Backstage With...

In this episode we meet some of the people whose stories are told in the musical Come From Away which opened last month at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End.

If you aren’t familiar with the show, it’s about what happened when the US airspace was closed on 9/11. 38 planes were forced to land at Gander airport on a Canadian island called Newfoundland. The 7,000 people from those planes were taken in and looked after by the people of Gander and nearby towns for five days before the planes were allowed to take off again.

I was recently invited to go and have a chat with some of the Newfoundlanders and some of the plane people who were stranded there at the time.

They’d come to London see the show and meet the actors playing them. And for one afternoon they all got together on the top floor of Canada House, overlooking Trafalgar Square, where once again, they told their versions of what happened on the north east tip of north America in September 2001.

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Hayden Tee is currently terrorising children in the West End as Miss Trunchball in Matilda the Musical.

Matilda is his favourite musical and Trunch is his ultimate role so he’s very excited to be doing the show London.

Hayden is originally from New Zealand but has worked extensively in Australia, the UK and the US. He played Javert in the most recent Broadway revival of Les Mis before reprising the role in Dubai and London. He also played Marius in 2005 not long after the show moved to the Queen’s Theatre from the Palace Theatre.

Having appeared in both the original and the 2009 production that will replace the original in the West End later this year, he has a strong opinion on getting rid of the revolve and modernising the show.

He’s just finished working on another album which will be out soon. You can follow Hayden on Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can buy tickets to Matilda and all your favourite shows at TodayTix

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Best known as Coronation Street’s Cilla Battersby-Brown, actress Wendi Peters has been treading the boards for 30 years.

Wendi is currently playing Sylvie in Call Me Vicky at the Pleasance Theatre in north London.

We chatted in her dressing room about how she started out improvising on stage at the Piccadilly Theatre when it was a club on a Saturday night in the 80s, how she went from being a dresser on the West End production of Into the Woods to playing in it as part of Sondheim’s 75th birthday celebrations, and how Coronation Street stopped her being seen for certain roles.

Call Me Vicky is on at the Pleasance Theatre until 9th March. Tickets are available here. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can buy tickets to all your favourite shows at TodayTix.

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Susan Harrison has been with The Showstoppers for about seven years now.

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is on at The Other Palace at the moment but also at the Lyric Theatre in the West End one Monday a month. Last month it celebrated its 1000th show.

The show is different every night. The audience make suggestions for the setting and the cast take it from there. It works so well and I really can’t recommend it enough.

Susan and I met at the Museum of Comedy in London, which is in Bloomsbury, underground, below a church. While we were there I tried and failed to describe that it reminded me of The Court of Miracles from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Of course as soon as I left I remembered what it was called.

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is running at The Other Palace until 16th March. Susan also has a comedy podcast you can listen to called Hayley and Ruth: Two Stars. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can buy tickets to all your favourite shows at TodayTix.

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Susan Harrison has been with The Showstoppers for about seven years now.

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical is on at The Other Palace at the moment but also at the Lyric Theatre in the West End one Monday a month. Last month it celebrated its 1000th show.

The show is different every night. The audience make suggestions for the setting and the cast take it from there. It works so well and I really can’t recommend it enough.

Jonathan Bailey is currently playing Jamie in the West End production of Company at the Gielgud Theatre. 
 The part, originally Amy, is one of five roles in the show that’s been gender-flipped. In this episode Jonny talks about how the show was modernised during the workshop process, the importance of queer roles existing without social commentary and how shy he went whilst working with Stephen Sondheim.

To find out about the upcoming gala performance of Company in aid of the LGBTQ+ charity, Albert Kennedy Trust, click here.  

You can buy tickets to Company on TodayTix here. 

Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast on Twitter Instagram or Facebook   for an extra look behind the scenes. There’s even more to find at backstagewith.com

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Ilana Levine is best known for starring in the 1999 Broadway revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. She’s appeared in a variety of Broadway plays and has worked extensively in film and television.

Ilana is also a podcaster, bringing conversations with her peers to you every week in Little Known Facts. She has so much love for the industry, the people in it and the magic of theatre.

I introduced myself to Ilana after she hosted a panel at this year’s BroadwayCon in New York. Two days later she schlepped all the way to the Upper East Side to come and chat to me at The Lowell Hotel where I was staying.

You can hear that conversation in this episode as well as what I got up to at BroadwayCon.

Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast on Twitter at @backstage_with and Instagram at @backstagewithpodcast for an extra look behind the scenes. You can find out more and see pictures from BroadwayCon at backstagewith.com.

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Jeremy Taylor is currently playing Raoul in Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the West End.

Many of you will know Jeremy from his time as Fiyero in the West End production of Wicked. Since graduating from Guildford School of Acting, he’s also appeared in The Sound of Music at the London Palladium and on tour, Evita and We Will Rock You.

We chatted in his dressing room about his journey to the West End, how he copes with awkward stage door moments and the Plan Bs for when things go wrong in the show.

The Phantom of the Opera is currently booking at Her Majesty’s Theatre until October 2019.

If you’re a Phan of the show, have a listen to my chat with Amy Manford, the alternate Christine in the show.

Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast on Twitter at @backstage_with and Instagram at @backstagewithpodcast for an extra look behind the scenes. There’s even more deliciously stagey content at backstagewith.com

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Gemma Sutton is currently playing Aladdin in this year’s Hackney Empire pantomime, marking the creative team’s 20th anniversary.

You may have seen her in Gypsy (with Imelda Staunton), Sweet Charity at the Watermill, The Rink, Strictly Ballroom, Hairspray, Legally Blonde and many other shows.

We had a chat in the green room where everyone who works at the Empire goes to eat and relax. It was a rare one show day, with only a matinee, so Gemma kindly stuck around after the show to talk to me.

Aladdin is running at the Hackney Empire until January 6th 2019.

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Declan Bennett is currently starring in Striking 12 at the Union Theatre in Southwark. Since 2000 he’s been seen in shows including Taboo, Rent, American Idiot, Once and Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as having a stint in BBC’s EastEnders.

In this interview he spoke for the first time about leaving the UK tour Taboo after a cancer diagnosis led to panic attacks on stage. He quit the business for two years until, after getting the all clear, an audition for Avenue Q led to a nine month U.S. tour of Rent, in which he played Roger.

Having spent a few years working in New York, Declan came home to star in Once where he was eventually noticed by the producers of EastEnders who offered him the part of Charlie Cotton.

In 2016, he starred as Jesus in the Olivier award winning production of Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre - a role he reprised in the same production a year later.

Now he’s working on more of his own material that might soon be seen on stage.

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