You can’t keep a good show down. And after my exclusive story last week, the London Palladium took £500,000 at the box office in a matter of hours for its Pantoland variety extravaganza.
And now Elaine Paige, the first lady of British musicals, is joining the fun to bring us mirth over the Christmas holidays. Oh yes she is! And … she’s evil.
She told me showman Michael Harrison asked if she’d do another turn as Queen Rat for the three-and-a-half-week run at the Palladium from December 12 — which I have a hunch might extend further, such is the demand for tickets.
Elaine Paige, the first lady of British musicals, is joining the fun to bring us mirth over the Christmas holidays. Oh yes she is! And … she’s evil
Paige performed there three years ago, sharing the bill with Julian Clary and Charlie Stemp in Dick Whittington. ‘It was such fun — and Julian was so naughty!’ she said, clearly relishing memories of the high jinks they got up to.
‘We had a nice rapport with each other as well,’ she added as we chatted about the I Know Him So Well duet she and Clary did back in 2017. ‘We’ll change a few of the lyrics to make it current,’ she told me; and said another number, As If We Never Said Goodbye (from Sunset Boulevard), would be slightly rewritten ‘to make it pertain to life as it is today’.
However, there are no plans to fiddle with the gags from Dick Whittington.
‘People are desperate to laugh out loud,’ she said, ‘because it’s so miserable. Also, I wanted to be part of something that would just help the theatre come back; get it back up and running. We’ve all been in such desperate straits in the theatre.’
She told me showman Michael Harrison asked if she’d do another turn as Queen Rat for the three-and-a-half-week run at the Palladium from December 12 — which I have a hunch might extend further, such is the demand for tickets
Paige said she’d never heard an audience ‘roar’ like they did at the Whittington show, though she wondered how the laughter might sound ‘muffled through surgical masks’. Producer Harrison told me ‘Julian’s salivating at the thought’ of performing with Paige again.
Other cast members include Beverley Knight, Ashley Banjo and Diversity, Nigel Havers, Gary Wilmot, Paul Zerdin and Jac Yarrow.
The award-winning star has continued with her popular Radio 2 show Elaine Paige On Sunday; she’s also appearing as Helen, the ‘other woman’ caught up in the marriage of Alison Steadman and Peter Davison in writer Mike Bartlett’s compelling BBC1 drama Life, which also stars Victoria Hamilton, Adrian Lester, Calvin Demba and Melissa Johns. ‘I was thrilled to be asked to be involved,’ she said.
The wind was so strong, when Amir El-Masry was filming in the Outer Hebrides, that producers had to hire locals to hold down the equipment, so it wouldn’t take off.
Sources of local entertainment, meanwhile, for the month he spent starring in Ben Sharrock’s rueful drama Limbo, consisted of a small Co-op store, and a pub called The Dark Island.
Cast and crew lived cheek by jowl in purpose built huts, with facilities — but no wi-fi. ‘There was no reception. Only 3 Mobile, and nobody had that network,’ El-Masry told me. ‘Plus, there was only one particular point on the island that had phone reception. In hindsight that was also useful, because there was no urge to be on your phone to check your social media.’
The wind was so strong, when Amir El-Masry (front) was filming in the Outer Hebrides, that producers had to hire locals to hold down the equipment, so it wouldn’t take off
And yet El-Masry said he found the isles ‘perfect’. The 30-year-old West London-based actor told me the ‘sense of isolation was paramount’ in helping him to play Omar, a Syrian refugee seeking asylum who’s packed off to the extreme north west of Scotland.
The remoteness enabled him to ‘feel time…over there, you feel every second’; and that helped him capture the sense of loneliness which is mirrored in Omar’s face. It’s a beautifully balanced performance.
The actor told me that some of the fear that I noticed in his eyes came from him drawing on the story of his older brother, who was attacked in Cairo by looters during the Arab Spring
The actor told me that some of the fear that I noticed in his eyes came from him drawing on the story of his older brother, who was attacked in Cairo by looters during the Arab Spring. El-Masry was already in London by then, but the harrowing tale helped reconcile the siblings, who had drifted apart.
He said that when he got Sharrock’s script about Omar’s experience in Scotland it was ‘the first time I’ve laughed and cried from reading something’. I found it just as poignant, and I was also impressed by the way Sharrock and his cast fund humour in a topic that’s normally depicted bleakly.
The opening scene, set in a Cultural Awareness class with two instructors illustrating how to behave socially…using Hot Chocolate’s It Started With A Kiss…is deadpan joy.
The Film4 picture is one of the gems chosen by Tricia Tuttle and her team at the BFI London Film Festival, and it’s playing at the event today.
El-Masry said there were moments where he found himself breaking down on set, but the director told him to ‘hold back the tears as much as you can, because if you break down so early on, where do we go?’
You might well recognise the Cairo-born actor. He was Youssef, the hotel kitchen porter who helps Tom Hiddleston’s secret agent Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager (El-Masry praised Hiddleston for his generosity in giving him tips on how to behave in front of the camera); he played Commander Trach in the last Star Wars movie, The Rise Of Skywalker and has been in lots of telly, from Jack Ryan to Age Before Beauty.
You can also catch him in forthcoming BBC drama Industry (with Lena Dunham and Tinge Krishan among its directors). El-Masry plays a Dutchman in the series, which he told me is about ‘young grads who get into the banking scene’.
And when trying to master the accent, he found being a Manchester United fan surprisingly helpful. He told me he watched a lot of videos featuring the club’s former goalie Edwin van der Sar (speaking…not playing!). ‘He’s an incredibly eloquent man but has this incredibly thick Dutch accent.’
The banking world portrayed in Industry is ‘dog eats dog, but they also find love within that circle’, El-Masry said. His guy ‘wants to be bad because he’s been so repressed his whole life’. ‘When he gets to London, he’s introduced to the London life and he explores the many facets on offer.’ At least there were more creature comforts than in the Outer Hebrides.
Limbo marks his first lead role in a British film, but I have a sense it will not be the last.
Attention must be paid! Wendell Pierce, who triumphed as Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman, will be resuming the role when the play returns to the West End next autumn.
Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, with Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke (on sensational form as Willy’s wife Linda), opened at the Young Vic in May last year to ecstatic reviews from critics and was quickly transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre for a ten-week run.
‘And then this happened,’ said Chris Harper, referring to you-know- what. Harper produced the play with Marianne Elliott (who co-directed the production with Miranda Cromwell).
He told me yesterday that Pierce has committed to reprising the role in London, from around September or October 2021. Meantime, Harper and fellow producer Cindy Tolan have begun conversations with West End theatre owners about where, exactly, it could reopen. There are all manner of chess moves involved before a venue can be determined.
Attention must be paid! Wendell Pierce, who triumphed as Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman, will be resuming the role when the play returns to the West End next autumn
Another consideration is Clarke. When the pandemic began, she was about to open on Broadway in Caroline, Or Change.
If the musical resumes in New York next September (which is when Cameron Mackintosh predicts theatres over there might re-open), then she clearly won’t be available.
Pierce was in Rome with John Krasinski until the beginning of this week, filming the third season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for Amazon Prime. They’re back in the U.S. now, preparing for principal photography to start in January.
Conor McPherson’s adaptation of Uncle Vanya, starring Toby Jones, Richard Armitage and Rosalind Eleazar, was enjoying a terrific run at the Harold Pinter when the pandemic shut it down.
Producer Sonia Friedman and director Ian Rickson have gathered their company out of isolation to film the drama on the Pinter stage.
The result is breathtaking, and so marvellously intimate. The BBC have acquired it for broadcast (date to be announced). And tickets are on sale now for a cinema release on October 27 (unclevanyacinema.com).
Who’s going to be president? No, I’m not referring to the Trump/Biden race for the White House, but to those vying to be president of the Society of London Theatre (SOLT).
The contenders are producers Nicholas Allott and Eleanor Lloyd.
The job has never been more important than it is right now — and it’ll be interesting to see whether the victor will revamp the organisation, or leave it as it is.
There’s a lot of whispering about the need for an overhaul.