Flowers For Mrs Harris cast album released on 3 December

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Chichester Festival Theatre has announced that the first official recording of Richard Taylor and Rachel Wagstaff’s award-winning musical, Flowers For Mrs Harris, will be released on 3 December by SimG Records.

Flowers for Mrs Harris is the story of Ada Harris, a char-lady in post-war London whose drab life of dusting and scrubbing is transformed when she glimpses a Christian Dior dress in one of her client’s wardrobes and sets her heart on going to Paris to buy one for herself.

Directed by Daniel Evans, Chichester’s 2018 production starred Clare Burt as Mrs Harris (who won a UK Theatre Award for her performance), Luke Latchman, Claire Machin, Louis Maskell, Rhona McGregor, Mark Meadows, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Joanna Riding, Nicola Sloane and Gary Wilmot.

The musical was originally produced at Sheffield Theatres in 2016, where it won three UK Theatre Awards including Best Musical.

Composer and lyricist Richard Taylor said: “On 29 July 2020, the entire Flowers for Mrs Harris cast and orchestra reunited, and stepped once more onto the Chichester Festival Theatre stage, almost two years since the show was performed there, to make this recording. In the grip of the COVID-19 global pandemic, this was perhaps the only such endeavour happening anywhere in the country at that time.’ 

 Artistic Director of Chichester Festival Theatre Daniel Evans said: “The making of this cast album, made possible by Richard Taylor, was not simply a wonderful opportunity to capture one of the most beautiful British musical scores of recent years; it was also memorable for having employed some of our finest musicians and actors at a time when almost none of them had any work or proper financial support – a situation that, sadly, persists.” 

The cast album can be pre-ordered now on iTunes or from Dress Circle here.