WALES Millennium Centre has announced details of the world premiere of Tiger Bay, a Welsh musical.

A Wales Millennium Centre production in association with Cape Town Opera, this brand new show takes audiences back to the dawn of the 20th century at the height of South Wales’s coal trade with characters drawn from the melting pot of Cardiff’s famous docklands.

Set at a turning point in history, Tiger Bay tells of a time when coal was king yet grinding poverty confronted opulent wealth. Valley girl, Rowena Pryddy, longs for a future away from David Morgan’s shop floor and its boarding house in central Cardiff.

On the outskirts of the city, a man arrives in Tiger Bay looking for an escape from his past to find refuge in the city’s underworld of public houses, immigrants and street urchins. Above them all, in the Zodiac Room of Cardiff Castle, the Third Marquess of Bute grapples with his own seemingly insurmountable troubles and ironically it will be a lowly Water Boy who inspires the richest man in the world to leave a legacy for everyone.

The role of John Stuart, Third Marquess of Bute, will be played by John Owen-Jones - best known as The Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera and as Jean Valjean in Les Miserables in the West End and on Broadway - with further principals to be announced.

Completing the cast will be a diverse ensemble to portray the multicultural community of the period plus a children’s chorus.

Graeme Farrow, Wales Millennium Centre’s artistic director, said: “2016 has been a defining year for Wales Millennium Centre having created and delivered several landmark projects. I am immensely proud that 2017 will see us realise our next significant piece of work, Tiger Bay, a musical born from the history of our culturally diverse home in Cardiff’s former docklands which has relevance to the world we live in today. I hope that our latest venture will bring a great Welsh story to the world in a time when arts and culture must be a uniting force in our communities.”

Michael Williams, writer and managing director at Cape Town Opera said: “First and foremost I have honoured the musical as an art form, although much of what found its way into the story is actually based on fact. Inspiration came from the complex mix of class, race and cultural diversity of this unique place in turn-of-the-century Britain. In writing Tiger Bay, the process of embedding myself in all things Welsh was made even more compelling when I uncovered my own Welsh roots; my grandfather worked in the Salvation Army in Cardiff and my mother was born there so, for me, the strong partnership between Cape Town and Cardiff began years ago.”

The world premiere of Tiger Bay will be Wednesday, November 15, 2017 at Wales Millennium Centre and the production will run for two weeks until Saturday, November 25, 2017.

Tickets cost from £7 to £39 and can be booked online at wmc.org.uk or via the centre’s ticket office in person or by calling 029 2063 6464.