BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Beckham's funny girl is a force of nature 

By Baz Bamigboye for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:21 EST, 9 July 2015 | Updated: 20:22 EST, 9 July 2015

Twenty minutes into the second act of the musical Bend It Like Beckham, Sophie-Louise Dann sings a number that has been bringing audiences to tears

Twenty minutes into the second act of the musical Bend It Like Beckham, Sophie-Louise Dann sings a number that has been bringing audiences to tears

Twenty minutes into the second act of the musical Bend It Like Beckham, Sophie-Louise Dann sings a number that has been bringing audiences to tears.

Ms Dann plays Paula, the lively mother of Jules (Lauren Samuels, who stars with Natalie Dew in the show about a couple of football-mad girls).

As she bids her daughter an emotional goodbye at the airport, she sings There She Goes by Charles Hart and Howard Goodall — a song that sums up what every parent feels when their offspring leaves home.

Several critics noted how effortlessly Dann sang. I attended one Press night and, during the interval, a colleague wondered aloud if it was the same actress who’d played Barbara Castle so magnificently in the woefully short-lived Made In Dagenham. Yes, the very same.

Dann’s that rare breed: a classically trained singer who also studied ballet and acting.

When we met for tea, I remembered that a lot of singers won’t drink the brew ahead of a performance. Would she like a cordial instead?

‘I’m not that neurotic!’ she cried, after which we both burst out laughing. ‘I’ve been doing this too long to worry,’ she added and plumped for the English Breakfast, informing our waiter at the Dean Street Townhouse in Soho that, damn it, she’d have scones, cream and strawberry jam, too.

She explained that she learned how to look after her voice long ago. At 11, she used to pop in for the last five minutes of her sister’s lessons with the late singing teacher Maeliosa Goodale.

She’d learn a little song here and there, but by 13 she was doing short arias.

‘She was a wonderful Irish lady from Battle and she taught me a solid technique,’ recalled Sophie-Louise fondly.

‘She had studied with some very powerful people in her time and passed it on. When you learn to dance, you do classical ballet training and everything comes from that.

‘It’s the same with singing. If you have a solid classical background, from there you can belt — safely — and protect all your equipment.’

She did her formative training at the Hastings Stage Studio and at 17 won a place at Arts Education. She left three years later ‘with a slap around the face and a pair of tap shoes’. And a role on tour with 42nd Street. ‘I was a hoofer, and I loved it,’ she said.

‘I was never the ingenue, I was always the quirky best friend — which is fine by me, because you always get the funny song, and it has paid off.’

She has always worked, but now big West End producers like Sonia Friedman have noticed her.

She was cast as Paula in Bend It Like Beckham by Friedman and director-writer Gurinder Chadha when rehearsals had already started.

They wanted her because she has the magical combination of great pipes and the knack of bringing out the humour in a character.

She told me that she honed her comic timing working in producer Paul Elliott’s pantomimes; in the Frankly Scarlett musical at the King’s Head (where she met her husband Nicholas Colicos); and in the Forbidden Broadway shows.

Over the years, she’s tackled everything from Gilbert & Sullivan to Sondheim. The only surprise is that she’s been nominated for an Olivier Award just once: for Lend Me A Tenor.

She loves the standards, but believes new works are the theatre’s lifeblood, so she’s thrilled to have done two original musicals back-to-back.

In fact, later this month, she’ll be performing in a workshop of the new George Stiles and Anthony Drewe musical Becoming Nancy, based on the Terry Ronald novel and directed by Jerry Mitchell, who’s in town rehearsing the London production of Kinky Boots.

Dann and her husband are childless by choice (she calls Colicos her ‘53-year-old toddler’). They live on the East Sussex coast with her parents (who reside in a bungalow they built in the garden).

Her mother had a stroke just as Made In Dagenham was about to open. ‘God bless her, as she was lying on the floor she said: “Darling! You’re going to London to do the show!”’

Her mum, you’ll be pleased to know, is recovering well. ‘She’s a force of nature,’ says Dann.

So that’s where she gets it from!

 

Sophie Ward will get a gender twist in a stage version of Aldous Huxley’s audacious masterpiece Brave New World.

Sophie will play Margaret Mond, one of the ten world controllers in the 1932 novel which Huxley set two centuries in the future. In his dystopian world, sexual freedom is all the rage, man.

Of course, Margaret Mond doesn’t exist in the book. That’s because she’s a he in the famous novel. The original character was Mustapha Mond, but writer Dawn King, who adapted the novel for the stage, wanted a woman to have a more central role.

Sophie Ward will get a gender twist in a stage version of Aldous Huxley’s audacious masterpiece Brave New World (file picture)

Sophie Ward will get a gender twist in a stage version of Aldous Huxley’s audacious masterpiece Brave New World (file picture)

I was amused when I heard about the switch because in real life Ms Ward is the mother of two sons, and in Huxley’s world, mother is a dirty word - about as obscene as you can get.

The production, which is being directed by James Dacre, will have music by band The New Puritans. It begins performances on September 4 at the Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton.

The Touring Consortium Theatre Company has set up dates at theatres in Edinburgh, Oxford, Cheltenham, Wolverhampton, Darlington, Blackpool and Bradford. 

 

Kenneth Branagh has enticed award-winning actress Zoe Wanamaker to join his theatre company.

Wanamaker will join the ensemble, at the Garrick Theatre, of Terence Rattigan’s Harlequinade - but before each performance of that drama she will also perform one of Rattigan’s rarely seen monologues, All On Her Own.

Wanamaker will perform one of Rattigan’s rarely seen monologues, All On Her Own, at the Garrick Theatre

Wanamaker will perform one of Rattigan’s rarely seen monologues, All On Her Own, at the Garrick Theatre

I’ve never seen it on stage before, but I did see a DVD copy of a filmed version that was shown on BBC TV in the late 1960s. Margaret Leighton starred as Rosemary, a woman who wants to explore whether or not the overdose of pills that killed her husband was accidental.

The Rattigan double bill will run in repertory with The Winter’s Tale from October 24.

I’m told that Wanamaker will perform All On Her Own; there will be a pause of a couple of minutes; and then Harlequinade will begin.

 

 

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