News: Melissa Jacques And Sam Bailey Join The Cast Of NOW Thats What I Call A Musical

NOW Thats What I Call A Musical have announced today that Melissa Jacques and Sam Bailey will join the cast for the world premiere of the brand new musical. Melissa Jacques will star as April from the 6th September 2024 (Aylesbury) up to and including 7th December 2024 (Brighton). Sam Bailey will then take over the role from the 14th January 2025 (Southampton) to the 12th April 2025 (Wimbledon). 

NOW Thats What I Call A Musical is a brand new British musical touring the UK and Ireland written by award-winning comedian Pippa Evans and directed and choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood. 

Melissa and Sam join the previously announced Nina Wadia, who will star as Gemma as well as an array of special guest stars playing themselves at certain performances and singing the songs that made them NOW icons. 

In 2024 Sinitta will perform in Aylesbury, Sheffield, Canterbury, Nottingham and Norwich. Sonia will perform in Newcastle, Cardiff, Milton Keynes and Brighton. Carol Decker in Truro, Belfast and Woking and Jay Osmond will perform in Bradford. 

In 2025 Sinitta will appear in Dublin, Hull and York. Sonia will perform in Southampton, Southend, Bristol, Liverpool, Wimbledon and Birmingham and Carol Decker in Oxford. 

Melissa Jacques most recently appeared as Shelley in I Should Be So Lucky (UK and Ireland tour). Her other theatre work includes Margaret New in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (West End & LA Productions), Pirate Queen in Pirates Of Treasure Island & Queen Of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland (The Stag Theatre, Sevenoaks), Carol’s Mum in 42 Balloons concert version (Vaudeville Theatre, Trish in Kinky Boots (Adelphi Theatre), Midwife and Madame Morrible cover in Wicked (Victoria Palace Theatre), alternate Donna and understudy for all the Dynamos in the original cast of Mamma Mia! (West End), Company & Into the Woods (Derby Playhouse), The Full Monty (UK tour), Spend, Spend, Spend (West Yorkshire Playhouse and UK tour), A Slice of Saturday Night, Oliver! & Beauty and the Beast (Theatre Royal, Lincoln), Little Shop of Horrors (Millfield Theatre) and Me and My Girl & Crazy for You (Aberystwyth).

Sam Bailey received her first big break as a singer-songwriter when she won The X Factor in 2013. Her debut single, Skyscraper, instantly became a commercial success making the coveted Christmas number one spot in 2013. Consequently, the single was released in a physical format alongside some of her most memorable X Factor performances. Her debut album The Power of Love was also number one in the British charts in March 2014 and, in support of the album, Bailey went on her first headline tour in January and February 2015. Her second album Sing My Heart Out was released in 2016. Her theatre work includes Mamma Morton in Chicago (UK tour), Betty Simpson in Fat Friends the Musical (UK tour), Vampires Rock (UK tour), Mrs. Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (UK tour and London Palladium) and most recently Miss Hedge in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (UK tour).

It’s Birmingham, 1989. Two school friends, Gemma and April, are busy with very important business – planning their lives based on Number One Magazine quizzes and dreaming of snogging Rick Astley. Cut to Birmingham 2009 and it’s the most dreaded event of their lives– the school reunion. Drama, old flames and receding hairlines come together as friends reunite and everything from the past starts to slot into place. The biggest question is: what was with all that hairspray?