Jenna Russell: my life in five shows
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Version 0 of 1. Sweeney Todd When I was 14 and I’d just started training at Sylvia Young theatre school, a friend of mine came round to my mum’s house where I was living, and he brought a cassette tape of the original cast recording of Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim with Len Cariou in the lead role. We sat down and listened to it and it totally blew my mind – so much so that I’ve never actually been able to see the show, because no one is ever going to be Len Cariou. It’s an extraordinary performance. It really did have a profound effect on me, and I defy anyone to listen to that and not be taken into the world that the character goes into: the ugliness and pain and anger. Len Cariou’s performance and how he attacked the work, which is so difficult, is just beyond compare. I would really say that was pivotal for me. I don’t remember sleeping, I just remember being haunted by this extraordinary thing that I’d heard. There are no visual recordings – you can’t see it – so it’s always been in my head. Liza Minnelli: By Myself When I was about 16 my mum booked tickets to see a Liza Minnelli show at the Apollo Victoria. I was on holiday with my best mate in a caravan in Bognor Regis, and I was having the best time ever. I was furious, it was the last thing I wanted to do, but I got on the train and I dutifully met my mum at the theatre. I really didn’t want to see it, even though I did like Liza Minnelli an awful lot, I was just not in the mood. Then I had the weirdest thing happen: when she walked on stage I burst into tears. I’d never seen anyone with such presence. She was a mistress of the stage. There’s just something about her when she performs: it’s so intimate and yet she can be so dazzling. I remember her doing a song called And I in My Chair written by Charles Aznavour, which is just about this woman sitting on a chair at a party watching her husband. It’s very quiet, there are no big notes in it. It’s like a monologue to music, really. And it was amazing. She is one of those people you have to see live in order to understand the power that she has. Something happens to her. When she gets on the stage, she can be a tigress. As a young woman watching that, it was quite something, and it always stayed with me as a result. Follies I did Follies when I was 20 and I played Young Sally. It was my first Sondheim show, and I was extraordinarily lucky, as Sondheim is so generous, and he’s brilliant at giving you notes and steering you in the right direction. I played the young Julia McKenzie, who was extraordinary, and also in the show playing the part of Carlotta was the amazing Eartha Kitt. I used to have a scene following her big song, which is I’m Still Here, and she killed that song every night – it was astounding the way she would caress an audience. That show was a big deal for me, because I was and still am a massive fan of Sondheim’s work. Some people get it with Shakespeare, some people get it with Pinter or Stoppard – for me, it was Sondheim. It was like I’d found my drug of choice. His characters are so complex, and they reveal themselves so beautifully and with such specificity. It’s like a flower opening; it’s a very slow, gradual thing. When you first listen to a Sondheim score, it doesn’t attract you immediately. It requires work for the person listening to it or seeing it as much as it does for the actor performing it. To actually be in one of his shows, meeting him, hanging out with him and getting the pleasure of doing it every night was a real shot in the arm for me. Oleanna For a little while I was a ticket-tearer at the Duchess theatre, and there was a show on called Other Places, which was a collection of three short Pinter plays, with the wonderful Colin Blakely, Dorothy Tutin and Susan Engel. They’re three very different pieces, but terrifying in the claustrophobic nature of the writing. I used to watch that every night, and those actors were amazing, so clear and clean. A bit later I remember having that feeling again watching Lia Williams, directed by Pinter, doing Oleanna. That was another one of those plays where you go, wow, the writing is so tight, but the performers and specifically the direction were phenomenal. I think Pinter totally understands how in order to direct someone like Mamet it can’t be adorned in any way; you just have to trust that the words are doing it for you. Lia Williams brought out screams from the audience – people were standing up and shouting things at her. The play is a two-hander and you don’t know whose side you’re on – you’re feeling sorry for her, then you hate her, then you love him. It messes with you. I remember it being a real lesson for me watching and seeing how less is more and trusting the writing, which it did to great effect. Sunday in the Park with George I hadn’t done any theatre for seven years because I’d been doing television, and then bizarrely I got an audition for Guys and Dolls, which is the last kind of show I would have ever imagined myself in. I was still in Guys and Dolls when I was offered Sunday in the Park with George. It’s one of those shows I’d grown up with, and I can’t listen to the score without falling apart. But I remember thinking at the time I shouldn’t do this, because I’ve just done a musical. But my best mate said: “Are you crazy? You have to do it.” And I did it, and it was one of the happiest occasions I’ve ever had on a stage. I felt ridiculously happy to be doing that show, because it’s such a personal piece by Sondheim. It came off the back of Merrily We Roll Along, which was slated when it opened in New York – they ripped him apart and he stopped writing. He disappeared, and they managed to pull him back about six years later, and he started writing stuff for Sunday in the Park. So much of it is about what is good art and why we put something out there to be criticised. I don’t think I’ll ever be in anything that means so much to me or something where I’ve felt so aware of being the custodian of something so special. It speaks to so many people about life and our purpose, especially people in a creative environment. It’s a tonic for those people. Those things aren’t discussed that much, about how odd it is and why we do it, and how it can kill us if we produce this baby and people say: “Your baby’s fucking ugly and I don’t want to look at it.” Of all the things I’ve ever done, it’s the thing that means the most to me. I will lie on my deathbed going: “I’m so glad I got the opportunity to be part of that beautiful thing.” |