Summer Strallen
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The non-musical theater in Britain may have the Treadaway twins, Harry and Luke, and, of course, we know about the various dynasties (the Cusacks, Oliviers, Redgraves) which the Anglo-Irish acting world makes a specialty. But let's not forget the two Strallens, Scarlett and her younger sister, Summer, who between them have been doing more than their bit to keep the West End musicals alight. (The same is true of their aunt, Bonnie Langford.) With Scarlett having recently closed in
Mary Poppins, attention is now focused on Summer, who has just begun a high-profile stint as Connie Fisher's replacement Maria in the smash revival of
The Sound of Music at the London Palladium. As if that weren't enough, Summer Strallen is also an Olivier nominee for best actress in a musical for her performance as Janet van de Graaf in
The Drowsy Chaperone, inheriting a part that nabbed a Tony nomination on Broadway for Sutton Foster. Broadway.com caught up with the busy, lively 23-year-old actress during a lunch break recently in the run-up to her Palladium first night.
So, doing The Sound of Music at the Palladium: this has to be the big time.
Yeah.You can never say whether you're ready for it until it happens. If you think about it too much, it will drive you crazy.
You came into this production in an unusual way—via a soap opera, Hollyoaks, in which you played a Sound of Music wannabe by the name of Summer Shaw.
That was all set up from the beginning when I went into the soap. Summer Shaw is not very like me—she's wide-eyed and desperate to be in musicals and has been training her whole life to do it. So she goes to this college in Hollyoaks village and gets a job in a smoothie bar and basically decides this life isn't enough for her so she's going to go to London and try to find Andrew Lloyd Webber and ask for an audition for The Sound of Music.
As you do.
Exactly! And so she stands outside the Palladium until he comes along one day. She knows he's in London and I guess she assumes that because he's in London, he's going to be around the Palladium! She sings for him in the middle of the street where he ignores her and thinks she's a bit crazy. But she then goes to his offices pretending to be a courier with a motorbike helmet on and runs in and stars singing "Any Dream Will Do" to Andrew and [casting supremo] David Grindrod. It's all quite surreal; there she is in a motorbike helmet on a wet and cold Friday morning.
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Summer Strallen
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Heavens! What happens then?
Andrew gives me an audition, and then I go in and mess it up and am overcome with nerves, so I run out desperately crying and upset about the fact that I've ruined my one and only chance of singing for Andrew, but then my boyfriend in the show says, "That's all right. You'll have another chance. You're a very talented lady: why don't you sing for me?" So I do, and Andrew comes out of the stage door and hears me sing and decides that I am probably the very best person to play the next Maria. The storyline continues until my press night, but I can't give any more anyway because it involves the boyfriend I have in the show.
So TV and the theater meet again.
Basically, the concept of this was to bring a new audience once again into the theater. Andrew had done it with How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? and ny Dream Will Do, which were a fantastic marketing ploy to bring a new and younger audience to the theater. I guess with me we'll have to wait and see whether it works. I hope it does give children or teenagers a fresh outlook on theater and coming to see it—and also hopefully that they'll enjoy it.
Summer Strallen in
The Drowsy Chaperone
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Did you know any of this might happen when you were doing Drowsy?
It was an inkling in my eye. When I found out Drowsy was closing, I had an audition for what I thought was going to be the alternate Maria—Monday nights and Wednesday matinees. I went for that and found out about this opportunity two weeks later, so I new before leaving Drowsy. This has given me five months worth of TV experience, which has been massive for me. I'd said to my agent that I wanted to try and get more into TV and film, purely as a result of having been inspired by Ewan McGregor and Jane Krakowski when we were doing Guys and Dolls—to try and learn that skill.
Yes, that was the West End revival in which your leg was immortalised, extended in photos and ads across Ewan's shoulder!
[Laughs.] Oh, that was fantastic, and I loved doing that show every night. It was fantastic also going into work and seeing who was in the audience every night: Keanu Reeves, Lucy Liu, Albert Finney, Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter. It was like, I don't know, not a new class of people but a new celebrity status that was coming rather than just the general public. A-list movie stars were coming to watch us in the show.
Congratulations, by the way, on your Olivier nod for Drowsy.
Oh, thank you so much! I feel really pleased that the show was acknowledged as being there and that obviously though it has closed, it wasn't forgotten. It didn't go unnoticed, which is the best thing.
Summer Strallen, Simon Burke and cast
in The Sound of Music
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What do you think Maria and Janet van de Graaf would make of one another?
I think Maria would love Janet and that there's an element of her in Janet: Maria is a pleaser, a people-pleaser, which is actually what Janet was. Janet wanted to please.
And I gather this isn't your first Sound of Music.
I was in a professional production when I was about six or seven playing Marta, with Liz Robertson as Maria and Christopher Cazenove as the Captain. It's a bit of a blur, though I do remember some things. My aunt said to me that once I came home from rehearsal and she said, "How did the tech go?", and I said, coming out of the mouth of a six year old, "The tech was fine, but Liz fell off a mountain." I've always been quite to the point.
Do you feel at this point as if you have a particular perspective on Maria?
It's kind of in the writing how Maria is—how she speaks and how her personality comes across: she's young and naive, so you try and bring as much of that as you possibly can. And I love Julie Andrews and the way she plays her: so lovable and full of joy. And that's what you have to remember. Maria's so joyful about the mountain and she can hear the sound of music in nature. She's got this sort of acquaintance with nature and earth and God and everything that makes your fingers tingle when you think about it. I'm going to try and have people tingling.