role. And immediately, if you have seen it and you know it and you think about Victoria Hamilton Barrett playing that character, you know, if you are familiar with her work, that this is going to be some level of unhinged. And it's exciting to me because I don't know that I would have thought of her for this character. She doesn't scream Nicole Kidman or the way that Nicole Kidman approached this role, but once you think about it makes perfect sense. And I have never once in my life questioned the versatility of Victoria Hamilton Barrett. I have seen her in A Chorus Line, I have seen her in in the Heights. I saw her very recently playing a campy scene stealing villain in Bronco Billy. She was brilliant in that show. Of course, in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella. Who could forget her performance as the stepmother? She is going to be sensational in this. I suspect as of right now, not knowing that much about the material that everyone has, this is the performance I'm most excited to see. But I do need to tell you about a few more of my favourites. The wonderful Tom Edden, looking subtle as ever in images that they have shared, is going to be playing another character. I have the name here, Mr. Curry. I feel like he is the one who resents Paddington being on the street. He's like the, the local busybody from what I remember. Yeah. Peter Capaldi in the movie. Tom Edden, absolutely brilliant, has done such brilliant work in plays and musicals recently seen opposite Charlie Stemp in Crazy for your was in Jamie Lloyd's Cyrano. A real breakout performance for him in 1 Man 2 Governors a few years back. Tom Edinburgh, absolutely fantastic, another of our best really as is true veteran of the stage Teddy Kempner, recently seen as Herr Schultz in Cabaret and Girl from the north country. But with a career that goes back decades of brilliant, funny, heartwarming performances. He is going to be playing the character of Mr. Gruber. I believe this was Jim Broadbent in the film. He is a friend to Paddington and I can immediately straight away, scarcely even closing my eyes, utterly visualized Teddy Kempner in this role. That's a fantastic piece of cast. Finally then, two more names have been announced. There is Taryn Callender, an alumnus of the original West End company of Hamilton, has also been seen in Come From Away. Has an infectiously joyous personality, lovely to watch on stage. He is going to be playing a character called Grant, who I believe from the film was a sort of an associate of Millicent Clyde's of Victoria's character. That's what I'm remembering, but that could be completely incorrect. And then we have Amy Booth Steele, who is a wonderful comedic musical theatre character actress who has done a whole bunch of shows, was one of the finalists on I Do Anything, the BBC TV series Searching for Anansi to star in a new production of Oliver, with Jodi Prenger winning the role. But many, many talented participants including Rachel Tucker and Jessie Buckley and Samantha Barks and more besides. Amy was most recently seen in the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, prior to that, I mean, years back in Sister act, more recently in productions of Assassins, the original London production of Tammy Faye at the Almeida. Also wrote and performed her own solo show which she took to the ED Festival fringe called Honest Amy, playing original songs that she wrote on the ukulele as well as sharing personal stories about her own life. I think she's brilliant. She's playing a character called Lady Sloane, who has no counterpart in the film from what I can tell, but is dressed sort of like an explorer here in the image that we are seeing and is stood nearby to Victoria and Taryn Callender. I wonder if she is part of that world potentially. There is in the Paddington movie a male explorer character who Paddington's Uncle Pastuza and Aunt Lucy are very enamored with. And I'm wondering if this could be a gender flipped version of that. Here's the other thing I'm wondering. Sometimes you have a principal cast where members of that principal cast understudy other characters within that cast, if that makes sense. Sometimes the understudies are in the ensemble, sometimes the understudies are other principal roles, like Svetlana covering Florence in Chess. And so I'm curious if anyone within the lineup that has been revealed so far is covering anyone else's character within that lineup. And I have another curiosity about this group as well because there has been considerable conversation about Paddington himself. But he is not the only bear that I am expecting to see featured in this musical because if we are going to tell his story from the very beginning, then we also need to meet Aunt Lucy and Uncle Pastuza. And I think they are going to be performed to some extent by members of the company, either physically or vocally, or both. And I am curious as to any of these actors are going to be lending either their physical body or their voices to those characters on stage. Is Teddy Kempner also going to double as the voice of Uncle Pastuza? Is it Taryn Callender or Tom Edden? Is Brenda Edwards or Amy Booth Steele going to be the voice of Aunt Lucy? I have questions about this. Alternatively, those roles could be portrayed by members of the ensemble. There are secrets yet to be revealed, secrets currently being devised by the show's creative team. Let's talk about them next. So we already knew prior to this announcement that the show had been developed and was going to be directed in the West End by Luke Shepard, who is currently represented in London by two other ongoing musicals. His is the new production of Starlight Express, running at the Troubadour Theatre in Wembley Park. He has also directed Just For One Day, which has recently transferred to the Shaft Spree, and he directed and Juliet, which continues to run successfully on Broadway. In addition to this, Luke was also the director of the Little Big Things, the new musical In Dreams, Rob Madge's solo show My Sons Are Queer, but what can you do? Luke is a brilliant emerging talent. There is so much talk about Jamie Lloyd and how prolifically he has been working in the West End and on Broadway. But Luke Shepard also deserves to be a big part of that conversation because the scale of projects that he has been working on over the past few years has very quickly become massive. The fact that he was entrusted with the new Starlight Express, the fact that he is being entrusted with with Paddington, which is going to be huge regardless of what it is, at least for a time. And something of a thread that runs through all of his work is a beautiful sense of sentimentality. And it's always very emotionally affecting and it's always very mindful, or at least it seems to be of young audiences as well. That is very much a sense that you get when you are watching Starlight Express that it cares a lot about the young audience members for whom this may be their first theatrical experience. There's a deeply sweet quality to his work on shows like the Little Big Things, like My Sons Are Queer. And so I'm very excited see what he does with Paddington. I think he is the perfect person for it. But as in any creative team, he is not alone. Let us find out who else is going to be joining him. We already knew about Jessica Swale and Tom Fletcher. I have spoken about this before when Paddington was first officially announced, but we now know that the creative team is additionally going to include Matt Brind, who will be the musical supervisor, also responsible for orchestrations and arrangements. Matt recently worked on Just for One Day, the Live Aid musical. I was singing his praises in my review about excited to hear more of his work. The choreographer Ellen Kane is going to be working on Paddington, another rising star creative name that we are hearing more and more these days who is doing brilliant, inventive, whimsical work. I left her choreography for why Am I so Single in the West End and the World. Loved her viral choreography for the Matilda movie. That Red Berry Girl moment in the hallway with revolting Children. I can't think of anyone better to choreograph Paddington. It's very possible we actually already knew about Ellen Kane as choreographer for the show that May announced previously or someone told me months ago and I forgot. Honestly, that happens more than I'd care to admit. Tom Pye is the scenic designer. Gabriella Slade is the costume designer, having worked with Luke Shepard previously on Starlight Express. That's very interesting. Neil Austin is the lighting designer. Gareth Owen is the sound designer. Ash J. Woodward, video designer and animation. Campbell Young Associates for hair wigs and makeup. Majid Adin for illustration and additional animation. Laura Bangay, musical director. Natalie Gallagher for Pippa Alien and Natalie Gallagher, casting. That's the casting director. And Nick Hockaday, young person. Person's casting director. Javier Marzan, physical comedy consultant. That's interesting. And Tobago and D. Lime, additional music consultants. And unless I missed it, I don't believe anyone was explicitly credited with anything like magic or illusion design in there. However, there are a selection of creatives who have as of yet been withheld because there is a note here. Full cast, including Paddington casting, Bear designer and bear creative team to be announced shortly after. There is an entire Bear creative team that we do not know about yet. How many musicals recently have had not even a Bear creative team, but a subsection of their creative team dedicated to this one specific thing that has been withheld until the first public performance. I'm very excited about all of this and it speaks to the complex logistics and the amount of innovation and thought that has gone into bringing the iconic character that is Paddington Bear to the stage of the Savoy Theatre. That there is an entire creative team, that there are multiple individuals responsible for the design of this bear, for casting the way that this bear is going to be performed. Which does tell us something. Even though they're not trying to tell us something. They have told us something within that already. And I think that does finally necessitate us having the conversation about how exactly Paddington is going to be performed.
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Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates excludes Massachusetts and like I said, I have heard a lot of things that you know they haven't been confirmed, but every industry professional that I've spoken to has heard those same things as well. So at the very least it is a widespread rumor, even if it is not an official one. I am not going to share that with you because it is not my place to do so. I know other people on the theatrical Internet like to loudly shout everything that they have heard about productions before it is made public so that they can acknowledge that they knew it first. But in this instance it is not my place. I'm not entirely sure that I would know how to fully explain it if I'm being honest. And also they have already dedicated a lot of effort to make it a surprise for AUD audiences at the first preview performance. And so I don't want to be a part of spoiling that. What I will say is that I already saw some people being preemptively disappointed about the notion of Paddington as a puppet or an animatronic of some kind with Ben Whishaw's pre recorded voice because he has been so involved with that character and he has been so linked to it since the Paddington films. And this, as far as I have heard heard, is not what is going to be happening. I have heard no names concretely attached to the voice of Paddington Bear. It is my assumption, and nothing else, based on having been told nothing about this part of it, that somebody is going to be providing the live voice of Paddington Bear. But what I understand is that Paddington is going to be brought to life on stage separately to that, and that it is likely to require multiple different individuals. The creation of Paddington Bear as a character going to take a team of performers as well as creatives. That's what I am hearing and that is absolutely everything I feel I can tell you about the Hairy subject. In fact, it's probably more than I ought to tell you. Next time I see Sonja Friedman at a press event, there are likely to be no marmalade sandwiches for me. If I say anything else. What I will say is that I remain convinced this is going to be the biggest new musical opening of the year in the West End. Paddington is already cultural, naturally massive. This has a brilliant and exciting creative team attached, exciting writers and a wonderful cast. Now revealed of West End veteran performers, deserving stars and newcomers with a sprinkling of name recognition in there as well. For people who may be sat at home saying, oh, Paddington the Musical, who's in that? Because that always seems to be the inevitable next question. So far, everything seems to be remaining on track for this to be a huge West End hit. I cannot wait to see it for myself once it gets out of the of preview performances. Chances are I'm going to get very jealous of everyone seeing it in those early previews, but also, hopefully we get to find out who is going to be portraying Paddington as soon as those performances start. I'm going to be very impatient on the night of that first performance waiting to find out what's in everyone's programs, and there is every chance that when that happens, you will see a new video from me very shortly afterwards. In the meantime, that is currently everything that I have to say about this other update from the Paddington musical. If there is anything more to talk about between now and then, you bet that you will hear it here. Make sure that you're subscribed with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any upcoming videos about this or other West End and Broadway shows. Or go follow me on podcast platforms and feel free to share all of your thoughts about the announced cast members for Paddington the Musical in the comments section down below and let us know if you have tickets to see it. Who is going to be seeing it first? Surely somebody watching this video is booked into that first preview performance. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.
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