Scarlett Strallen
|
The brightest and most sought-after ingénue role in town has to be the title part of the spectacular Disney/Mackintosh produced stage version of
Mary Poppins, who enters from the heavens and keeps the show airborne till her flying exit. Popping in to meet Scarlett Strallen, the effervescent 23-year-old musical actress who is now flying high in the role in her dressing room backstage at the Prince Edward Theatre, she virtually skips to the stage door to meet me, and is the picture of unbridled enthusiasm about a stage career that has kept her in work constantly since before she even left school. She was still studying for A Levels when she was in the original cast of
Mamma Mia!, and immediately prior to this job completed a summer outdoor Shakespeare season in which she also did
HMS Pinafore, which earned her a 2006 Laurence Olivier nomination.
Theatre runs very much in your family blood it seems–and you made your West End debut when you were just nine!
That was in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love–my dad [Sandy Strallen] was in it and was also the Dance Captain, and was very good friends with the resident director. They were looking for young Jennys, and I got the job! It was so different from any other child role, though: the children here in Mary Poppins have a big dressing room and there are ten of them, but with that, I had this tiny little broom cupboard all to myself, my very own dressing room! That was just incredible, absolutely incredible!
Your mother was a dancer, and her sister is Bonnie Langford, who is now coming back to the West End next month as Roxie Hart in Chicago. Was Bonnie, who also started as a child actor, an inspiration or a warning?
Yes, Bonnie started young, when she was about 7. I think my parents were very cautious about going down a similar route with me. But we all have done so. In fact, I’ve got three younger sisters and we’re all in the business now! The teenagers were both in Scrooge, for which my mom was kids’ director–they’re 12 and 15, and Sassie, the younger of them, has just started filming the latest Harry Potter. Summer, who is 21, was in Guys and Dolls and got all the publicity for her dance with Ewan McGregor; and she’s seriously following in my footsteps now as she’s just been offered Regent’s Park [where Strallen did HMS Pinafore last year] for this summer.
Is there any competitiveness with each other at all?
There isn’t and there hasn’t been. I kind of felt huge pride when Summer just told me that she’s got Helena inA Midsummer Night’s Dream and Maisie in The 
Ross McCormack, Scarlett Strallen
& Lydia Bannister in Mary Poppins
|
Boyfriend that they’re doing at the Open Air Theatre this year. It’s really brilliant, because I know all the people there and will be able to see her.
After you did Aspects of Love, you also did a revival of Annie Get Your Gun at the same theatre, the Prince of Wales. What professional training did you do after that?
After doing those two shows, I went to Arts Educational School when I was ten, which provides a vocational as well as academic training. Two of my sisters followed me there, but Sassie’s at Sylvia Young! She’s different from all of us–she’s more of a character kind of girl, and she’s been in Billy Elliot already. She’s funny and has the kind of confidence that the other three of us haven’t had–we were all quite shy–so she wanted to do something completely new for school. When I did Mamma Mia!, I was 16 and studying for my A Levels as well. Jenny Galloway, who was a huge influence on me, took me under her wing and used to go through my English A Level with me, and she told me to keep reading plays as well as doing musicals. Appearing in Mamma Mia!, the ensemble has to sing offstage for the whole show they’re not onstage in the booth; others would read magazines and books, but I had all my studying to do!
You were also in the original cast of The Witches of Eastwick, first at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and then on its transfer to the Prince of Wales where you had begun onstage. You’ve definitely served your apprenticeship….
I really have, and I’m so pleased that I have. People comment that I’m so much more down to earth than some other people they’ve worked with, because I know what it’s like on the upper floors!
You moved floors during the run of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang….
I was in it for three years. I was there right at the beginning as the main dancer for Gillian Lynne, and in the second year I took over a small part and covered Truly Scrumptious. I was only 19, and in the third year, they offered me the lead. I thought, can I stay in this for three years? But then Truly is a lovely part as well, so it was good to step up into that part.
You’ve now made the transition from ensemble dancer to leading lady. How does that feel?
I was really lucky. Chitty really helped, being moved up from ensemble and understudy to lead role doesn’t happen that often. But getting the Park right after that really helped, too, to change people’s perceptions. I worked with some incredible actors there, most of whom are working in the West End now it seems–Daniel Flynn is in A Man for All Seasons, and Martin Jarvis is in Honour, for instance.