Friday, December 3

Tom Chambers and Summer Strallen to star in Top Hat musical next year

Summer Strallen and Tom Chambers are to star in a new musical version of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie Top Hat, with music by Irving Berlin.

Ted Chapin (President of Irving Berlin Music) attended a reading in London with two of Berlin’s daughters and a granddaughter where Summer and Tom read the parts that Rogers and Astaire played in the 1935 movie.

Tom Chambers wowed audiences on Strictly Come Dancing with his Astaire routine and is currently appearing in a sell-out production of White Christmas at Sunderland. He was due to appear in a musical version of the Tom Hanks’ film Big, but it had to be postponed.

Summer Strallen is currently appearing as Meg Giry in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies at the Adelphi Theatre.  Top Hat’s director Matthew White saw Summer in The Drowsy Chaperone and admired her song and dance skills, plus what he called her “exquisite comic timing”.

Top Hat the movie had five songs: Isn’t This A Lovely Day (To Be Caught In The Rain), Cheek To Cheek, No Strings, Piccolino and the title song Top Hat (White Tie And Tails).  The production team (director Matthew White, choreographer Bill Deamer and producer Kenny Wax) also want to include Let’s Face The Music And Dance and I’m Putting All My Eggs In One Basket.

Top Hat will open in Milton Keynes in August and then tour to Birmingham, Salford, Southampton, Plymouth, Norwich, Canterbury, Marlowe and Leeds before hitting the West End about this time next year.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Birmingham date now on sale.
Birmingham Hippodrome - August 30th-September 10th 2011

Theatre Spy said...

Thanks for that. I put it on the website earlier this morning with a booking link.

Ambassadors Theatre Group are slow in announcing its start up dates at Milton Keynes Theatre but expect to have all the information in the next few days at

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