Jenna Russell starring in Victoria Wood's That Day We Sang

Musical theatre diva and Olivier Award-winning actress Jenna Russell will star in Victoria Wood's That Day We Sang at the Manchester Opera House from 6th-16th July.

Russell recent stage credits include Season’s Greetings at the National Theatre and Into the Woods at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park. She won an Olivier Award for the Menier Chocolate Factory's 2006 revival of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George in the West End and on Broadway. Her other credits include Amy's View, Guys and Dolls and High Society. She also played a large part in the special Sondheim 80th birthday celebrations as part of last year Proms.

She is joined in the cast by Vincent Franklin, Lorraine Bruce, Jemma Drake, Gerard Horan, Ian Marr and Martin Savage.

The musical is part of the biennial Manchester International Festival who commissioned Wood to write and direct the musical about two Mancunians: a prim secretary (Russell) and an overweight insurance man (Franklin).It’s the summer of 1969 and they are back on the stage of the Free Trade Hall forty years after they first stood there as children, singing their hearts out with Hallé orchestra. It’s the anniversary of the Manchester School Children’s Choir recording of Nymphs and Shepherds.

But Tubby and Enid don’t sing any more - they’re just doing a little interview for local television. And they are not children with everything ahead of them, they are two middle aged people who have left a lot of chances pass them by.

Two stories unfold in Victoria Wood’s new play: the children of 1929 are eagerly gearing up for the big day of the recording and in 1969, Tubby and Enid are trying to reconnect with who they were then, and who they could be now.

The piece will reconstruct the recording of the famous 78 of Purcell’s ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ and will feature a specially formed Manchester Children’s Choir and members of the Hallé Youth Orchestra.

Buy tickets for That Day We Sang