If you didn’t catch our recent review on the wonder that is WICKED, you can do so here!
The following week, having had time to digest all the green and sparkles, I met with the talented cast of this wonderful production in The Emerald City itself, aka, the Apollo Victoria Theatre. While I sat inside, I couldn’t help but ponder all the talent that has been housed within these walls over the last nine years, and these are the walls that were once again eagerly awaiting the thousands of people who were yet to walk through the doors in a few hours time. Meanwhile, the cast had taken time out of their exceedingly busy schedule (I mean, 8 shows a week, blimey) to come and chat with us, so we could wrack their brains on all things WICKED.
First up, I met with the two leading ladies of show, Emma Hatton who plays Elphaba, the witch with terribly anti-social coloured skin, and Savannah Stevenson, the delightfully blonde and frivolous Glinda.
I came and saw the show last Wednesday and it was incredible, the show was incredible, and it was absolutely full – what is it about WICKED that continues to draw people?
Emma Hatton: Everything! We’ve spoken about this before, it’s just such a visual and audial spectacle, everything that you see and hear, and the costumes, the lighting, the story, the music, its just such a wonderful escapism from everyday life, and it’s just magical. Isn’t it? You said it before, it’s a really magical other worldly experience.
Savannah Stevenson: I think it’s one of those shows as well that people come and enjoy it, and they go and tell their friends, and then they go and tell their friends, so there is this lovely thing where they’ll come back time and time again.
Is there a sisterhood that exists between the existing Elphabas and Glindas of the show world? Do you guys give each other tips?
SS: Do you mean with the people that were here before?
Yes
EH: Yes definitely.
SS: I think there has to be, they are the only people that understand what you do because as much as our jobs are glamorous, and fun, and a dream, they are really hard as well at times and the schedule and the way our lives become about the show. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is think how my voice is, you don’t go out, you really live and breath it, so I think there is only a few people probably in the world that understand how that is.
EH: Like you say, it’s a sisterhood, it’s like a little exclusive club of people that—its very reassuring to know, I mean I covered three girls that played Elphaba during my time as standby and I picked their brains and they came to me with advice, it’s one of those things where there is a mutual respect for anybody that, for me personally, dons that paint, gets on that stage, and tackles that role and it works within the understudies as well, you know with my standby, my two understudies, there is a support there where my door is always open because it’s important that they feel that they can approach me with any concerns or worries they have because they know that I’ve been there. It’s tough, it’s very tough and it’s not just, I think in any lead role and particularly with something as big and as successful as WICKED, the show is just one part of what we do, for example we’re here today doing press, and it’s great, and we get to do a lot of extra curricular things and its wonderful, but the show is not the only thing that we do so we also have to, as Sav said, take care of ourselves, and manage ourselves and that is a real learning curve actually. I’ve made many mistakes and got it wrong sometimes, and gone on when I shouldn’t have done, it’s about managing yourself as a performer and to know that there are a handful of people that you can turn to and say “Is this normal?! Should I feel like this? What if my voice goes?!”, that is really reassuring isn’t it? And between our kind of roles as well.
SS: We stick together. [laughs]
EH: We have to! You know, we choose to, but we have to because it means we are united and we can face this job together which is really important.
Do you read your reviews?
EH: [Shakes head]
Strong reaction! If you do, how do you handle the critique? I ask because so many people have said “I’ve have had so many wonderful positive reviews, and yet I only remember the bad ones”. How do you handle that?
SS: I don’t read reviews, the only problem with our job is the social media element of everyone having a voice and a opinion, and sometimes you get tagged in that and even though it’s really good, I don’t tend to like to know either way, at all. So, sometimes you’re forced to, but out of choice I wouldn’t read anything.
EH: I used to, when I was younger. I think I used to be fairly influenced by what people thought of me, I think it’s an age thing, I used to care a lot more about what people thought of me, whereas now I’ve learnt to realise that as long as I know I’m doing a good job—like I recognise there are many people that can do this job and do a great job, but I’ve got the job, you know, I’m doing it right now and I’m doing it to the best of my ability and as long as my creative team, my producers and my peers at work are happy, and I know that I’ve done a good job then, like I said to one of the interviewer’s before, people’s opinion of me is not really my business, so it’s been detrimental to me in the past because I’ve believed the hype but I’ve also believed the negativity, and it can really affect you and you need to when to say “I’m doing a good job and that’s cool that you think that but I don’t need to know”.
SS: Everyone’s a critic, especially these days.
Emma you must spend half your waking hours covered in green—completely covered in green paint
Both: [laughs]
What is the process of getting it on and also getting it off, because that must be awful!
EH: You know sometimes, I just sit in that chair for the show, and I think “How am I here again?!”, I’ve come from a matinee and I’ve just taken it off! [laughs] I made the fatal error last weekend of buying white bed sheets, and I don’t know why I did that but it’s fine. But yeah, it’s an amazing transformation actually and it can be really good fun, it doesn’t matter how awful you look or how tired you look, you stick that green on and you just transform, and it really does get you into the character, so it’s about half an hour from start to finish with the makeup, and then obviously wigs on top of that, and then taking it off between 15 to 20 minutes but invariably I will find patches of green. I wore a backless dress the other day, and I definitely had green showing there, so someone covered it up with a wet wipe, but it’s fine, I think people thought I was doing it on purpose. [laughs]
My last question for you girls is, if you could switch to another character just for one night who would you play?
EH: We can change this every time can’t we?
SS: [laughs]
EH: Hmm…
SS: I mean like, if I could belt out those numbers, playing Elphaba would be kind of awesome.
EH: Lets just do a straight swap.
SS: Yeah maybe we should just switch over.
EH: It would be really fun though wouldn’t it? I do think we should do that.
And then you, Savannah, would get to scrub the green paint off next time!
SS: Oh yes, there is that! [laughs] There are many great roles in WICKED, but [whispers] we’ve got the best two!
You can follow Emma Hatton on Twitter at @emmahatton1 / Savannah Stevenson at @SavannahSt
Next up were Sean Kearns, who plays Dr Dillamond, the loveable mentor / tutor at Shiz University who is progressively losing his powers of speech, and Tom McGowan, the manipulative and cowardly Wizard who hides behind a giant metal mask.
I came to see the show on Wednesday night, and it was absolutely full, you know the middle of the week and there is tons of people. What do you think it is about WICKED that continues to draw people? I mean it’s nine years that we’re talking about here.
Sean Kearns: Nine years and in a 2300 seater! It is incredible! I came in a couple of months ago, actually just before my final audition for this on a Monday night and it was full, and I just went “This is unbelievable”, and it is, it’s incredible. I think I suppose it’s—I would compare it to being, it’s er, not THE HUNGER GAMES but the TWILIGHT, it’s like the TWILIGHT musical of this generation. I think people just want something, they want friendship, they want what the show is about. It’s about friendship, and about differences, and acceptance.
Tom McGowan: It is one of those shows that has something for everyone and has a gorgeous score, clever story, sets and costumes, you couldn’t ask for more, but I remember what you were just talking about, that with all that was going on when it was first being developed, Joe Mantello the director said “Don’t forget it’s a story of two girls and their friendship”, and there is not a lot of musicals about that. It’s usually about love, or politics, or whatever, but that is something that has resonated and something that brings back people again, and again, and again—you know I did the tour in America, both tours in America, and I’ve played a couple of cities multiple times, and people will come, you know husbands and wives will come and say “We saw you two years ago when you were here” or “We saw it with the other guy two years ago” and the nine year old girls are now 12 and they wanna see it, and when they’re 15 they’re gonna wanna see it again! There was someone at the stage the other night who said it was their 139th time to see the show, and it still speaks to them, they have to see all the new witches combination, or they have to see the first performance of an understudy, they have to see the last performance of the old cast, you know people camped outside, and that is around the world. There are nine world wide companies, of one musical. And I had heard, I think it’s true, that Universal Pictures, one of the producers, said that this is the most successful project they’ve ever had and it’s not a movie.
There have been so many different people over the years who have played these characters, how do you come in and make it your own?
SK: I think you hit the nail on the head there, I think by the virtual fact that we are just different people, for example, I think I’m possibly the tallest Dr Dillamond that they’ve ever had, and on Wednesday night, when you were here, I felt like Elphaba and Glinda—Carina [Gillespie] and Emma [Hatton] were like Sylvanian families next to me! I just feel like a huge giant! [laughs] But I think visually that looks wonderful, no pun intended. [laughs] I just by virtue of us having different physicality from whoever was in before us, you know, you’ve got that. It’s incredibly well looked after this show, and all you have to do really is trust it and it does it for you. I think you don’t need to try and have your slant on it, if it ain’t broken don’t fix it. And this certainly isn’t broken!
TM: What’s amazing about this company is that the fact that they can still get people like Sean, and Emma, and Savannah in their ninth year, is because they want Sean’s performance of Dillamond, and that again comes from the top. If they wanted a carbon copy, they wouldn’t be getting people like that because there is no fun to it. What I’ve loved and what I’ve seen now, I’ve even seen a bunch of Wizards, some are more charming, some are funnier, some are meaner, and then you meet your new Elphaba, and some are more tomboyish, some are more fierce, some are more easily hurt, and again it’s one of the things I think the audience respect, they are not seeing the same exact, not only do you not see the same exact from day to day, but from different company member to different company member, you can get a different team, you know especially the witches, teams have different energies and it’s fascinating to watch ,and it’s been a joy to be a part of, because as Sean said, this show is as sharp as it can be all around the world, there are constantly people giving notes, being encouraging, and the moment it starts to slip that’s their fault, and this show has not, and it’s been a decade now. When you’re in Tucson, Arizona and the whole team is flying out for a week of notes, you’re like “Oh this is gonna be exhausting”, well by the end of the week you’re like “Get me out there again because I have all new things to think about”. It’s a one of a kind phenomenon.
Do you both read any of your reviews, and if you do, how do you handle critique?
SK: Critique review is one person’s opinion, and it is bizarre, you know people say I don’t read them, but of course out of interest people sort of do. It doesn’t bother me whatsoever, at the end of the day I still have to come in to the building, I still have to carry on and that is it. In the same way, one person could say “He was absolutely magnificent” and the person next to them could say “I didn’t like him at all”, and we’ve all been and seen shows and we’ve read reviews of shows and we’ve gone “They did not see the same show I did”. So you then really question, and you go “Well what?”—doesn’t bother me at all.
TM: The thing is, if you believe the good ones then you have to believe the bad ones. I’ve tried not to read them, but the curiosity always gets me. You just wanna know what’s out there, and that is just part of it. WICKED is different because there is such a social media and fanbase, that I do try to stay away from it because you can be the favourite for a whole year and all of a sudden they can’t stand you! [laughs] The social media aspect of the show is amazing, but you can’t get caught up in it and the people that review it every single night, those kind of things, but usually with reviews I will get a general tone. But the only ones I can quote to you are the terrible ones.
Absolutely, I was saying to Savannah earlier, you only ever remember the worst ones, even if you receive hundreds of incredible comments, you’ll have that one really awful one that will always stick in your mind.
TM: That’s right, it’s like “Oh he liked me and he liked me, but John Simon said”, and you can quote exactly.
If you guys had the chance to switch characters for one night, who would you be?
SK: Can it be any character at all?
Any character!
SK: Morrible would be mine!
TM: Me too!
[room laughs]
TM: Last year in Newark, Joe Mantello was directing me in CASA VALENTINA, which is this new Harvey Fierstein play, and it’s about men that dress as women, and opening night Joe said “Are you interested in Morrible?” and it was so funny, ever since he said that I was like “Yeah”, I mean what a great character! I don’t think Liza [Sadovy] would stand for it.
SK: No certainly not!
TM: But Morrible would be so much fun.
SK: You see, I think, she’s the villain of the piece, she is the manipulator.
So now we know that that is your next role!
Both: Oh yeah definitely.
Speaking of next role, are there any productions in the future you’d potentially like to work on, after WICKED, much further down the line?
SK: The next one! Always the next one. And who knows when that next one will be.
TM: I sort of feel the same, I’ve felt so lucky over the last 28 years, the last table I waited was 20 years ago and I feel so fortunate. I’ve had bad years and good years, and big parts and small parts, but I’ve kept it going, so the longevity is what it’s all about. I don’t know whats next but…
Onwards and upwards!
TM: Oh yeah, I would always like to do Shakespeare in the park in New York, I’d love to come back to the West End, but as long as they keep calling, that’s the best part!
SK: You come in here and you play to 2300 people on a nightly basis, you send those people out with the biggest smile on their faces, what’s not to like?
You can follow Sean Kearns on Twitter at @IamSeanKearns / Tom McGowan at @TomMcGowan_
And last but not least, Oliver Savile, who plays the egotistic Fiyero; Daniel Hope, who plays the oh-so-sweet munchkin Boq; and Carina Gillespie, filling in as the understudy of Glinda.
I was really lucky because I came to see the show on Wednesday, which would mean I got to see you [Carina] perform! The place was full, and you got a standing ovation!
Carina Gillespie: It was so cool!
I was going to ask you how did that feel, I saw your faces and you all looked so excited.
CG: I have to stop speaking at that point! You can’t help but have a good time, the thing is with this show is that no matter how you feel walking into the building, you always walk out feeling great, and I think that goes with the audience and with us, there is just something about it that is so magical.
There are so many actors that have played your roles over the last nine years, how do you all bring your own personality to the role? How do you bring a piece of you to it?
Oliver Savile: I’ve been asked this a couple of times over the last few weeks, I am not Adam Garcia, I am not Mark Evans, so naturally you bring your own energy to the part anyway. There is obviously things we do as actors to change it and mix it up a little bit, but there is only so much you can do, it’s a long running show, it’s very similar along with Les Mis, Mamma Mia, Phantom of the Opera, they work for a reason. You can’t stray too far from what you wanna do but obviously you do bring your own little interpretations to it and different energy to it, so I suppose naturally that is just what happens.
CG: They’re iconic these parts, people have a preconceived idea of what those characters should be and I just think, I can’t speak for you guys, but a character like Glinda, you have to have fun with it, you have to tap into that bit of your personality that is quite erratic or fun loving or whatever, I do think it has to come from truth otherwise there is something that jars. You have to tap into your own personality and I think that automatically makes it yours.
Daniel Hope: Definitely.
CG: Because everyone has different sense of humour haven’t they? Some people have a more dry sense of humour, or sarcastic or whatever, I think it’s really cool that we can bring that.
Do you all read any of your reviews? and how do you handle critique? I was speaking earlier with the others, and we were saying that you can get a hundred amazing reviews but you’re only ever going to remember that one really awful review by this one person and it’s always going to stick out.
DH: Well Twitter’s good for that now because everyone is a reviewer, but luckily all the fans are really supportive, and I haven’t see anything bad yet, though we haven’t been on long yet.
CG: I’ve definitely had bad reviews! [laughs]
OS: I just think it’s one person’s opinion
Well Savannah mentioned earlier that everyone is a critic nowadays…
CG: Absolutely.
OS: But you know, we’re doing musical theatre, we’re not saving lives.
DH: Definitely.
OS: I mean come on!
Saving souls though!…
[room laughs]
DH: Sometimes you do crack, we’re human beings.
OS: We’re only human.
DH: There is only so much you can do.
OS: I think a bad review—you know if you’re not—but then if you’ve been miscast it’s not your fault, you wanna take the job, so sometimes I just think “oh just enjoy it”.
DH: It’s just one opinion.
CG: I personally really strongly stay away from them, I will literally stay away from it, even if someone says “Oh there is a great review here” I just go “No”, because actually I remember years and years ago I got a really bad one, and my company manager put it up outside the room without reading it, and I was about to go on stage and it was so cruel, and I just thought “You know what, I’m not gonna read it” and the next week I got a really good one and I thought “This is silly” because I can’t believe the good ones if I’m saying that I don’t believe the bad ones.
DH: It means you doubt your performance doesn’t it?
CG: From then on I just said “I’m not gonna do it anymore”, because it’s a creative thing.
OS: I was just gonna say, I trust my peers, if something was really bad I believe that one of them would say something or my director would go and say “Try something different”.
CG: And we’re actors, we’re sensitive souls! It’s not nice to hear something like that.
OS: We’re really putting ourselves out there.
CG: I think it’s better to stay away.
DH: And it’s nice as well because with Petra [Siniawski], our director, we can go up to her or the creative team and say “Is this wrong?” and they’ll tell us, they’ll be the first person to say “Yes”, you just have to…
Do your best?
CG: Yeah totally.
DH: Just trust your instinct basically.
If you guys could switch character just for one night—now I’m gonna let you in on a secret here, I asked Tom [McGowan] and Sean [Kearns] before, can you guess who they picked?
DH: I mean, Sean definitely said Elphaba or Glinda!
Well actually, they turned to each other and they said “Oh we’d love to be Madame Morrible!”
[room laughs hysterically]
CG: That’s mine!
With not even a pause or a hesitation, it was like “That is who we wanna be”.
OS: I think they’d be good in drag act actually!
CG: Oh they’d be fabulous!
So what would you guys be?
CG: Yeah, Madame Morrible! It’s always been her, she is just fabulous. Just so much to explore! You think that you know her and then she just got this whole different side to her. I think for an actor’s point of view it’s just incredible to play, and the costume! Who doesn’t want sleeves that touch the floor! Who would not want that?!
DH: With two to three rings on every finger.
OS: Weighing them down.
CG: Dragging her down to the floor!
DH: I’d be Elphaba! Getting to sing with fans in my face would be amazing.
And all the green paint!
DH: It would just be so great.
OS: I’d be Chistery! I wanna come down that rope, I was just thinking about it now and he gets to climb all over the set, don’t have to worry about my voice, oh brilliant!
So what does a typical day at Wicked entail? Is there loads of rehearsals, or do you kind of just roll outta bed and roll onto the stage?
DH: That’d be nice!
OS: We had our rehearsal process at the beginning which is four weeks and so we have that, and we do have clean up calls, though we haven’t had any yet, we’ve only just started, and they’ve [the ensemble] just finished doing rehearsals and they’ve been rehearsing during the day. My typical day is I get up, on a one show day relatively early, and I’ll gym and I’ll eat, I’ll play a bit of xbox, and I’ll come into work, and warm up, and do a show. I try to be as normal as possible.
CG: My day kind of drastically changes from about 3pm when I get the cut off point about whether I’m on or not, so depending on whether I’m on or not I’ll either go “Right another cuppa tea, it’s fine I don’t have to fit into that corset tonight!” or, I’m suddenly steaming and having loads of water, and all that!
The show has been on for nine years here, in Victoria, which is incredible, and as I said Wednesday evening was completely full.
CG: I know, it’s insane!
It continues to draw people, why do you think that is?
DH: It’s just got such a great story and like I was saying before, it’s like so many different stories in one, you’ve got the mob part, and then you go to Shiz which is another section, and then the Emerald City, it’s just so different, and it just all comes together. It’s an absolutely amazing story, and for young girls, if they’re struggling, it’s got such a good message about bullying.
CG: And it’s quite a political piece as well, it really is.
DH: Without hammering it in your face.
CG: Absolutely.
DH: It’s there but you don’t realise as you don’t think about it.
CG: And we were saying before as well, there is just so many things to discover in the show that sometimes watching once is not enough, and I think they get a lot of repeat customers because the more you watch it, the more you discover.
DH: There is no expense spared either, when it comes down to the costumes, every little detail that you can’t even see until you’re close up, it’s amazing. Its something different every time.
Last but not least, what is your favourite number to perform?
CG: Mine changes quite a lot actually, but I think my favourite number lately, and it’s gone back to the original as this was my original favourite number, is For Good and that is purely because I remember my first ever show, and it’s overwhelming and it’s quite a lot to take in, and I always remember really clearly at the end of the show starting to sing For Good, and suddenly getting this weird tunnel vision thing that everyone disappears apart from Elphaba’s face, that was all that was there. I still get that really strange sensation every time I’m performing, it’s like a weird zoom in thing and it brings you into a totally different place I find, because there is a lot of big numbers and loads of flashing lights, but there is something really special about that number, it’s like a poem.
I think my favourite is Dancing Through Life, I was discussing this with someone else the other day and I was saying how much I love the journey the song goes on from the change in location, in costumes, the lights, the tempo, all of it.
CG: And the tight pants!
OS: Oh yes the tight pants!
DH: Who doesn’t wanna see that eh!
[room laughs]
OS: It’s a great one to do, and as much as I love doing that, I have to say that As Long As Your Mine is quite a big scene for me, it’s the first time I’ve been on stage, one in front of 2500 people, and just been singing at somebody else, like literally not anyone else, I’m singing to you. It’s very rare that that happens, you look at Dancing Through Life and it’s all out front looking left and right at everybody, whereas that one is just at her and it’s something that we share every night with whoever it is, and I love it. It’s great fun, and when it goes well it’s amazing.
You can follow Oliver Savile on Twitter at @oliversavile / Daniel Hope at @DanielHopeUK / Carina Gillespie at @carinagillespie
The WICKED cast performs 8 shows a week. The show is currently booking for all performances until Saturday 5 November 2016 at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre. Prices start from £17.95 plus transaction fee, and tickets can be found at www.WickedTheMusical.co.uk
Find WICKED on Twitter at @WickedUK
