For its fourth year at the Union Theatre, the Phil Willmott Company’s hugely popular Essential Classics season celebrates the 75th anniversary of V.E. Day with 3 productions exploring the British in W.W.2.
Lionel Bart’s epic musical BLITZ! is a celebration of London’s working-class spirit as the Nazi’s rained down bombs on British cities. It’s the story of the redoubtable Mrs Blitztein (Jessica Martin), loved and feared by her neighbours as the “Queen of Petticoat Lane” and based on Bart’s mother.
Initially, determined that her kids won’t marry outside the Jewish faith she’s forced to reconsider as neighbourhood feuds take an unexpected turn in the nightly scrabble for the air raid shelters. All that and you’re never more then 10 minutes away from a cockney knees-up or a haunting ballade from the writer of Oliver!
The first production of Blitz was one of the most spectacular and expensive musicals ever staged and although it was a hit producers have been intimidated by the cost of a remount ever since. This production is the first ever attempt to reframe Blitz! as a chamber piece; with the intimacy of the Union theatre pulling the characters and relationships into sharper focus then ever before and allowing us to vividly recreate the crowded claustrophobia of the air raid shelter and the bustle of London’s alleyways.
The cast includes: THE BLITZTEIN FAMILY, Jessica Martin, Caitlin Anderson, Anna Robertson, Robbie McArtney, Anna Robertson, Corinna Marlowe. THE LOCKE FAMILY, Michael Martin, Connor Carson, James Horne And featuring Vicki Mason, James Georgiou, Danniella Schindler, Beaux Harris, Eleanor Sandars Charlotte Bradley, Eleanor Griffiths, Jack Slatter, Lorne Taylor, Stephen Hayward.
Blitz! Is at The Union Theatre 5th February to 7th March 2020.
