THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA Roars Into Cadogan Hall
By: Marianka Swain Jun. 15, 2016
The Tiger Who Came to Tea roars into Chelsea this summer in the truly magical Olivier Award nominated West End production opening at Cadogan Hall on Saturday 6 August 2016 and running through to Sunday 4 September 2016. For tickets, call 020 7730 4500 or visit https://www.cadoganhall.com/
Adapted and directed by David Wood OBE, Judith Kerr's ever popular tale The Tiger Who Came to Tea is the ideal introduction to theatre for children aged three plus and the perfect summer treat for the whole family.
When Sophie and her Mummy welcome the hungry Tiger to tea, he proceeds to eat all the sandwiches, buns, biscuits and more. He even manages to drink all the water in the tap! What will Sophie's Daddy say when he gets home? Join the Tiger, Sophie and her Mummy and Daddy, in this musical slice of teatime mayhem with sing-a-long songs, oodles of magic and interactive fun.
David Wood is undisputedly the country's leading writer and director of plays and musicals for children, whose many successes include: The Gingerbread Man, Guess How Much I Love You, eight Roald Dahl adaptations including West End hits The BFG, The Witches and George's Marvellous Medicine; and the Olivier Award winning Goodnight Mister Tom.
A musical play adapted and directed by David Wood, based on the much loved book by Judith Kerr, designed by Susie Caulcutt, movement director Emma Clayton and Music Arranger / Supervisor Peter Pontzen, starring Abbey Norman (Sophie), Ashley Tucker(Mummy), Benjamin Wells (Daddy/Milkman/Postman/Tiger), Stephanie Summers (Understudy/Wardrobe) and Thomas O'Connell(Understudy/ASM).
Watch the trailer below!
Fun facts about The Tiger Who Came to Tea!
The Show
· Music - The Tiger Who Came to Tea is a musical adaptation of the classic picture book by Judith Kerr.
· Mayhem - Although the tiger in the book speaks, the Tiger in the show does not, preferring to cause mayhem through physical comedy and movement.
· Magic - The show contains magical illusions designed by the President the Magic Circle, Scott Penrose.
· The Tiger Who Came to Tea was first performed at the Bloomsbury Theatre in 2008, prior to a national UK tour. The production has since gone on to tour nationally and internationally, playing three smash-hit summer seasons in the West End, Christmas seasons at the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Arts Centre, as well as sell-out dates in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Bahrain.
· David Wood has been writing plays for children and families for almost fifty years and his productions are seen all over the world. Visit his website www.davidwood.org.uk for more information.
· The Tiger Who Came to Tea book published in 1968, is a perennial favourite and has been read by several generations. It tells the story of a tiger who invites himself to tea and eats and drinks all the food and water in Sophie's house.
· Author Judith Kerr will celebrate her 93rd birthday this year.
· In 2008, Judith Kerr approached Seven Stories (The National Centre for Children's Books) to house her archive. Her work is regularly exhibited nationally.
· Her extraordinary archive, the most significant collection of artwork by a single illustrator in the Seven Stories Collection, spans 70 years, and includes childhood paintings, drawings from her student days, and finished artwork for most of her published books, including The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
Abbey Norman returns to plays Sophie. Her family and children's theatre experience includes Maisy's Treasure Hunt, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr Benn and Robin Hood (Nuffield Theatre Southampton), The Book of the Banshee (Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford & tour), Dick Whittington (Harrogate Theatre) and Guess How Much I Love You, The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child (West End, international tour). Other theatre includes Pygmalion, The Importance of Being Earnest, Charlie's Aunt, The Maintenance Man, A Murder is Announced and The Chair Women (Riverside Studios & European tour); and for film,Traveller, the forthcoming feature film starring David Essex. Abbey also sings in the vintage three-part harmony group 'Some Swell Sisters'.
Ashley Tucker plays Mummy. Ashley has been part of The Tiger Who Came to Tea team for over a year and has performed in the role of Mummy at the Pleasance Grand and on UK tour. Her other theatre credits include Aladdin (Loughborough Town Hall),1001 (Courtyard Theatre Shoreditch), A Month In The Country (North Country Theatre), Cinderella (Maltings Theatre Berwick),Jekkyl's Potion (Vienna's English Theatre) and Salome, (Time Zone Theatre Company).
Benjamin Wells reprises his role as Daddy/Milkman/Postman/Tiger. His theatre credits include Jack and the Beanstalk (The Camberley Theatre), Spot's Birthday Party (UK tour), Merlin's Banquet (The Stage and Production House/Centre Parcs UK Tour),Romeo & Juliet/Macbeth (Young Shakespeare Company UK Tour), The Importance of Being Earnest (Oxford Shakespeare Company), Comedy of Errors (Oxford Shakespeare Company), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Young Shakespeare Company UK Tour) and Twelfth Night (The Young Shakespeare Company). Benjamin was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award in 2007 whilst training, and in 2008 was winner of the Sir John Gielgud Award.
Stephanie Summers (Understudy Mummy and Sophie/Wardrobe). The Tiger Who Came to Tea marked her first professional debut. This year she has featured in Channel 5 documentary Inside Holloway and 2 short films.
David Wood (Adapter & Director)
David's 70-plus plays for children are performed worldwide, and he has been dubbed 'the national children's dramatist' by The Times. His adaptation of Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mister Tom won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment and Family in 2013, and his adaptation of Judith Kerr's The Tiger Who Came to Tea was nominated for the same award the previous year. There were also tours of his adaptation of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach and Eric Hill's Spot's Birthday Party. His award-winning adult musical, based on L P Hartley's The Go-Between, co-written with Richard Taylor, opens in the West End in June 2016.
In 2006, to celebrate the Queen's 80th birthday, he wrote The Queen's Handbag, performed in Buckingham Palace Gardens and seen by 8,000,000 BBC1 viewers. In 2004 he was awarded the OBE for services to drama and literature. Visit his website atwww.davidwood.org.uk
Nick Brooke Ltd (Producer)
Nick Brooke has been a theatre producer for over twenty years and established Nick Brooke Limited, with Philip Noel, in 2002. The company specialises in drama and children's theatre and its productions have played across the UK, in the West End and elsewhere. Past and current productions include The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Angelina Ballerina - The Mousical, Aliens Love Underpants and Erth's Dinosaur Zoo. For more information visitwww.nickbrooke.com
Kenny Wax Family Entertainment Ltd (Producer)
Kenny Wax is renowned for bringing some of the best of children's theatre to the West End and on tour including Tall Stories' The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo's Child and the Olivier Award nominated Room on the Broom, as well as What the Ladybird Heard and the critically acclaimed stage adaptation of Jaqueline Wilson's Hetty Feather which plays the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Florida this June. They have also had great success with We're Going on a Bear Hunt and their brand new family musical Mr Popper's Penguinswhich will play an Off-Broadway season at the New Victory Theatre this October prior to a West End run. Independently, Kenny also produces Top Hat, The Play That Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong and the brand new The Comedy about a Bank Robbery at the Criterion. For more information visit www.kennywax.com
Judith Kerr (Author and illustrator of the book)
Judith Kerr was born on 14th June 1923 in Berlin but escaped from Hitler's Germany with her parents and brother in 1933 when she was nine years old. Her father was a drama critic and a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis. The family passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936. Judith went to eleven different schools, worked in the Red Cross during the war, and won a scholarship to the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1945. Since then she has worked as an artist, a BBC television scriptwriter and, for the past thirty years, as an author and illustrator of children's books. Her three autobiographical novels are based on her early wandering years (which against all the odds she greatly enjoyed), her adolescence in London during the war, and finally on a brief return to Berlin as a young married woman. The stories have been internationally acclaimed and have done particularly well in Germany where they are sometimes used as an easy introduction to a difficult period of German history. Judith has a daughter who is an artist and a son who is a novelist. She lives in London. Her books include The Tiger Who Came to Tea, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Twinkles, Arthur and Puss, Mog the Forgetful Cat, Goose in a Hole, Bombs on Aunt Dainty, BirdIe Hallelujah, How Mrs Monkey Missed the Ark, A Small Person Far Away and The Crocodile Under the Bed.
Illustrations copyright © Kerr-Kneale Productions Ltd 1968
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