Pocket Size Theatre and Liza Heinrichs (Captured by Liz) have teamed up again and created our new series 'Coming Home'. In this new piece, we look at the reopening of Theatres in London and around the country and celebrate our industry coming back. We got together some performers who will be some of the first to return to theatres and created this piece to bring some positivity to the theatre industry which has been through one of the toughest years in our lifetime. Whilst it is important to acknowledge the hardships we've all gone through, it's important we pull together as a community and celebrate our beloved industry finally coming back!
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has been running in the West End since November 2017, a new British musical it has taken audiences by storm and has had a hugely successful run over the past few years. The show has recently announced that it will be temporally closing from the 26th of September at the Apollo Theatre, where Mischiefs Theatres’ Magic Goes Wrong will take its place. However, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie will be making a return in 2022!
Hiba Elchikhe is currently playing Pritti Pasha in the West End production of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and has recently announced that she will be playing Alice in Dick Whittington this Christmas at the New Wimbledon Theatre. She will also be appearing in ‘Well-Behaved Women’ at Cadogan Hall on the 3rd September. Her other credits include the title role in Brooklyn the Musical at the Greenwich Theatre, Fiver at the Southwark Playhouse, Antony & Cleopatra at the National Theatre, Princess Jasmine in Disney’s Aladdin in Australia, Ghost the Musical in Asia and The Sound of Music for ITV.
Hiba joined the cast of Jamie in January 2020 meaning she has bookended the pandemic with this show, Jamie was also her West End debut. She’s kept herself pretty busy over the pandemic with many concerts and teaching but she also has appeared in ‘In Pieces’, produced by Future Spotlight Productions and written by Joey Contreras. She’s also appeared in West End Live Lounge, appeared on the album for the new musical version of In the Willows, was in the outdoor production of A Little Night Music in Holland Park, has performed for the West End Musical Drive-In, was featured in the online series of In the Wings, has worked with the Barn Theatre on their online content and believe it or not, that’s just a handful of things she’s been getting up to!
As well as all of this, she produced her own show ‘Out of the Darkness, Into the Spotlight’, a musical theatre web series produced at the Apollo Theatre in collaboration with Nimax and The Theatre Café. The series featured some of the West Ends finest including Carrie Hope Fletcher, Courtney Bowman, Sejal Keshwala, Liam Tamne, Noah Thomas and so many others!
Talking to Hiba about the pandemic and how she thinks she’s grown, she tells us how she has “learnt a lot about myself and about the kind of person I want to be.” We talked about how it would be incredibly difficult to be the same person you were at the beginning of all this. She also tells us how she’s learnt that having empathy for one another will help us move forward and progress as an industry.
We asked Hiba a very mean question, what would be the show she’d most like to see! A very tricky question indeed, but her answer was Wicked (Which we hear is a dream show for Hiba, one we’d love to see her in!) and & Juliet. She tells us she has friends in both and she can’t wait to see them do their thing. As Jamie has been one of the first shows to re-open since theatres shut their doors in March 2020, she hasn’t had much chance to see anything else that's been on! Telling us that the last full show she saw was in December of last year, she says she’s “actually looking forward to being in the audience!” With Jamie talking a pause in its run, she’ll have plenty of time to catch up on seeing those shows she’s missed so far!
You’ve got until the 26th September to catch Hiba and her wonderful cast in Everybody’s Talking about Jamie at the Apollo Theatre in London’s West End. The show is said to return in 2022 but make sure to catch this incredible cast in this wonderful show. A brilliant original musical with a huge heart, one of the best shows around right now.
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