BWW Interviews: Joanna Riding, On THE PAJAMA GAME, STEPHEN WARD and WITCHES!

By: Oct. 05, 2014
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Hello, Jo, and welcome to BWW:UK! Your cabaret is one in a series, following on from Daniel Boys, most recently - what's yours going to be like?

Ah, I'm the old lady of the group! Act One is a bit of a retrospective - it'll start from the beginning, from when I was a little girl. It's nice to touch on the old music festival songs that nobody would have heard me sing. That was where it all started. We'll work through some of the shows I've done. Jennifer White, the MD, has put together a beautiful medley of songs from a number of shows I've done - it's a spot-that-show piece, and that tops the first act.

Then in Act Two I have some very special guests - Anna-Jane Casey and Cassidy Janson, and we're going to do some Witches of Eastwick! It's amazing how much love there is out there for that show, so I've bowed to the pressure, and we'll do three numbers. I'll also have a few Jason Robert Brown songs - they're real actors' songs, quirky, and I really admire his work. So that's the gist of it!

Nothing from your more recent shows? Are you sick of them?!

No! Babe in The Pajama Game doesn't have any big solo songs, really, and it is nice to be singing something else again. Stephen Ward, perhaps that's a bit too recent. I'd rather go back and sing some others I haven't sung for a while, lovely as that is.

I'm glad you mentioned Stephen Ward. I felt that you were really underused - one big number, I'm Hopeless When It Comes To You, but not very much else. Does it get a bit repetitive when you have a role like that?

For me there was a slight flaw in my character having that song. I wished they'd established her more so you knew who she was and you knew more about their relationship to care. My feeling was that there wasn't enough of her to give a damn. The writers weren't concerned - they felt it would work, and you have to trust in them and what they want. I suppose any actor wishes they want more, but I knew how that song was supposed to move, and how it would move them more just if people had spent more time with that character.

What are your plans going into 2015?

I've been doing workshops for Calendar Girls The Musical, which may or may not happen. I hope it does. It's wonderful material. As for the near future, I'm just going to be Mum. It's been a bit crazy and relentless, and I have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old, and I'm not getting enough of them and they're not getting enough of me, so I've decided to take some time out. My seven-year-old has so many questions, and theatre is rather selfish - you don't get dinnertime or that pillowtime, where the questions come out. I don't want to get years down the road and realise I've missed it. I might miss some corkers of shows, but there'll be others. So I'm not looking at work until 2015 - and we'll see what happens then.

An Evening With...Joanna Riding plays the Delfont Room on October 9 - tickets are available.



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