BWW INTERVIEWS: A ZOMBIE PROM Special!

Hi, Sophie! Tell me about your character.

Toffee is very young, she's in high school, she's always thinking there's always more to life than this. In the first scene, all the other kids in the school are very excited, and love Miss Strict's regimented attitude to the way the day is run. Toffee thinks, oh, Good Lord, there must be more to life. When Jonny comes along, she thinks this is it, brilliant, and totally falls in love. That's her real thing, she just wants to find true love. With Jonny she does, which makes her incredibly happy. Not so much when she has to split up with him. It makes her a very, very rebellious teen, she's dressed in black, she's very volatile. She's either crying or angry or shouting! It's a fantastic part to play.

It sounds like a hell of a sing!

It is! But definitely my kind of sing. I love all that. Working with George and stuff, we've really gone to town with the stylisation, which is really good. But it is a big sing.

What's your favourite?

Actually, Voice in the Ocean we've just done. It's a real Bonnie Tyler power ballad. That's really good. She's got a diva moment, which is fantastic. I also love Ain't No Goin' Back as well. It's quite rocky. That's when she goes with him down the rebellious route, so I really like that one as well.

It sounds like you really like her!

I do! I really do! I love that at the beginning she's quite dreamy, but there's always this feistiness inside her. She really, really explores that with Jonny. She becomes a rebel, a rock chick.

Do you recognise yourself in her?

I was never a rock chick. I was quite a good girl. Not a goody-two-shoes. I was always down with the popular people. But I always did my work. I could have been a bit more rebellious - I'm living that through Toffee now.

And you're all having so much fun.

The cast and the production team are fantastic. We spend all the time just laughing and having fun. I love just trying stuff out and experimenting; we really do explore all the different avenues we can go down, which is really fun as well. It's a really good cast. We're all really close. I don't feel that I have to hold back in rehearsals. I think everyone feels like that, it's fantastic.

Is it fun going to work every day?

When our costumes came in, I just thought I love my job!

What are they like - all beautiful skirts?

Yes! We've got beautiful skirts, with nice underskirts as well, flat shoes and we have our prom dresses too! They're very nice. I'm very pleased with mine. It's like a peach strapless Fifties number, and then a little bit of black on it just to show her rebellious side still, which is really nice.

How are you going to fit all those skirts in the Landor?!

I know! We've been restricted to underskirts, because ideally we'd like two each, but they are just not going to fit. Hopefully they'll be all right. There'll be clothes flying everywhere!

Have you worked there before?

No, no, but my friend saw a play there last year and she says it's teeny-weeny. But it's such a respected theatre. Everyone I've spoken to has said they know it and how lovely it is. It's really well-known. I live in Clapham as well, so it's even better!

What are your plans for when the show finishes?

I sing at the Royal Albert Hall in a charity event for the Salvation Army on the 29th November. On the 30th I go to Eastbourne to start rehearsals for panto. I'm doing Jack and the Beanstalk with Chris Jordan - I'm playing Jill. That'll be really exciting. That's got me busy up until January.

Are you planning a musical theatre-focused career?

Not necessarily. I'm totally open to doing anything and everything. TV, plays, film, theatre - I just really, really want to have as varied a career as I possibly can. I know that's very difficult to achieve. I'm young and I can get out there now, and get as much variety in there as possible.

Do you have a perfect role you'd love to do?

I'd love to play Glinda in Wicked. And I'd also love to play Meat or Scaramouche, either one, in We Will Rock You. The sing in that is just - to go out and sing those songs, every day would just be fantastic, absolutely brilliant.

Glinda rather than Elphie?

Yeah! I just think you'd have so much fun playing her character, I think she's fantastic. And I'm a huge Kristin Chenoweth fan, as the majority of people are.

What was the last thing you saw at the theatre?

Sister Act, actually, I went to see, which I absolutely fell in love with. Everyone was dancing. It was brilliant. I loved it, the music is incredible, the set is gorgeous. Patina Miller is INSANE. Her stage presence, and everything - it's just incredible. I've been meaning to see War Horse for ever, and I walked past there the other day, which reminded me - I must make myself go and see that!

Welcome too to Ian McFarlane, the show's director. Ian, how did you get involved with this particular production?

Christopher [producer Christopher Clegg] and I have known each other for a long time. We worked together on Betwixt last year, and Chris was one of the producers at the King's Head, then we did a concert staging of it at the Ambassadors Theatre in aid of TheatreMAD. Chris approached me and asked me if I wanted to direct a musical. I said, "Yes, please, I would love to direct a musical, that would be delightful." Chris approached me with Zombie Prom. Funny story - when we first decided we were going to do something together. I said I wanted it to be something with a lot of subtext and depth and I wanted to direct something with a lot of acting. And here I am, doing Zombie Prom, but loving it, because it's fabulous. It's an escapist night out, which I think we need.

What was your initial reaction to the script?

I loved it. I loved the style of theatre. I think it's very difficult to get right. It excited me that it was a challenge and something different. My original idea was that I wanted to maybe do an old piece of musical theatre that we could look at in a different way. Perhaps the piece was done in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, when they sort of didn't think about the subtext, they just did it - sort of like the National did with Oklahoma! And found all these subtexts in it. When I read the script I absolutely loved it. It's the sort of piece I'd like to sit and watch, in the vein of The Producers, Avenue Q, Hairspray. That sort of really heightened feel. So I was excited when I read it.

Your cast seem to have clicked really well.

I've got a really fantastic cast. They're frighteningly, disgustingly talented. We did a run on the first Thursday of the first week of rehearsals, we ran the first 30 minutes of the show. It was absolutely brilliant. They're working so fast. There is so much music in the show. There is a lot of dialogue, but it's so spread out. The first week we really had to dedicate to learning as much music and staging as much of the music as possible so we could fit in the acting around it. So we've done a decent amount of text work, but a lot of it has been choral numbers. They've been doing two or three a day, they're just bashing through them, then they come back the next day and they're perfect. I'm thanking my lucky stars that they're so brilliant.

It makes your job a lot easier!

It does! It makes it not easy, but easier! We've got some amazing personalities and fantastic voices. I think the key to making a piece like this work is yes, there's little to it in terms of depth and subtext. But the stylised nature needs to be so good, there's such room for error, it needs to be really, really brilliant in every aspect. The cast need to be really individual. It's not a show with an ensemble. It's a show where everyone is a character. We tried to get people with quirky, different looks and different personalities so each person is a really definite character from the beginning. That's really nice because they bring a lot to the table, and they're really exciting people to work with. After the first day, they really clicked into the sensibility of the production, and understand where it's going. I think it's difficult when a piece is so stylised and heightened. The first couple of days the cast don't know what has hit them, it's like being shot out of a cannon, and it hasn't slowed down since. They really bring a lot to the table. Even at an early stage, you could see glimmers of the different characters and what they're bringing to it.

You've got a limited stage space at the Landor.

It's bigger than you would think it is for a small fringe theatre. It's a nice space, a nice shape, the audience are in an L so it's like a half-round. It's quite tricky when you're blocking anything, because it's not the round. You've got to do everything on an angle. It's nice because you don't need scenery, you don't need lots of effects to create a world because you're so close to the performances, it really is about the storytelling. However, there will be marvellous scenery and marvellous effects. We are working as many into a small space as we possibly can because it's that kind of show, with campery in every number. There are a few little surprises here and there that I think will be quite lovely. I shan't talk about them now!

Zombie Prom is running at the Landor Theatre.