Caroline's career in musical theatre began in 1990 playing piano at the Kit Kat Club in Cabaret at the Leicester Haymarket. She went on to conduct her first West End show in 1993 and has since enjoyed a busy and varied career as a musical director, supervisor and arranger.
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West End conducting credits include A Little Night Music (Garrick), Sunday in the Park with George (Wyndhams), Passion (Queens), Leonardo (Strand), Whistle Down the Wind (Aldwych), Maddie (Lyric), Tell Me on a Sunday, and Romance, Romance (Gielgud). Musical direction highlights beyond the West End include Sweet Charity (Nottingham Playhouse), The Last Five Years (New Wolsey, Ipswich), This Is My Family (Sheffield Theatres), Daddy Long Legs (St James Theatre), The Water Babies and The Gondoliers (Chichester Festival Theatre), Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya (Donmar and Brooklyn Academy of Music), Hair (Spektrum Arena, Oslo), Take Flight and Closer Than Ever (Adelaide Cabaret Festival), Honk! (UK Tour), Oliver! (Crucible, Sheffield).
Caroline joined the Menier Chocolate Factory team in 2005 and was musical director for the company's critically-acclaimed production of Sunday in the Park with George. The show transferred to the West End and won Olivier Awards across five categories. It later moved to Studio 54, New York for the Roundabout Theatre Company, where it ran for six months and received eight Tony nominations. Over the next five years for the Menier, Caroline was the music supervisor for Little Shop of Horrors with Sheridan Smith (West End, UK Tour), They’re Playing Our Song, Aspects of Love, and Trevor Nunn's A Little Night Music - which transferred first to the Garrick, then to Broadway with Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta Jones. The production was later staged in Hungarian at Centrál Színház, Budapest, where it ran for three years. During her time at the Menier, Caroline was also musical director for Tick, Tick, Boom... with Neil Patrick Harris, and Maltby and Shire’s Take Flight, and for two years she led the successful Menier Musical Theatre Summer School programme.
In 2018 Caroline was musical supervisor for The Producers (Royal Exchange, Manchester) and for the all-female revue Don’t Tell Me Not To Fly featuring Janie Dee, Claire Sweeney, Danielle Hope and Ria Jones (Underbelly, Edinburgh Festival 2018). In 2019, Caroline arranged, supervised and orchestrated Tim Firth's musical This Is My Family for Chichester Festival Theatre following seven years of workshops and performance development. The production was directed by Daniel Evans and starred Sheila Hancock and James Nesbitt. Caroline was musical director for the recent Sheffield Theatres production of She Loves Me, at the Crucible, directed by Rob Hastie.
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Orchestration and composition work includes: The Wind in the Willows (Royal & Derngate, Northampton), They’re Playing Our Song (Menier), The Wizard of Oz (Theatre Clwyd), Maddie (Salisbury Playhouse and West End), and featured arrangements for Maria Friedman – By Special Arrangement. Notable recordings include A Little Night Music (2010 Broadway), Take Flight (2007), Sunday in the Park with George (2006 London), Twelfth Night/ Uncle Vanya (2003), Maddie (1998), Passion (1997 London), Starting Here, Starting Now (1992).
Caroline works extensively at many of the leading UK drama schools, as an educator, audition panellist, musical director and coach. She takes an active role in improving opportunity and career progression for women and non-binary musical directors, through independent mentoring and job creation, her participation in the MD Mentorship Scheme and her role as Maestra Music UK Regional Group Moderator. She is also a lead facilitator for Book, Music and Lyrics, a workshop programme focused on new musical theatre writing, development and craft and is on the teaching staff at the Royal Academy of Music.
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Upcoming projects include, as musical supervisor, the new Stiles and Drewe musical Identical directed by Trevor Nunn.