Simon Burbage – John Lewis & Partners Christmas Advert 2018

/in /by

Simon stars as Elton John in his mid to late 30s in this year’s Christmas advert for John Lewis & Partners entitled A Boy and his Piano.

Produced with Sir Elton’s involvement in nearly every stage of production, the Christmas advert from the nationwide department store chain has become something of a Yuletide tradition.

Charting the life of Sir Elton John throughout his life, it starts in the modern day before going all the way back to a family Christmas in Pinner where his parents/Father Christmas have him his very first piano. Before then we see several major events in Elton’s life from a dreary childhood recital, to dazzling friends and family as a teenager by playing like Jerry Lee Lewis, to recording Your Song (the soundtrack to the episode), to performing in front of packed stadiums around the world.

While some have criticised the ad for having nothing to do with Christmas, the true message of the advert is that a lifetime of wonder and success and beauty can all be traced back to a single act of kindness and generosity towards those we love and adore.

For Simon’s profile click here

For more information click here

Cassidy Little – Shakespeare & Remembrance

/in /by

Cassidy is taking part in Shakespeare & Rememberance at Shakespeare’s Globe in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

An evening of performances that will pit Shakespeare’s imagined experience of war against the realities of twenty-first century military life.

Focusing on current serving and veteran military personnel and their families, this will be an evening of remembrance for all those who served in both the First World War and other more recent conflicts. The call and response between Shakespeare and our contemporaries will explore what war means to our society, how we view the military and combat, and how it touches our lives.

The performance will also be a testament to the power of art, theatre, and specifically Shakespeare, to rehabilitate and enrich the lives of those who have experienced the effects of war. 

To read more about the show click here

Stephen Marzella – Walking with the Enemy

/in /by

Stephen features as David Koenig in Mark Schmidt’s Walking with the Enemy, available on DVD, Netflix and iTunes now.

Starring Jonas Armstrong, Hannah Tointon, Burn Gorman and Ben Kingsley, it’s set in Hungary during the Second World War. In 1941, trapped between the German Reich and the Soviet Union, Admiral Miklos Horthy (Ben Kingsley), Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, is forced to join the Axis and must follow Hitler’s lead as to the treatment of Hungary’s Jewish population including forcing 10,000 into slave labour and the rest into ghettos & concentration camps. 

Two young men, Elek Cohen (Jonas Armstrong) and Ferenc Jacobson, obtain forged Catholic baptism certificates and urge their families to leave Hungary as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz is saving thousands of Jewish lives by issuing Swiss passports from his Budapest office, known as The Glass House.

Based on the true story of Pinchas Rosenbaum and Carl Lutz, they are accredited with saving 62,000 Hungarian Jews, the single largest rescue operation of Jewish people of the Second World War. Thanks to their actions, around half the Jewish population of Budapest avoided a grizzly fate at the Nazi extermination camps. 

For More Information click here

For Stephen’s Profile click here

 

Cassidy Little – Coronation Street

/in /by

Cassidy is guest-starring in six episodes of  ITV’s Coronation Street which will be transmitted later this autumn.

He plays an amputee who meets with young Jack Webster to help him explaining how he dealt with loosing his leg and becoming a Paralympian. 

For More Information click here

For Cassidy’s Profile click here

Robin Kingsland – The Effect

/in /by

Robin is co-starring in The Effect, produced by Play With Fire Productions and directed by Jake Murray.

A clinical romance, it focuses on two young volunteers, Tristan and Connie, who agree to take part in a clinical drug trial. Succumbing to the gravitational pull of attraction and love, however, Tristan and Connie manage to throw the trial off-course, much to the frustration of the clinicians involved.

This funny, moving and perhaps surprisingly human play explores questions of sanity, neurology and the limits of medicine, alongside ideas of fate, loyalty and the inevitability of physical attraction.

Toby is the overseer and technically Lorna’s superior within the facility, despite being colleagues once upon a time. He is idealistic and passionate about the efficacy of anti-depressants. He is optimistic and believes in a mental health revolution where drugs will soon cure all that ails peoples minds.

The Effect will be the sixth production from Play With Fire Productions but their first on the Oldham Coliseum’s main stage and their first touring production, performing at both the Oldham Coliseum and The Exchange in North Shields, and will be running in Oldham from September 25-27 in Oldham and from September 11-13 in North Shields. 

For more information click here

For Robin’s profile click here

Julie Barclay – Wild Geese

/in /by

Julie features in Iris Production’s short film Wild Geese, airing as part of Iris Prize Film Festival running from the 9th to the 14th of October 2018 having already been aired at festivals in Toronto, Los Angeles and Dublin. 

When Amy (Emma Pierson) catches her husband cheating on her with another man, she falls down the stairs and bangs her head on the way down. She wakes up in hospital with severe amnesia, thinking it’s the year 1999 and she’s 16. She has fully reverted back into being a teenager complete with Emo poetry and hormonal outspoken attitude with absolutely no memory of the past 20 years especially that weak-chinned husband of hers. However, crucially, she has now become fixated on tracking down her high school best friend, and first love, Polly (Lisa McGrillis). 

Directed by Susan Jacobson and written by Katie Campbell and Kayleigh Llewellyn, this is a darkly funny yet poignant story of recovery and the redemptive nature of love.

For More Information click here

For Julie’s Profile click here

Ian Houghton – The Wider Earth

/in /by

Ian co-stared as Robert Darwin and Richard Matthews in Trish Wadley Productions’ The Wider Earth, in association with The Dead Puppet Society and The Natural History Museum. 

The Wider Earth has been nominated for Best Entertainment and Family at the 2019 Olivier Awards!

Written, directed and co-designed by David Morton, it followed the life of a 22-year old freshly-graduated Charles Darwin as he embarks upon arguably the most significant expedition in scientific history, the voyage of the HMS Beagle.

Although he originally enlisted as the crew’s geologist, Darwin would use the experiences he had and the detailed observations of the flora and fauna he encountered to lay the foundations for a revolutionary new theory, that species were not fixed but ever-changing. Once he got back to England after circumnavigating the globe in the space of almost 5 years, he would commit these ideas to paper where they evolved into the Theory of Natural Selection. 

Robert Darwin was Charles’ father, a highly successful and respected doctor who was deeply frustrated by his son’s lack of direction. He expected that Charles would find some kind of acceptable occupation but this has brought him into conflict with his young son’s obsession with natural history. 

Richard Matthews was a missionary charged by the Beagle’s captain Robert FitzRoy to escort a native Patagonian known to the British as “Jemmy Button” (real name Orundellico) to his family in Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America and to open a Christian mission there. He was a deeply devout man who initially served as an emotional ballast for Charles before their relationship was foundered by Darwin’s insistence on questioning the origins of the natural world. 

Featuring spectacular puppetry, an original score and cinematic animations, it opened at the brand-new theatre in the Jerwood Gallery at the Natural History Museum in London on the 13th of October with previews running from until the 2nd before closing in February the 24rd. 

For the Trailer click here

For More Information click here

For Tickets click here

For Ian’s Profile click here

Jenny Gayner – Entanglement

/in /by

Jenny stars as Elysse in Alexander Miguel’s Entanglement and is nominated for Best Actress at The Queen Palm International Film Festival.

In this short film, a successful businesswoman is waiting for her date at her regular bar when she receives a mysterious coded message leading her to a room in the hotel above. Instead of a surprise rendezvous, she finds herself transported to a surreal world full of strange characters from which there is no escape. 

Written by Sophie Armatas and produced in association with Lakeside Pictures, it has been selected by four different international film festivals so far: the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival, the Cult Critic Movie Awards, the Portobello Film Festival and the Queen Palm International Film Festival. In the latter, Jenny has also been nominated for best actress! 

For Jenny’s profile click here

For Information on the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival click here

For Information on the Cult Critic Movie Awards click here

For Information on the Portobello Film Festival click here

For Information the Queen Palm International Film Festival click here

Robin Kingsland – Fiddler on the Roof

/in /by

Robin features as the jolly innkeeper Mordcha in Fiddler on the Roof at the Frinton Summer Theatre, running from the 14th to the 19th of August.

Headed by director Edward Max, Frinton Summer Theatre is the oldest still active Repertory theatre in the country and has had actors such as Vanessa Redgrave, David Suchet, Timothy West and Gary Oldman walk through its doors in the past on their way to stardom. 

For the first time since the theatre’s beginnings in 1937 they are staging a production on Frinton’s gorgeous Greensward, a stretch of greenery along the seafront. 

This now-iconic musical takes place in the Pale of Settlement, the region in the western Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to have permanent residence, and centres on Tevye, a Jewish father of five daughters, and his attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon the his family’s lives. 

For more information click here

For Robin’s profile click here

Adam Lilley – Rain Man

/in /by

Adam will be playing Babbitt family lawyer Mr Mooney in the Classic Screen to Stage Theatre Company’s production of Rain Man, presented by Bill Kenwright, directed by Jonathan O’Boyle (An American in Paris, Aspects of Love, This House), and debuting on the 21st of August at the Windsor Theatre Royal before touring around the nation and finishing in late November in Northampton. 

The inaugural production by this company, it is a direct retelling of the 1988 Best Picture Oscar winner starring Matthew Horne (Gavin & Stacey, Bad Education) and Ed Speleers (Downton Abbey, Wolf Hall) as brothers Raymond and Charlie Babbitt,  originally played by Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. 

It tells the story of an abrasive selfish and young wheeler-dealer Charlie who, after the death of his estranged father, is bequeathed a vintage cream-coloured Buick Roadmaster convertible. However, the bulk of his father’s $3 million estate went to an as-yet unknown party.

Charlie discovers that the money is being directed to a mental institution where Charlie meets his brother Raymond, an idiot savant with unfathomable skills at mental arithmetic. In an attempt to get his hands on his father’s fortune, he takes Raymond out of the facility and they embark on a road-trip across America but Charlie soon discovers that Raymond is worth more to him than anything they could win at the Blackjack tables.

For more information click here

For tickets click here

For Adam’s profile click here