Interview: 'I Made My Own Creative Outlet': Beth Burrows on Singing, Acting and Writing Her Own Work
"I’m trying to live in the very narrow channel between Theatre and Musical Theatre and I’m aware that, as an actress in my 30s, that’s not an easy place to be."
An award-winning actress, singer, cabaret performer and writer, Beth Burrows has been a fixture in some of the best work in London venues for years. BroadwayWorld sat down with her to find out about how to make a life on stage. She's been Marilyn and Frank and many others, but who is Beth? Gary Naylor finds out.
Tell me about your first one-woman show, Sirens of the Silver Screen.
It’s a look into the nooks and crannies of the lives of Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. Sirens came out of a desert, literally and creatively. I had done English and Drama at the University of Bristol and then did a Masters at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and I had an agent, but the juices weren’t cooking - which, I think, is quite common. He was putting me up for big West End shows, but it just wasn’t going for me as I’m not a triple threat, I’m ‘an actor-singer who moves well’.
I remember Mamma Mia. I went in for a singing audition absolutely not expecting to be called back for the dance recall in the afternoon. I wasn’t prepared for it. It was January and I was as pale as Casper The Friendly Ghost - not the look for a show set on a Greek Island! So I bought some cheap bronzer at Covent Garden Boots and dived into the changing room at Marks and Spencer to put it on. This was 13 years ago, and musical theatre was not as diverse as it is today.
I got into my dance gear and up on the big stage they played Pussycat Dolls’ “Don’t Cha”. This was not what I signed up for! As the bronzer started melting off me, I looked like an Oompa Loompa trying to impersonate Nicole Scherzinger. Mamma Mia! was not coming my way.
I wasn’t having much luck in London, but I blagged my way into a job working for Forbes magazine in Dubai. I enjoyed the writing, but it was so dry, the environment was so alien and the people were nothing like the theatrical motley crew that I loved. So I created Sirens of the Silver Screen out of a kind of desperation. I was interviewing billionaires and writing about oil prices, but there was no creative outlet at all. So I made my own.
Lots of people have thought of that kind of escape, but not many make it happen.
I was moonlighting, singing at Music Hall Dubai, a beautiful venue that would suit a cabaret style show. The audience were international, so any show had to be Hollywood and glitzy - which is why I went for Audrey, Judy and Marilyn. I didn’t want to do a caricature or a pastiche as that felt disrespectful to them and I wanted to give the audience something to think about at the end of the night.
I spent ten days in a cafe researching and reading everything I could about these women, so the show became a kind of montage of all the stuff that’s not widely known - because a lot is. It was a blend of story, song and cinema.
The story I wrote went down the backstreets of their careers, with their famous songs used to plot the emotional temperature of the show. For example, I used “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” to explore Marilyn’s fraught relationships with men and the fact that she was an orphan. The song was twisted into a discordant, chilling insight into Marilyn’s demons.
I’ve always wanted to know about how shows like this get the rights?
My director was a lawyer, so I left that in his hands! Essentially, if you’re in character, there are exemptions - and I was playing them. For some of the clips taken from movies and interviews, you have to be more careful.
Judy Garland had a particularly tough life, so how do you inhabit it, especially away from home, and stay on an even keel?
You can’t wrap yourself in cotton wool on stage - some nights it’s deeply affecting. Maybe by luck, I’ve always been able to go to those places in the moment and then leave it at the curtain call. Depressed, isolated, drunk women are one thing, but I haven’t played truly villainous characters, so I don’t know how I’d handle it.
In Sirens, I go straight from Judy’s despair (“The Man That Got Away”) to Audrey doing “I Could Have Danced All Night”. That requires a bit of emotional dexterity, but I like that as an actor. You want to live in those moments - real humanity in crisis - I don’t like to fester in something after the natural emotional arc has run its course.
The technique that comes to mind is The Method. That seems to expect women to ‘live the abuse’, which is obviously very damaging. You’re saying no to that?
I think everyone has their own tapestry of emotions and if it’s helpful to use those as trigger points to get you into something, that’s fine, but I can’t see how The Method is sustainable for a long term career.
Your second one woman show (Luck Be A Lady) focused on three more legends - Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Frank Sinatra. There’s obviously more distance between yourself and those three, so what’s your route in?
My initial thought was to do a modern day siren - Amy, Whitney, Cilla - but I felt there was still territory to explore in the Golden Era. I didn’t want to do three more iconic women as the show would only be a lesser version of Sirens - and that led me to the men.
Because of the gender element, I ended up coming to those men through the women in their lives. So the show is called Luck Be A Lady and it swings the spotlight on to the women behind them.
For Fred, it would obviously be Ginger [Rogers], but also his sister, Adele, who was the one expected to be a star when they were growing up. But she married some English Lord and so, of course, she must retire. Fred was paired, reluctantly, with Ginger but she was the boost his career needed. For Frank, there’s Nancy, his daughter, and Nancy his first wife, but the key figure was Ava Gardner - and she was great to get into in the show.
In the musical numbers, I was the men. Top hat and tails for Fred; singin’ in the rain for Gene etc. I had to do this gender-bending thing with the costumes. I had a jumpsuit, but on top it was like a waistcoat, on the bottom trousers. I had to go from Frank being a lothario, straight into Ava being a screen goddess. It was a lot of fun, especially finding the differences between the women, finding the voice, the posture, the energy.
I was very proud of Luck Be A Lady because I gave myself the next level of difficulty. It was a real Rubik’s Cube job to fit them together and I did it for the first time coming out of the pandemic - social distancing and all! I’d really like to do it again because this show has cultural relevance and gets you thinking.
Photo Credit: Lidia Crisafulli
The other half of your career (so to speak) has been acting in mid-sized venues - my favourite kind! What are the things that you’ve enjoyed most?
That kind of theatre, that I’ve been lucky enough to cut my teeth on, I adore. I love the immediacy of those spaces because there’s nowhere for me to hide, but also nowhere for the audience to escape to either. It’s a challenge every night to get them to buy into you, the show and the story. I’m a bit naughty because I kinda break the fourth wall (if it works for the character and the director is happy). It’s the best education an actor can get working so close to the audience.
Favourites? The Lady With The Dog was really a gift. It was my first straight play back in London after my time in Dubai. I was working as the Assistant Cruise Director on Seabourn when I met Mark Giesser; we took Sirens to London thereafter, and then he cast me in The Lady With a Dog. I thought I was done with the performing life, but I wasn’t!
It’s about the best short story adaptation I’ve seen in 16 years reviewing!
It’s the 1920s in this version with a woman, Anne, who is married to a pathetic husband. She goes up to a chic beach resort near Edinburgh with her dog, the invisible Lily, whom I had to remember every night! She has a dalliance with Damian, also married and older - a classic case of forbidden love.
It’s the magnetic pull of two people, it’s in their hearts and in their bodies. But their circumstances, to some extent the period they’re living in, pulls them in the opposite direction. In the last scene, they’re a few years on and in a hotel in London. She’s got away from home and they spend a couple of nights together then break apart. Then Damian suggests they take Lily for a walk - in public!
It’s essentially about infidelity and, whether you want to or not, you do end up cheering on these people - who are cheating. It’s a difficult one and that’s what made it universal. We know that it’s so natural that they should be together.
As an actress, I was thinking, how do I write this in my head? Sometimes you can’t write it morally, you just give it the space. It’s not lustful, not hedonistic, it’s a deeper fulfillment, finding a sense of contentment and companionship - the characters complete each other, Yin and Yang.
If they could have avoided it, they would have. Anne does feel guilt, but, in the epilogue, we know that the marriages continue, even though everyone knows. It’s not exactly consent, but the compromises are accepted.
In Safe Haven recently at the Arcola, you play a very different part, a kind of young Rory Stewart-type, in a new play written by a former diplomat. How do you get a part like that?
Bizarrely, from The Lady With The Dog! Chris Bowers (the writer) had seen the play and came up to me and Richard (also in The Lady With The Dog and Safe Haven) and got chatting to Mark, who became something of a playwriting mentor. His script got picked up straight away by the Arcola and he thought of us for casting - so the two lovers in one play became boss and junior in another.
Catherine, the diplomat, was a lot more of a challenge than Anne. Chris came from that world which meant that the play was quite plot heavy and exposition-led.
I also saw you in a musical, Call Me Madam at Upstairs at the Gatehouse?
I’m greedy! I like flip-flopping. I’d hate to do just musicals and I’d hate to do just plays. I’m trying to live in the very narrow channel between Theatre and Musical Theatre and I’m aware that, as an actress in my 30s, that’s not an easy place to be. At this point in your career, people like to have you in a category, whatever that might be. I’d like to think that my CV shows that I can do musicals and drama, but that may present them producers with more of a problem.
For me, everything has to come from an acting place first. So, if I had to choose, I’d go with the acting. I can go to a deeper place when I have a really clear character and it feels instinctive, I haven’t had to overthink it. I don’t watch myself so much when I’m acting.
When I’m singing, because I have to think about managing the breath, the technique, the movement and all the rest of it, my analytical brain kicks in a bit. There are more factors in play when you’re doing a musical. And you can’t go and have a drink in the bar to relax after the show like a real person - the voice needs to be protected!
Straight theatre is fiendishly competitive, but musical theatre may be even more so. It’s uniquely delicious when you have a real feel-it-in-your-bones song, you’re spinning the story word by word and you’re opposite a great performer. When I did Strike Up The Band and sang “The Man I Love”, it was such a treat - Gershwin!
The thing I’ve realised over my career is the importance of immediacy and that every night, you have to convince yourself that you don’t know what you’re going to say next - and that’s difficult. Especially if you’re a bit tired, a bit run down or had a bad day, so doing it then is the mark of being a professional. It’s committing at that half hour call that you’re going to go out there and absolutely listen to the person you’re in the scene with - and not start thinking of the shopping list.
When you’re at week two and a half of a three week run, that sort of thing can creep in and you’ve got to be so vigilant in order to give the audience the performance they deserve that night.
You can read more about Beth Burrows's show, Sirens Of The Silver Screen here
Beth will be appearing at various locations this summer playing Beatrice in Changeling Theatre's open air production of Much Ado About Nothing.
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