Jennifer Zia will play Ella, with Emily Vinnicombe as her sister Angelica, in Cinderella, the Christmas show for children aged 3 to 8 in Nottingham Playhouse’s Neville Studio from 3 December 2026 to 2 January 2027.
Jennifer Zia, whose screen work includes Casualty and His Dark Materials, takes the title role in a brand-new version of the fairytale built for the youngest theatregoers. A member of the Nottingham Television Workshop since 2012, Zia is joined by Emily Vinnicombe, who plays Ella’s proud sister Angelica and turns up as a string of comic animals besides. Vinnicombe trained on the BA in Theatre Arts at the University of Derby, and her stage credits include The History of (Almost) Everything and Sleeping Beauty.
The script comes from writer and actor Katie Arnstein (Everything Will be Alright, It’s a Girl!), who shares the lyric credit with composer and musical director Jude Taylor (Aliens Love Panta Claus, Pirates Love Underpants). Tristan Jackson-Pate, whose earlier family shows include Hoppily Every After: The Frog Prince Musical and Cinderella Ice Cream Seller, directs. Taylor and Jackson-Pate are both Associate Artists at Royal & Derngate.
All three were hired through an open call-out run by Amplify, the Playhouse’s development programme for artists in and around Nottingham. The set and costumes are by Michelle Cave, a Nottingham Trent University graduate in Design for Theatre and Live Performance, who won this year’s Playhouse Prize: the award gives a newly qualified designer a first professional job, and that job is this Neville Studio Christmas show.
Completing the team are lighting designer and video programmer Sam Osborne, puppetry designer Connie Burley, movement director Lucy Glassbrook and creative captions designer Matt Powell, with casting by Sharon Sorrentino.
“It’s a funny, magical take on a familiar favourite, with a wonderfully modern heart,” said Jackson-Pate. “At its centre are two sisters discovering they can move beyond the labels they’ve been given and be themselves: something I think will really resonate with children and grown-ups alike.”
The Playhouse’s artistic director, Adam Penford, pointed to the theatre’s long record of making new work for children, including tours to schools. “What is often a child’s first experience of watching live theatre, introduces them to a whole world of storytelling and ways of making sense of the world,” Penford said.
The show lasts 50 minutes and leans on music, puppets and plenty of audience participation. It also uses Creative Captioning, putting simple pictures on a screen to flag the key moments of the story for children who are hard of hearing or find auditory processing difficult. It is a Theatre Green Book production at Basic Level, so at least half of the materials in its set and scenery have been used before, and at least 65% will be used again. Once the Nottingham run is over, it goes out on tour to primary schools and community centres across Nottinghamshire and beyond.
It runs alongside the Playhouse’s pantomime, Aladdin, whose cast was announced in October.
Cinderella opens in the Neville Studio at Nottingham Playhouse, Wellington Circus, on Thursday 3 December 2026, with its press performance on Saturday 5 December 2026 at 1.15pm, and plays until Saturday 2 January 2027. Relaxed performances are on Saturday 12 December 2026 at 10.30am, Monday 21 December 2026 at 1.15pm and Monday 28 December 2026 at 1.30pm; Friday 18 December 2026 at 1.30pm and Saturday 19 December 2026 at 2pm are both BSL-interpreted and captioned.
For more information, visit the official website.
