CHILDREN’S FAVOURITE ‘THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA’ RETURNS TO THE STAGE FOR UK TOUR IN 2017
Nick Brooke Ltd presents
The Tiger Who Came to Tea
UK Tour 2017: Wed 15 March – Thu 31 August
The Tiger Who Came to Tea is roaring back into theatres for a major UK tour in 2017. The truly magical Olivier Award nominated West End production opens on Wednesday 15 March at the Civic Theatre, Chelmsford and will visit a further 35 venues until the end of August 2017 (full list of dates to be confirmed).
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 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.
The doorbell rings just as Sophie and her Mummy are sitting down to tea. Who could it possibly be?
What they certainly don’t expect to see at the door is a big furry, stripy tiger!
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), Harry Howle (Daddy/Milkman/Postman/Tiger), Katie Arundell (Understudy/Wardrobe) and Jacob Jackson (Understudy/ASM). The Tiger Who Came to Tea is produced by Nick Brooke Ltd.
Watch the trailer at: www.TigersTeaLive.com
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 four 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
• 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.
Judith Kerr
• 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 94th birthday in 2017.
• 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.
Notes to Editors
David Wood (Adapter & Director)
David’s seventy 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 at www.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 visit www.nickbrooke.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.
All book illustrations must carry the copyright below exactly as shown:
Illustrations copyright © Kerr-Kneale Productions Ltd 1968
www.TigersTeaLive.com
Running time: 55 minutes - no interval
Suitable for ages 3+
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To gain a chance to participate in this competition and to win a family ticket please answer the following question:
What was the little girl's name who welcomed the Tiger to tea?
Please answer here below or send us your replies to [email protected]
The winner will be drawn on the 14th of August 2017 at random. Please make sure to check your emails and reply us within 24 hours, otherwise the next person will be chosen.
The prize is a family ticket for four people and the seats will be at discretion of Orchard Theatre.