Strictly champion choreographs couple’s new show Barista The Musical in Horsham

With script and score written by husband and wife team Nigel and Anna Newman, tickets are now on sale for the show. Pasha will choreograph and Sarah Redmond will direct a show that combines “beautiful melodies, show-stopping numbers and incredible Latin and contemporary dance,” Nigel says.

The production charts a young Colombian woman's journey to follow her dreams whilst unlocking the nightmares of her past; a blend of love, truth, passion and the darkest of secrets.

“It all started back in 2009 or around about that time when I was working up in London,” Nigel says. “And it was the time when all the coffee shops were just exploding. And it was fascinating observing what was happening as a commuter heading up into town every day.

"You could see that everybody was intent on getting their cup of coffee and it really was quite a journey when you think that coffee started as this humble thing and has now turned into this quite fantastical thing when you think of all the different types of coffee that are now available. And so that was the germ of the idea really. But at the same time there was the financial crash in London. We started off by writing a song relating to coffee and then the germ of the story came to us. It’s a love story about a chap that has inherited a coffee shop from his grandfather and he's trying to compete in this world against all the other coffee shops that are springing up around. But the main character is a girl called Isabella who has come to England from Colombia to study, and obviously Colombia has a wonderful heritage.”

As Anna says: “She's a girl he knows her own mind. And she has got a very strong family bond. She has come to study in England but also to experience life and she starts off working in the coffee shop just to see her way through but then they start to develop a bond together.”

Nigel adds: “Bella has dreams and she's seeing flashbacks to things that have happened in her past. Through the story we discover that there are secrets within her past that she is uncovering. She has a real journey about what has happened and how it has affected her family. It all develops into quite a dramatic story and we discover how everything connects back to that back story.

“We did a concept production in 2017 and that went very well.

"We only did a short run down in Bognor and it sold out and it seemed to be very well received. Shortly after that we were picked up by the professional producers and they have supported us on the journey since then.

"We did a couple of workshops in London and it was a fantastic way of sharpening the whole thing. At the end of the second workshop in 2020 we were ready but then lockdown happened. So it's only really in the last year or so the theatre has really settled back and we are ready to pick up momentum again.”