This week, Phonebox spoke to Charlotte
Wakefield, who is currently starring as Polly Baker in the UK Tour of Crazy for
You.
As Charlotte says, George and Ira
Gershwin’s iconic music is ‘a classic story of love and mistaken identity… it
has classic numbers such as I Got Rhythm, it’s got slapstick comedy – it has
everything you could want in a show!’
Charlotte has appeared in a dazzling array
of musicals ranging from Spring Awakening to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and in
Crazy for You, she’s once again stepping into new territory. ‘It’s in a
different vein,’ she explains to us, ‘I’m using my tap skills, which I’ve never
used professionally before, it’s just an entirely different genre.’ Something
else that makes Crazy for You stand out is that it’s what Charlotte describes
as ‘an actor-musician show’, meaning that ‘all of the instruments are played by
the ensemble, so there’s no orchestra’.
When asked, Charlotte lists her favourite
musicals, which include ‘Mary Poppins, Me and My
Girl, Fiddler on the Roof and the Sound of Music, which I’ve been in at the
Regents Park Open Air Theatre’, as well as numerous others. ‘I’m a huge musical
theatre fan’, she says, ‘I try to listen to at least one new score a
week!’.
She goes on to explain why she loves performing
in musicals, as ‘you get to do lots and lots of things all at once, it’s a
different emotional outlet. To see people singing along and tapping their legs
is also really rewarding.
She then went on to say, ‘Theatre is
personal to so many people in so many different ways – and we’re able to bring
theatre to people who need it. When I meet people after the show and they tell
me that they’re going through a rough time and how the 2 ½ hours have helped
them, that’s great too.’
And does she have any advice for those who
want to go into Musical Theatre? ‘Patience is a virtue’, she responds, ‘you
have to keep believing, continue to work hard and always keep learning. You
need to be aware that you will have to work hard, but that all your hard work
will pay off eventually.’
When we ask which record she would take
with her if she were stranded on a desert island, she thinks long and hard
before responding ‘It’s cheesy to say, but probably I Got Rhythm, because it’s quite
uplifting’, before she jokingly adds, ‘although
you’d probably get a bit bored of it after a while!’
Crazy for You is on at Milton Keynes
Theatre from Tuesday the 20th to Saturday the 24th of
March. For more information, go to www.atgtickets.com
No comments:
Post a Comment