COMING HOME: Oli Higginson, who will be starring in The Last Five Years at the Garrick Theatre in September

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! 

If there's one name in Musical Theatre, that has popped up and made everyone aware of who they are very quickly, it's Oli Higginson. Having actually trained as an actor at Guildhall, rather than in musical theatre, he made an absolute splash playing Jamie in The Last Five Years at the Southwark Playhouse. The show was playing before the lockdown and was actually one of the few shows that got to play its final performance on the evening of the 16th March 2020. But this wasn’t the end of the road for the show. After rave reviews, the show returned in October 2020 and was also filmed and streamed at the beginning of 2021. It has also recently been announced that Oli and his co-star Molly Lynch will reprise their roles for a West End transfer. The Last Five Years will play at the Garrick Theatre from the 17th of September to the 17th of October 2021. 

For his role in The Last Five Years, Oli was nominated for the Stage Debut Award for Best Performer in a Musical and also for an Offie Award for Best Lead Performance in a Musical. But even though he is a new name on the scene, he’s certainly been busy! As well as his performance in The Last Five Years, Oli has appeared in The Haystack at the Hampstead Theatre, Maggie & Ted at the White Bear Theatre, has played John in the hit Netflix show Bridgerton (in which he his reprising his role for its second season), layed Colin in The Pursuit of Love for the BBC and will be playing Saul in This Sceptered Isle for Sky Atlantic which is due for release in 2022. 

The Bridgerton cast and their Theatrical backgrounds

Bridgerton has blasted onto our screens and it is all anyone can talk about right now! And rightly so, its an incredible series and I for one cannot wait for more series to drop in the future. Something that makes this wonderful show so great is the incredibly talented cast and as the theatre nerds that we are, I couldn't stop googling the actors to find out that so many of them have some incredible theatre backgrounds. Some, I'm sure, you've seen in shows before! So, we've pulled together the information you'll need to fulfil the stagey part of your brain. How many have you seen in shows?! 

Jonathan Bailey

Bailey has become a well-known Screen actor with credits including Chewing Gum, Broadchurch, Jack Ryan and Hooten & the Lady and now as the eldest son of the Bridgerton family, but Bailey is an award-winning stage actor. In 2018 he won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his role as Jamie in the West End revival of Company at the Gielgud Theatre. His other stage credits include The York Realist (Donmar); King Lear (Chichester); The Last Five Years (St. James Theatre); American Psycho (Almeida Theatre); Othello (National Theatre); South Downs (Chichester & Harold Pinter Theatre); Girl with a Pearl Earring (Cambridge Arts & Theatre Roya Haymarket) and Beautiful Thing (Sound Theatre). 

Ruth Gemmell

A truly seasoned actor, Gemmell plays the Dowager Viscountess Bridgerton, the widowed mother of the Bridgerton children. Her stage credits are extensive, working up and down the country in some of our finest theatres. Some of her credits include Tis Pity She's a Whore & The Country Wife (Lancaster Playhouse); The Winter's Tale (Salisbury Playhouse); An Ideal Husband & Uncle Vanya (Edinburgh Lyceum); Ancient Lights & Nabokov's Gloves (Hampstead Theatre); The Weir (Royal Court Theatre); Coram Boy (National Theatre); Betrayal (Sheffield Crucible); Riflemind (Trafalgar Studios) and Macbeth, King Lear, Midwinter, Midsummer Mischief all at the RSC.