Cast
Sophie Melville
Polly
Sophie trained at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Previous Young Vic: Pops (Hightide).
Theatre includes: Cowbois (RSC & Royal Court); Sorter (Swansea Grand); Iphigenia in Splott (Lyric Hammersmith, National Theatre, 59E59 New York, Sherman Theatre); The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s Globe); Mum, Herding Cats (Soho Theatre); That Is Not Who I Am, Living Newspaper (Royal Court Theatre); Wolfie (Theatre503); Blue (Chapter Theatre); Close Quarters (Sheffield Theatres); The Divide, Pagans (The Old Vic); No One Will Tell Me How To Start A Revolution (Hampstead Theatre); Low Level Panic (Orange Tree Theatre); 2066 (Almeida Theatre); Blackbird (The Other Room Theatre); Insignificance, Under Milk Wood (Theatr Clwyd); The Shape of Things, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore and See How They Run (Theatre by the Lake).
TV includes: The Way, Casualty, The Left Behind, The Missing (BBC); The Chelsea Detective (Acorn TV); The Pact (BBC/Little Door); Film Club (Tilt Content and Plaything); Bang 2 (BBC/S4C); Call the Midwife (Neal Street Productions).
Leah Harvey
Rowan
Leah has recently filmed a role in Craig Roberts’ next feature, The Scurry, and a lead role in Sweetpea, See-Saw and Sky’s new drama. Leah has also shot the feature film The Assessment with Alicia Vikander. On stage, they went straight from LAMDA into lead roles in Phyllida Lloyd’s Shakespeares for the Donmar and St Ann’s Warehouse in New York.
Theatre includes: Small Island (National Theatre), Emilia (The Globe), The Wonderful World of Dissocia (Stratford East) and As You Like It (Soho Place).
Film and TV includes: A Gentleman in Moscow (Paramount+/Showtime),Tuesday (A24), Foundation (Apple TV+. Nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 2022 BAFTAs), On the Road (London Entertainment), Fighting with my Family (Lion’s Gate).
Jessica Temple
Voice of the Black Box
Jess is Nottingham born and bred and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Theatre includes: The Mousetrap (West End), Patriots (West End/Almeida), Hedda Gabler (Reading Rep), Peter Pan (National Theatre), Medea (Bristol Old Vic), The Madness of George III (Nottingham Playhouse).
TV credits include: D.I Ray (ITV), Malpractice (ITV), Atlanta (FX/Disney), The Sister Boniface Mysteries (BBC).
Jess also works in voiceover having done campaigns including Google Pixel, Diet Coke, Boots, Amazon and is the voice of the HSBC telephone banking system.
Creatives
Stef Smith
Writer
Stef Smith is a stage and screen writer working to international acclaim. Awards for her plays include; Scotsman Fringe First Awards for Enough, Swallow and RoadKill, which also won an Olivier Award and the Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award. Stef was shortlisted for the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Nora: A Doll’s House.
Previous Young Vic: Nora: A Doll’s House (also Glasgow Citizen’s Theatre), The New Tomorrow, How To Build A Nation.
Theatre includes: The Outrun (Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh & EIF); Antigone (GSMD); Enough, Girl In The Machine, Swallow (Traverse Theatre); The Song Project, Human Animals (Royal Court); Acts Of Resistance (Headlong / Bristol Old Vic); Remote (National Theatre Connections Festival).
TV includes: Float (BBC & Black Camel). Won a Royal Society of Television Scotland Award for Best Writer. Season 2 launched in early 2024 and has been nominated for a Scottish BAFTA.
Annie Kershaw
Director
Annie was the 2023-2024 Carne Deputy Director at Jermyn Street Theatre. She was Associate Director on Best of Enemies in the West End after being the Jerwood Assistant Director of the Young Vic and Headlong co-production, as part of the Young Vic’s Jerwood Assistant Director Programme, supported by Jerwood Arts.
Previous Young Vic: Light (Five Shorts).
Theatre as Director includes: Hedda Gabler, Safe (Reading Rep); It’s A Flawed World After All (Flawstate); THIS IS NOT A PROTEST (Reading Thames Festival); Ulysses (Jermyn Street Theatre).
Theatre as Assistant Director includes: Jekyll & Hyde, Dorian (Reading Rep); Henry II, Romeo and Juliet (Rabble Theatre).
Khadija Raza
Designer
Khadija graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2017 with a BA (Hons) in Theatre Practice: Design for Stage. Khadija won the award for Best Designer at the Stage Debut Awards in 2018 and won the Linbury prize for her design on Dido in 2017.
Previous Young Vic: Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play, Sundown Kiki, Love Reign, The American Dream 2.0.
Theatre includes: The Secret Garden, Every Leaf a Hallelujah, Antigone (Regent’s Park Theatre); Augmented (Told By an Idiot/RET); Mixtape (RET); The Flood (Queen’s Theatre); Talking About a Revolution (The Barn); Julius Caesar (Shakespeare’s Globe/UK Tour); 10 Nights (Graeae/Tamasha Theatre/Bush Theatre); Philoxenia, Hijabi Monologues (Bush Theatre); Bach & Sons (Bridge Theatre); Skin Hunger (Dante or Die); Funeral Flowers (Roundhouse/UK Tour); The Bee in Me (Unicorn Theatre); Great Ormond Street Hospital – Binaural Project (Unicorn Theatre); A History of Water in the Middle East (Royal Court).
Odinn Orn Hilmarsson
Sound Designer
Odinn is an Icelandic composer and sound designer working in theatre, podcasts and short film.
Theatre includes: Scarlet Sunday (Aslant Theatre), Broken Water (Lightbox Theatre), Hamlet (All In Actors), In the Dead of the Night (Faceplant Theatre), The Island (The Cervantes Theatre), What the Doll’s Saw (House of Macabre), The Actor’s Nightmare (3 hearts canvas and Over Here Theatre Company), Jekyll and Hyde (National Youth Theatre), The Trick (Loose Tongue and HighTide in association with Bush Theatre).
TV includes: Murder for Dummies (Casual Violence), The Zoe Ball Book Club (ITV and Cactus TV), Baptiste (BBC).
Film includes: Two Stars Short (Sweet Doh).
Lucía Sánchez Roldán
Lighting Designer
As Lighting Designer, theatre includes: Wonderful World of Dissocia (Stratford East); The Importance of Being Earnest (Mercury Theatre); Bedroom Farce (Queen’s theatre); Kill Thy Neighbour (Theatre Clwyd, Torch theatre); Grate (National theatre of Kosovo); Under Milk Wood (Sherman Theatre); The E.U. Killed My Dad (Jermyn Street Theatre); Papercut (Park 90); How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Southwark Playhouse Large); Suddenly, Last Summer (as Co-Lighting Designer with Jamie Platt, English Theatre Frankfurt); Orpheus Descending (National Theatre of Albania); We’ll Be Who We Are (Vault Festival); The Walworth Farce (Southwark Playhouse Elephant); Fefu and Her Friends, Not About Nightingales (Tobbaco Factory); Bogeyman (Pleasance/Camden’s People Theatre); Black, El Payaso (Arcola Theatre, Cervantes Theatre); Camp Albion (Watermill Theatre); We Are the Best! (Live Theatre); Tapped (Theatre 503); The Forest Awakens, Code and Dagger, A New Beginning (Kiln); Cyrano (Sainsbury Theatre LAMDA); The Gift (GBS RADA); Barbarians (Silk Street); Everything Must Go (RnD Playground); Invisibles, The First (Vault Festival); The Spirit (BAC); Ms Julie, Utopia Room (The Place); The Niceties (Finborough); How We Begin (Kings Head).
Nevena Stojkov
Movement Director
Nevena is an Offie award nominated movement director, holding an MFA in Movement Direction and Teaching from RCSSD.
Theatre includes: The Lonely Londoners (Jermyn Street Theatre); You're So F***ing Croydon (Edinburgh Fringe, Croydonites Festival and Omnibus Theatre); Weeverfish (RCSSD); Waterlilies (RCSSD); She Kills Monsters (GSA); Machinal (Orange Tree); Our Town (GSA); Coram Boy (Tower Theatre/Minack Theatre); The Boy Who Fell in a Book, Lizard Evidilleh Marmarok, The Little Prince (Tower Theatre); On the Line (Camden People’s Theatre)
Theatre as Choreographer includes: In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields (RCSSD); Much Ado About Nothing (Moving Parts Theatre).
Yarit Dor
Fight & Intimacy Director
Yarit is an IDC certified intimacy director, fight director and movement director. She is co-director of Moving Body Arts and ensemble associate of Shakespeare’s Globe.
Previously for Young Vic: A Face in the Crowd, The Homecoming, Nachland, Second Woman, Death Of A Salesman (also West End), Changing Destiny and Wild East.
Theatre credits include: Why Am I So Single (West End); Fiddler on The Roof (Regent’s Park Theatre), Hadestown (West End), Hamilton (West End); A Strange Loop (Barbican); The Glass Menagerie (West End); Rockets and Blue Lights (National Theatre); Othello, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Hamlet, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing Deutsch Bank (Shakespeare’s Globe); The Years, Look Back In Anger, Roots, Daddy A Melodrama (Almeida); The Band’s Visit, Love & Other Acts Of Violence (Donmar Warehouse).
Dance credits include: Death Trap, Rooms, Peaky Blinders (Rambert Dance); The Burnt City (Punchdrunk).
Film/TV includes: Glass Onion, Rivals, The Rings of Power; Starstruck; Mood; Adult Material and Atlanta 3.
Neil McKeown
Associate Sound Designer
Neil has been creating sound for theatre since 2012. Starting as Head of Sound at the immersive production You Me Bum Bum Train before going on to compose music and design sound for a huge variety of theatrical productions from site specific works to straight plays.
Theatre includes: Shrapnel - Nominated Best Sound Design Off-West End Awards 2016, Kenny Morgan, Clarion, Say Your Name (Arcola Theatre), A Comedy of Errors (Guildford Castle Grounds), Richard II (Palace of Westminster), His Dark Materials (Southampton Youth Theatre), The Door, Shang-a-Lang, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Diary of an Expat (London Fringe).
Jacob Sparrow
Casting
Jacob worked in the NT Casting Department from 2015 to 2019 before becoming a freelance Casting Director. In 2024 he was interim Head of Casting for Sydney Theatre Company.
Previous Young Vic: Oklahoma! (Young Vic, Wyndham’s Theatre).
Selected Theatre includes: Hadestown (Lyric Theatre), Backstairs Billy (Duke of York’s), The Confessions (Europe + National Theatre), Orlando (Garrick Theatre), As You Like It (Soho Place), The Hot Wing King (Dorfman Theatre), Little Shop of Horrors, The Crucible, Anna Karenina, Much Ado About Nothing (Sheffield Crucible), Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2021 tour), Jitney (Old Vic/Headlong/Leeds Playhouse), The Good Person of Szechwan (ETT), Village Idiot (Nottingham Playhouse), You Bury Me (Bristol Old Vic), Black Love (Kiln Theatre), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Leeds/Home Manchester), Burn It Down, The Big Life (Theatre Royal Stratford East), Once On This Island, Carousel, Our Town (Regents Park), LOVE, Faith, Hope and Charity (Dorfman/European tours), The Book Thief (Bolton Octagon), Wuthering Heights (Wise Children), Hungry (Soho Theatre), Perspectives (New Views), 2021 Roundabout Season (Paines Plough), City of Angels (Garrick), Hadestown, Pericles, Follies, Amadeus (all Olivier Theatre), LOVE (Dorfman/International Tour/Film), Queer Season, Rutherford and Son, Faith Hope and Charity, Mr Gum, Downstate (National Theatre).
Neve Adams
Jerwood Trainee Assistant Director
Neve Adams is a Scottish Theatre Maker, Director, and Facilitator, with a deep focus on community engagement, new writing, and socio-political theatre. Passionate about using theatre as a tool for change, Neve is dedicated to creating work that reflects and uplifts diverse voices and stories.
She has collaborated with theatres such as the National Theatre of Scotland, Traverse Theatre, Wonder Fools, and the Tron Theatre, alongside various charities to develop impactful and accessible theatre.
This is her first show with the Young Vic, and her first professional credit.