Meet the Cast of "Tristan & Yseult"

The cast, with Kristy Woodward center, in Kneehigh's Tristan & Yseult. Photo by Richard Termine.

Hannah Vassallo and Dominic Marsh in Tristan & Yseult.  Photo by Richard Termine.

Kneehigh’s Tristan & Yseult is an imaginative retelling of the Cornish love myth of the same name. Live music, dance, aerial acrobatics and sharp wit come together in this wildly ambitious production. And, with so many diverse elements in the show, it’s only fitting that the cast reflects the same diversity.

Tristan & Yseult teems with talent; its international cast of actors and musicians has resumes that span many different artistic forms. Whether in original works, theatre, dance, television or film, they all flex their creative talents and bring varied experiences to shape Tristan & Yseult. Best of all, each is making his or her SCR debut this month!

Niall Ashdown (Morholt, Brangian) is an actor/writer/performer with an extensive background in improvised theatre and comedy. His stage work includes regular guest appearances with London’s Comedy Store Players, improvising operas with Impropera, and as part of Improbable’s Animo and Lifegame. He has written and performed two solo shows, Hungarian Bird Festival and The Man Who Would Be Sting. On television, Ashdown has been seen in a number of shows, including “Whose Line Is it Anyway?” He has written to the poems from A.E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. 



Damon Daunno (Frocin) is an actor musician of New Jersey and a graduate from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is thrilled to be making his first appearance at South Coast Repertory. His other Kneehigh shows include Brief Encounter and The Wild Bride. He is a multi-instrumentalist and composer and has scored feature length and short films. His original music can be found on iTunes.

Tom Jackson Greaves (Lovespotter, Brute and Animator) was born in Cornwall and trained at Laban and London Contemporary Dance School. His performance credits include extensive touring for Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures including Cinderella, Nutcracker!, the 25th anniversary tour of Early Adventures and most recently the principal role of Carabosse/Caradoc in the worldwide tour of Sleeping Beauty. Greaves also has created his own dance-theatre work, including Seven Deadly Sins and Vanity Fowl. He was a winner of the New Adventures Choreographic Award 2012, and is a member of the dance faculty at the Musical Theatre Academy. 



Róbert Luckay (Lovespotter, Brute and Animator) received his training at the University of Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. His theatre credits include Aloysius Mogarich in Master and Margarita, The Red Shoes (Kneehigh), The Overcoat (Gecko Theatre), A Matter of Life and Death (NT/Kneehigh), Iachimo in Cymbeline (Royal Shakespeare Company/Kneehigh), Pericles in Pericles and Adam in Man Falling Down (Globe) and Dionysus in The Bacchae (Kneehigh). His film and television credits include Mission Impossible 5, “Foreign John,” “Strike Back” and the radio program “Solo Behind The Iron Curtain.”



Dominic Marsh (Tristan) has numerous theatre credits, including Macheath in Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs) (Kneehigh), Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice (Bury St. Edmunds), The Actor in The Woman in Black (West End), Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), Prince Charming in Cinderella (Oxford Playhouse) and Jonathan Harker in Dracula (Derby Playhouse). His film and television credits include Lucky Stiff and “DCI Banks.” In collaboration with Dougal Irvine, Marsh recently wrote the book for The Other School, a new musical commissioned by the National Youth Music Theatre.



Mike Shepherd (King Mark) started Kneehigh in 1980 and has worked almost exclusively for the company ever since. He is an actor, director and teacher and has an ongoing preoccupation with the conditions of creativity. He is currently joint artistic director with Emma Rice and most recently directed Kneehigh’s new version of The Beggar’s Opera, Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs). His recent shows as an actor include Tristan & Yseult, The Red Shoes, Cymbeline, A Matter of Life and Death, Steptoe and Son and the film, Anna Karenina. His recent work as a director includes Hansel and Gretel and A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (with Little Angel Theatre). Shepherd portrays a pirate in the forthcoming movie, Pan.



Hannah Vassallo (Yseult) received her training at Rambert School. She has been a principal dancer for Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures and has performed and created numerous roles at Sadlers Wells in London, throughout the UK and internationally. Her theatre credits include Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, Clara in Nutcracker and Kim Boggs in Edward Scissorhands. She also has performed in London’s West End, including the leading role of Baby Houseman in Dirty Dancing. Earlier this year, Vassallo was nominated by the Critics Circle National Dance Awards for Outstanding Female Performance for the role of Aurora in Sleeping Beauty.



Kirsty Woodward (Whitehands) received her training at National Youth Theatre and Kneehigh. She has worked with Kneehigh in Cymbeline, Rapunzel, A Matter of life and Death, Blast, Midnight’s Pumpkin and Steptoe and Son. Her other theatre work includes Stuart, A Life Backwards (Hightide), The Way of the World (Sheffield Crucible), Beauty and The Beast (Told by an Idiot), A Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Grainstore, American Trade and Romeo & Juliet (Royal Shakespeare Company). 



Stu Barker (Musician) has worked extensively as composer/musical director with Kneehigh Theatre over the last 20 years. His shows include A Matter Of Life And Death and Tristan & Yseult (Royal National Theatre), Brief Encounter (Broadway/West End), Cymbeline (Royal Shakespeare Company), Hansel and Gretel (Bristol Old Vic), The Bacchae and The Wooden Frock (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Red Shoes (Lyric Hammersmith), The Wild Bride, Rapunzel and Midnight Pumpkin (BAC) and Pandora’s Box (Northern Stage). Recently, Barker has been touring as trombonist with C. W. Stoneking & His Primitive Horn Orchestra.



James Gow (Musician) is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from Kent who earned a BA in music from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Outside of theatre, he performs with Cocos Lovers, as well as other Kent- and London-based bands, including the genre-hopping jazz-fusion group Lunch Money. Tristan & Yseult is Gow’s third show with Kneehigh, following tours of Brief Encounter and Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other Love Songs). Most recently, he appeared as Glowworm in James & the Giant Peach (West Yorkshire Playhouse).



Pat Moran (Musician) has composed original music and lyrics for over a dozen professional theater productions and served as resident composer/lyricist/music director for the San Francisco Mime Troupe from 2007-13. He recently performed as a multi-instrumentalist in the world premiere of An Audience With Meow Meow last year at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Originally from Boston, he received an MFA performer-composer degree from the California Institute for the Arts and a BFA in philosophy with a concentration in ethics and public policy from Clark University. He has been an artist-in-residence at universities including the University of San Francisco, University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Cal State Fresno.



Justin Lee Radford (Musician) is a Cornish-born composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and writer. As a child, he was taught music by his father and has since busked and played his way across the lands, enjoying international touring and festival stages. He also composes for film, poetry and installations as a member of the Human Suits Collective. He assists in musical workshops aimed towards empowering local children, and writes and produces music for other artists. He has just finished a UK tour of Kneehigh’s Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs). 


Lizzy Westcott (Musician) has scored and musical-directed for several shows with the Bristol Old Vic and the Bike Shed Theatre; she is co-director for the Bristol-based company Twisted Theatre. Westcott performs with Eleven Magpies, a quartet featuring original music by Kneehigh’s Ian Ross, and is co-directing Death and Treason, Rhyme and Reason, a song-cycle for adults based on the dark and dirty origins of nursery rhymes. This is her second tour with Kneehigh’s Tristan & Yseult.


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