In 2026, I returned to MishMash Productions’ Ruby’s Worry as musical director and performer/cellist, re-touring the production including a two-week residency at Polka Theatre in London.

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Based on Tom Percival’s much-loved picture book, and directed by Hannah Stone, Ruby’s Worry is a staged concert for 3–7-year-olds that uses live music, storytelling and visual theatre to explore anxiety in a gentle, accessible and hopeful way.

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As musical director, I shaped the repertoire around the emotional journey of the story. I used a fast, repeated-note figure from Duncan Strachan’s Ten Ways of Looking at a Blackbird as a musical motif for the worry, allowing it to appear in fragments throughout the show before finally emerging in full. This motif was woven through gentler repertoire and eventually opened out into Jessie Montgomery’s duo for violin and cello, helping the music mirror Ruby’s experience of her worry: first as something small and persistent, then as something overwhelming, and finally as something that can be understood and shared.

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I first worked on the production in 2023, when I was musical director and performer/cellist for the original tour. The show was shortlisted in the Excellence in Primary/Early Years category at the Music & Drama Education Awards 2025.

visit the MishMash Productions website or the trailer here.