Katie Brace returns as Tracy Turnblad as the Hairspray tour adds 2028 dates

Katie Brace will play Tracy Turnblad once again in the new UK and Ireland tour of Hairspray, the part that gave her a professional debut on the show's No. 1 tour and that she took up again on the road in 2024-2025. She joins Neil Hurst, whose return as Edna Turnblad had already been confirmed.

Originally from Sunderland and a graduate of the London School of Musical Theatre, Brace has also played Madame de la Grande Bouche, the Wardrobe, on the UK and Ireland tour of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and Jan in Grease in the West End at the Dominion Theatre. Hurst, meanwhile, headlines the annual pantomime at Nottingham's Theatre Royal, which is among the eight venues added to the itinerary; the tour plays there from 31 January - 5 February 2028.

Paul Kerryson and Brenda Edwards return as co-directors, as announced earlier, with Olivier Award winner Drew McOnie choreographing. Edwards, a regular panellist on Loose Women whose stage work includes Paddington: The Musical at the Savoy, has played Motormouth Maybelle in the show on tour herself.

The producers are also looking for new faces. Open auditions take place in London on Monday 26 October 2026 for Motormouth Maybelle, Seaweed, Little Inez, the Dynamites and the Motormouth Kids (performers must be 18 or over). Submissions, a CV and a headshot, go to auditions@markgoucher.com by Friday 23 October 2026.

Set and costumes are designed by Takis, with lighting by Philip Gladwell, sound by Ben Harrison and wigs, hair and make-up by Craig Forrest-Thomas. Ben Atkinson is musical supervisor and arranger and Richard Atkinson musical director, while casting is by Grindrod Burton. Juliet Gough is associate director and Shaquille Brush associate choreographer.

Adapted from John Waters's 1988 film, the musical follows Baltimore teenager Tracy Turnblad, whose place on a TV dance show becomes a platform for fighting segregation, and perhaps a way to win Link Larkin. The score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman takes in Good Morning Baltimore, Welcome to the 60s and You Can't Stop the Beat, and the book is by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan. It collected eight Tony Awards after its 2002 Broadway opening, then four Oliviers, Best New Musical among them, once it reached the Shaftesbury Theatre in 2007.

Produced by Mark Goucher, Matthew Gale and Laurence Myers, the tour opens at the Palace Theatre in Manchester on 2 July 2027 and stays on the road until April 2028. The new venues carry it from Norwich in mid-January to Wolverhampton at the start of April.

The eight newly added dates: