Annahilt woman Joanna makes her West End debut

Joanna Hyndman recently made her West End debut as ‘Swing’ in what is probably one of Andrew Lloyd Webbers best known musicals of all time – ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, staged at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket, London.

The musical has been running for 29 years, with a total of eight shows per week playing to sell out crowds of around 1200 each performance.

Speaking about her new role Joanna from Annahilt said: “I absolutely love it.”

“Phantom was the reason I got into musical theatre and it is just amazing getting this role.”

“I have a contract for a year and it is going great.”

Joanna showed an interest in musical theatre and acting when she joined Lisburn’s Fusion Theatre at the age of 12. She went on to play various leading roles in their productions including ‘Mabel’ in The Pirates of Penzance which for which she was nominated for an AIMS (Association of Irish Musical Societies) award.

In her final year at Friends School Joanna played ‘Eliza Doolittle’ in My Fair Lady and achieved her LLCM in Musical Theatre from The London College of Music under the tuition of Ashley Fulton. She then moved to London after being accepted to the prestigious Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts - one of the top Academies of its kind in the UK.

Whilst studying she performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London as part of the 2011 BBC Proms – ‘Sondheim at 80’ concert, a tribute to the musical theatre genius Stephen Sondheim.

In June 2012 Joanna graduated with a BA (Hons) in Performance, Musical Theatre and just a month later played ‘Titania’ in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream in Buxton. An original piece of promenade theatre staged in Poole’s Cavern Caves.

Last March Joanna played ‘ensemble/cover for Christine’ in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Beautiful Game at the Union Theatre, London and last August – played ‘ensemble’ in Kiss Me Kate as part of this years BBC Proms series at the Royal Albert Hall with the lead performers coming over from Broadway for the one night show will be broadcast on BBC2 on Christmas Day.