The Story
The story as told by his Mum, Dad and Brother.
A heart full of dreams, and a body full of chemo!
From a very early age it was apparent that George was destined for the stage. His natural flair to entertain, tell jokes, recite entire film scenes and deliver relevant and hilarious observational humour never ceased to raise a smile. Gradually he veered towards, and found a great love of musical theatre simply absorbing every note and vocal line he could find.
After successfully compering his Year 6 leaver’s assembly, and performing in numerous school productions, he started his developmental journey with Stagecoach performing arts Liphook where he studied and gained his LAMDA silver award. It was here that his talents became very apparent, with a strong cohort of friends who were to become his closest.
During that time, he played lead roles such as Mr Bumble from ‘Oliver’, Gaston in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ as well as performing as Mack Sennett at Her Majesty’s Theatre London in a tribute to Chaplin, singing Movies were movies from ‘Mack and Mabel’.
In 2016 he joined Surrey Youth Musical Theatre where he was cast as Javert in their production of ‘Les Miserable’ and truly shone in every aspect of the role. His rendition of Stars bought the house down at every performance, and even attracted hugely favourable comments from the orchestra members, many of which were regular musicians in the West End. How was he only 16?
He then attended Godalming College studying drama where again he excelled and made performances from monologues to more vocal roles singing songs from ‘Rent’, ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and ‘Shrek the musical’ simply soaking up every experience put before him.It was then onto Drama School after being awarded a scholarship with SLP College in Leeds where he appeared and performed publicly for the last time at The Theatre Royal York. At SLP he was further developing his talent on their Musical Theatre course, under the guidance of some of the best in the business. It was during his time at SLP that his repertoire strengthened. You can hear this, in the recording of ‘Where’s the Girl’ from the Scarlet Pimpernel which incredibly he managed to sing within hours of receiving a cancer treatment on his 21st birthday! It was during this time at SLP that he received his initial diagnosis.
The college were hugely supportive of George at this difficult time and enabled his studies to continue throughout his ongoing treatment until after 2 years, he finally became too ill to carry on.
George’s mantra was ‘positivity is key’, a saying he truly lived by.
His smile would genuinely light up a room, his joy for life and constant desire to learn was contagious, and often referred to as ‘the George effect’ by those around him. He was passionate about many things, but especially so, when The Mill at Sonning’ in his last few months asked him if they could create a foundation in his name, to help and enable funding to students in the theatrical arts who found government funding unattainable, and from backgrounds where finances were not easy to come by. He was truly humbled by this despite his predicament.
