Meet the Jewish Cinderella at the heart of JW3’s Chanukah panto

Pick says it's been a dream to play Jewish baker Cinderella, not least because she loves Jewish baked goods enough to have her very own challah bread tattoo – which her parents still don’t know about.

“I got it in January of this year, and when I got the audition for the panto, I was like, ‘This is beshert,’” she says.

The show, whose silly world includes characters like Beigel Streisand, Fairy Cob Mother, and Monsieur Croissant, features classic songs reimagined with Jewish lyrics, including the opening number One Short Day in the Kosher Kingdom, based off Stephen Schwartz’s song One Short Day in the Emerald City from Wicked. The onstage performing band spotlights Klezmer specialist and musical director Josh Middleton, acrobatic circus performer, klezmer trumpeter and tuba player Oliver Presman, and award-winning Mexican drummer Migdalia van der Hoven.

Pick, who trained as an actor at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, says making the Cinderella and the Matzo Ball has been “surprisingly moving.”

“It's got love and joy and pride at its heart, which I think, in my experience as an actor telling lots of Jewish stories, can be quite rare - we spend a lot of time on really, really important stories that might have a bit more tragedy, which, of course, is such an important part of our history,” she says. “But being able to spend so much time with the joy of Jewishness is beautiful, and something that we mustn't forget to do.”

Cinderella and the Matzo Ball is at JW3 from  December 7 to January 4