The producers of the brand-new musical HERE & NOW, presented by UK pop sensation, Steps, are delighted to announce that West End actress Lara Denning will take over the role of Caz from 11 November 2025. Rebecca Lock who currently plays Caz will leave the production on Sunday 9 November.
Lara Denning recently finished playing Anne Hathaway in the UK and Ireland tour of & Juliet. Her other theatre credits include Standby Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (Savoy Theatre), Miss Hedge in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (Apollo Theatre), Doreen/Miss Elf in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ (The Ambassadors & Menier Chocolate Factory), Mrs Wormwood and Miss Honey in Matilda (Cambridge Theatre), Mrs Bucket in Charlie & The Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Lex Logan in Eugenius! (Turbine Theatre), Mrs Mullin in Carousel (Kilworth House Theatre), Miss Hedge in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (UK Tour), Mrs Cratchit in Scrooge The Musical (Curve Theatre, Leicester), The Rocky Horror Show (European Tour), Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance (UK Tour), All the Fun of the Fair (UK Tour) and Dirty Dancing in Concert (UK Tour). Her TV and film credits include: Rosalind in I Came By (New Regency/Film4), singer for Matilda (Sony Pictures), Ruthless The Musical (BroadwayHD), Dick Whittington (UK cinema release/Kaleidoscope), Glass Body (short film), Leave a Light On (online concert), Menthos (commercial), and various recordings including The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, The Little Big Things (promo), Toast of London (Channel 4) and Dear Evan Hansen (Noël Coward Theatre).
The cast of HERE & NOW currently includes Rebecca Lock* as Caz, Jacqui Dubois as Vel, Blake Patrick Anderson as Robbie, Rosie Singha as Neeta, Finty Williams* as Patricia, River Medway as Jem, Chris Grahamson as Gareth, Edward Baker-Duly as Max, Ben Darcy as Ben, John Stacey as Lesley and Lauren Woolf as Tracey.
Also in the cast are Georgia Christofi, Kade Ferraiolo, Albert Green, Harry Jack, Casey Jay, Charlie-Jay Johnson, Rosemary Annabella Nkrumah, Dean Rickards, Markus Södergren, Genevieve Taylor and Jessica Vaux.
Featuring Steps’ most beloved hit songs, HERE & NOW has an original book by Shaun Kitchener and is produced by the band and ROYO with Pete Waterman. It is directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, with choreography by Olivier Award-winning Matt Cole and Matt Spencer-Smith as musical supervisor, orchestrator and arranger.
Welcome to seaside superstore Better Best Bargains, where it’s Friday night, the vibe is right, and everyone’s dancing in the aisles. But when Caz discovers the shelves are stocked with lies and betrayal, the summer of love she and her friends dreamed of suddenly feels like a tragedy. Have they all lost their chance of a ‘happy ever after’? Or does love have other plans in store…
Steps (Claire Richards, Faye Tozer, Ian ‘H’ Watkins, Lee Latchford-Evans and Lisa Scott-Lee) are the UK’s most successful mixed sex pop group of all time, with 14 top five singles, 4 number one albums, 22 million record sales, 500 million streams & 11 sold-out national arena tours under their belts. The band’s hits include #1 singles Tragedy/Heartbeat and Stomp, the gold certified One For Sorrow & Better Best Forgotten, the silver certified 5,6,7,8, Last Thing On My Mind, Love’s Got A Hold On My Heart, Chain Reaction, all of which will feature in the musical alongside many more.
Steps’ 2017 comeback tour sold out all 300,000 tickets, making it one of the biggest pop tours of the year. The band have since continued to release new music including two further iTunes #1 singles, the Sia-penned What The Future Holds in 2020 and the Michelle Visage duet Heartbreak In This City in 2022. In 2022 Steps celebrated their 25th anniversary with a headline summer tour and released the #1 album Platinum Collection which means they join ABBA, Rolling Stones and Stereophonics as the only groups in UK history to score #1 albums in four consecutive decades.
Musical supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by Matt Spencer-Smith, set design by Tom Rogers, costume design by Gabriella Slade, lighting design by Howard Hudson, sound design by Adam Fisher, wigs and hair design by Sam Cox, make-up design by Jackie Saundercock, casting by Will Burton for Grindrod Burton Casting, Music Technology by Phij Adams and Production Management by Setting Line.
