After surviving London train terror, I’m blessed to have the life I lead
Liza Pulman
Liza Pulman brings her Liza Pulman Sings Streisand! show to the National Concert Hall this Saturday. As the title suggests, the English soprano will take the audience on a journey through the singer’s career highlights in a show that has received five-star reviews from the British critics.
Liza might not go ‘fullStreisand’ with curly wig, but there are few who can deliver the range of songs in her canon as convincingly as she can. ‘And,’ she quips, ‘there’s no Neil Diamond lookalike at any point in the show!’
The 49-year-old is also a member of Fascinating Aida, the all-female musical comedy group, and trained at Glyndebourne to become an opera singer. ‘I’m in debt to those who trained me. I’ve been able to look after my voice. In terms of the Streisand show, what I ask of my voice is massive,’ she says.
Liza’s mother is actress Barbara Young, who found fame in the BBC production of I, Claudius in the Seventies. It was adapted for television by Liza’s father Jack Pulman. There was, she concedes, an inevitability in her decision to take to the boards in some capacity. But she also saw at first-hand the pitfalls of a life in the business.
‘I was very lucky because my father was an incredibly successful writer and my mother was constantly in work. I was always sitting at the end of the bed when mum was reading scripts if she had an audition for something, so I think there was an inevitability to it.
‘The other thing is that writers and actors have that constant fear of being out of work and just say “yes” to everything
consistently. My father worked too consistently until the day he dropped dead.’
Liza was married to Irish actor, David Ganly, and although she is now married to Steve Hutt, who manages Fascinating Aida, she and the actor are still on good terms. It was while married to Ganly that Liza found herself caught up in one of the most traumatic days in London’s recent history.
‘I was unemployed after coming back from a US tour with Fascinating Aida, so I took my first ever temp job. July 7, 2005 was to be my first morning in a legal firm. I jumped on the third carriage and, of course, the bomber was in the first carriage. It was one of those Sliding Doors moments where you think how different life could have been.’
Liza says she was unscathed physically, apart from lung damage due to the smoke she inhaled while trapped underground. After that experience, it’s no wonder she feels ‘blessed to have the life and career that I have’.
‘I’ve taken my chances, rode my luck, but I’m still here and, most of all, happy.’ Liza Pulman Sings Streisand, NCH, Saturday.