Josefina Gabrielle

Josefina Gabrielle is a British actress and ballet dancer born in London in October 1963 to a Spanish father and an English mother. Trained at the Arts Educational Schools in London, she began her professional performance career as a dancer with the National Ballet of Portugal before returning to Britain to pursue a career in musical theatre. She has since worked extensively across the West End, regional theatres, and Broadway.

Gabrielle's early stage work included the role of Iris in Fame at the Cambridge Theatre, Maggie and later Cassie in A Chorus Line at the Derby Playhouse and on tour respectively, and Jenna in The Goodbye Girl at the Noël Coward Theatre. In 1992, she joined the ensemble of Nicholas Hytner's revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, which originated at the Royal National Theatre and moved to the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1993. She can be heard on the London cast recordings of Carousel, Fame, The Goodbye Girl, and Oklahoma!

Her career reached a significant milestone in 1998 when director Trevor Nunn cast her as Laurey Williams in a new production of Oklahoma! at the National Theatre, opposite Hugh Jackman. The "Dream Ballet" sequence in that production was choreographed by Susan Stroman. The show subsequently transferred to the Lyceum Theatre in the West End, and Gabrielle received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical for her performance. When the production transferred to Broadway in 2002, she made her Broadway debut with the company, marking her sole Broadway credit to date.

Among her many other West End and regional credits, Gabrielle played Dot and Maria in Sunday in the Park with George at the Leicester Haymarket, Roxie Hart in Chicago at both the Adelphi and Cambridge theatres, Alexandra Spofford in The Witches of Eastwick at the Prince of Wales Theatre, Cassie in A Chorus Line at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, and Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain at the Leicester Haymarket and Sadler's Wells theatres. She also played Irene Molloy in Hello, Dolly! at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park. In Sweet Charity, which began at the Menier Chocolate Factory before transferring to the Theatre Royal Haymarket, she took on the roles of Nickie and Ursula, earning a second Olivier Award nomination. In 2010, she played Lady Jacqui in Me and My Girl at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.

In 2012, Gabrielle toured the United Kingdom as Anna Leonowens in The King and I, her third Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Later that same year, she returned to the Menier Chocolate Factory to play Gussie Carnegie in Maria Friedman's production of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along. That production transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in 2013 and brought Gabrielle her third Olivier Award nomination. In May 2014, she joined the cast of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the Musical at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane as Mrs. Teavee, and in August and September 2017 she took the lead role of Desirée in A Little Night Music at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury.

Gabrielle returned to Chicago in 2018 when the production came back to the West End at the Phoenix Theatre, this time playing Velma Kelly opposite the Roxie Harts of Sarah Soetart, Alexandra Burke, and Caroline Flack. In 2020, she played Madame Thenardier in Les Misérables when the production reopened the refurbished Queen's Theatre, by then renamed the Sondheim Theatre, and she continued performing the role as of October 2022.

Beyond musical theatre, Gabrielle has appeared in straight plays including Noël Coward's Tonight at 8.30 at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester in 2006, opposite Alexander Hanson, The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre in 2007 and 2008, The Murder Game at the King's Head Theatre in 2009, Park Avenue Cat at the Arts Theatre in 2011, Ray Cooney's Two into One at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2014, and Maria Friedman's revival of Stepping Out at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2017, in which she took over the role of Mavis. Her screen credits include appearances in Miranda, Doctors, Heartbeat, Born and Bred, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and Sunburn, as well as the film of Oklahoma! as Laurey, and television appearances on The 56th Annual Tony Awards and The Rosie O'Donnell Show as herself.