With just two weeks to go until our first socially distanced show at Bournemouth Pavilion; we’d like to introduce you to the names, and accolades, behind the voices of West End Unlocked.

Nigel Richards, Claire Moore, Charlotte Wakefield and Louis Maskell have a host of credits to their name and will be joined by musical director Colin Billing and a small band of musicians.

Claire Moore

Claire performs regularly in concert, cabaret and on the radio, and can be heard on many recordings.

Training: Royal Northern College of Music with Joseph Ward

Theatre credits include: Mary Poppins (Prince Edward Theatre); The Girls (Phoenix Theatre) -receiving an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical; Les Miserables (Palace/ Queen’s Theatre); The King and I (London Palladium); Oliver! (London Palladium); Miss Saigon (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, original company); The Phantom of the Opera (Her Majesty’s Theatre, original company), Little Shop of Horrors (Comedy Theatre); Camelot (Apollo Victoria); Follies (National Theatre); London Road (National Theatre) – receiving the WhatsOnStage Best Ensemble Award.

Film and television credits include: On the Town (BBC Proms); Phantom of the Opera:behind the Mask (The Royal Variety Performance); The Making of Miss Saigon; Joy to the World; Have you met Miss Jones; Visiting Day; London Road; A Christmas Carol.

Vocal Coach for Theatre/ TV: Threepenny Opera (National Theatre), Wonderland (National Theatre); Porgy and Bess (Regents Park); Sunshine on Leith (UK tour); I’d do Anything; Over the Rainbow; Tonight’s the Night; Ant & Dec’s Saturday night Takeaway; Popstar to Opera Star; Children in Need – for which she has been the vocal coach and arranger for the CiN National Children’s choir for the past nine years.

Charlotte Wakefield

Charlotte is a multi-award nominated Actress and Voiceover Artist.

Theatre credits include: The original role of Miss Windsor in The Royal Shakespeare Company’s musical adaptation of David Walliams’ The Boy In The Dress (The Royal Shakespeare Theatre); Ethel Salomon in The Dreamers (Abbey Road Studios); Polly Baker in Crazy For You (UK Tour); Veronica Sawyer in Heathers (Work in Progress Season at The Other Palace); Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (UK Tour); Wendla Bergman in Spring Awakening (Original London Cast – Lyric Hammersmith & West End)- receiving yet another nomination for “Best Actress In A Musical” for both The Laurence Olivier Awards and The Evening Standards Awards.

Film & television appearances include: Alison Steele in Doctors (BBC); Holly Cullen in Holby City – (BBC); Cassie Turner in Waterloo Road (ITV); Jess Swift in Occupation (BBC); Ruby Heddon in The Royal (Yorkshire Television); Leap of Faith (BBC); May in An Angel for May (Portman Films).

Louis Maskell

Theatre includes: Dick/Benvolio in Doctor Faustus (Shakespeare’s Globe); Bob/André Fauvel in Flowers for Mrs Harris (Chichester Festival Theatre and Sheffield Crucible); Grinpayne in The Grinning Man (Trafalgar Studios and Bristol Old Vic, 2017 UK Theatre Awards nomination for Best Performance in a Musical); Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof (Chichester Festival Theatre); Tony in West Side Story (UK Tour); Freddy Eynsford-Hill in My Fair Lady (Sheffield Crucible); Cal Chandler in The Fix (Union Theatre); Leon Bakst/Léonid Massine in Rattigan’s Nijinsky (Chichester Festival Theatre) and Strephon in Iolanthe (Wilton’s Music Hall).

Television includes: A Discovery of Witches, Rellik, Endeavour and Atlantis.

Nigel Richards

Nigel has had 30 years’ experience working in the West End, including playing the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre.

He lectures worldwide in Musical Theatre (Artsed, Royal Academy of Music and the University of West London as well as in Latvia, Malaysia and China) and, since working with Leonard Bernstein in 1986 on the British stage premier of Bernstein’s Mass at the Barbican, has worked closely with new writers as both performer and dramaturg, working at the National Theatre on three occasions as advisor on new writing.

Nigel is an established leading man in Musical Theatre, having also played Enjolras and Grantaire in Les Miserables, Eddy in Blood Brothers, Quasimodo in Norte Dame de Paris and originated lead roles in the British premieres of Spend!Spend!Spend!, Martin Guerre, Napoleon, Floyd Collins, Baby, Hello Again, and Songs For a New World.

His eclectic career spans touring the world with Tom Waits in The Black Rider, and soloist with Cirque de Soleil, to playing Figaro in Vienna, and the lead in Songs from a Hotel Bedroom at The Royal Opera House, and Kurt Weill’s Silverlake at Wexford Opera. He has been soloist for the John Wilson Proms on four occasions from the Royal Albert Hall.

His passion for nurturing new writing culminated in his award winning 2009 album of new musical theatre songs, A Shining Truth, which was reviewed in the Independent as ‘not so much an album as a manifesto, a love letter to new writing’.

Nigel was most recently seen playing the lead in the National Tour of ‘Son of a Preacher Man.

Nigel is also a writer, director and film producer.

His first feature, Finding Clive, starring Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle from Harry Potter) and Roger Allun (Endeavour), starts shooting in Spring 2021, covid willing.

Nigel is proud to be Patron of both the Northern Musical Theatre Orchestra and the BigLittle Theatre School.

Nigel plays Drake, the singing superstar dachshund in the children’s series, Bowowzer!

West End Unlocked is heading to Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre 16-17 October 2020, and tickets are on sale now here.

Written by Tia Thorp