A star who hates fame
The First Lady of Musicals, who is visiting New Zealand this month, wonders how she’s survived in her industry, when Kate Robertson spoke to her.
Elaine Paige says she never sought the spotlight. ‘‘I remember hating all of it. I just wanted to play the part, not any of the other stuff that came with it. It took me several years to adjust,’’ she says from her holiday home in Cannes, France. ‘‘It’s not something that I ever envisaged for myself.’’
Paige has lived the past four decades in the public eye, but her success happened overnight when, at the age of 29, she was cast as Eva Peron in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Evita.
The show produced one of her greatest hits, Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, and she soon cemented herself as one of the industry’s greatest powerhouses.
She was the first person to play Grizabella in Cats, has released more than 20 solo albums, found global success with hit I Know Him So Well, and has won the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Musical.
But Paige very nearly had no stage career at all. She spent the best part of her twenties ‘‘singing doo wops and harmonies on people’s albums’’ and it took close to 10 auditions for Lloyd-Webber to settle on Paige as the lead in Evita.
‘‘I went to so many different auditions for Evita, and I think the final one was at Andrew LloydWebber’s apartment in London.
‘‘It was in his very small library where the main piece of furniture was a baby grand piano,’’ she says.
After one final rendition of Rainbow High, a song Lloyd-Webber told her ‘‘gets the men from the boys – the one that shows whether or not you’ve got the range to sing this score’’.
Paige remembers Rice pulling her aside on her way out, telling her, ‘‘I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about singing doo wops much longer.’’
Finding out she’d scored the part that night, Paige was a superstar by dawn – a reality she’s been grappling with ever since.
‘‘[The next morning] the doorbell was ringing, the phone was ringing non-stop and there were a whole bunch of paparazzi camped outside of my house.
‘‘I was living in a ground floor apartment in West Hampton and there they all were, camped out on the lawn. I couldn’t get out,’’ she says.
‘‘It was terrifying, and my mother and I were imprisoned there. I remember thinking, ‘Oh dear, I don’t know if I want this.’ I wanted to play the role, but I didn’t want all this attention.’’
Want it or not, she got the fame and accolades. Paige fondly describes the years that followed as ‘‘very heady days’’.
‘‘I met some amazing people that I never thought in my wildest dreams I would meet.
‘‘I never thought I would meet the royal family, or idols of mine like Liza Minnelli or Bette Midler.
‘‘Big stars of the day were coming to see me in this musical, and coming backstage to see me and be entertained after the show.
‘‘I had to learn this whole way of life and way of being. It wasn’t about just getting up and playing Eva Peron every night, I had this whole other life I had to deal with that was completely alien to me.
‘‘Sometimes I think ‘how did I survive in this industry’, really?’’
Paige says she is never worried the jobs will dry up, because they’ve just never stopped rolling in.
It’s a fact she knows makes her a complete anomaly. During those early days, people went out of their way to warn her about the realities of the industry.
‘‘[Legendary producer and director Hal Prince] said to me, don’t be too ready or too quick to leave playing this role [in Evita].
‘‘He was trying to make sure that I wouldn’t be frivolous, and just do it for a bit then leave. I always remembered that, and I’d say I [knew] he
was right, but I can’t really say that, because it did seem to me that things fell into my lap without me really trying too hard.’’
When Evita wrapped on The West End, Paige’s next big opportunity came when Judi Dench tore her achilles, and was forced to step away from the role of Grizabella, in the first West End run of Cats in 1981.
Called in as a last-minute replacement, the role ultimately saw Paige lay claim to Memory, a song that’s now her signature, and which, to this day, she feels a fierce sense of ownership of.
‘‘Millions of other people have sung it by now, but I was the first to sing that song, so I feel protective of it, and I want to keep it as mine. That’s why I feel that it’s my signature song.’’
Visiting New Zealand this month to perform in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, Paige says her voice has changed over the years, but not necessarily for the worst, as is commonly assumed.
‘‘I think with maturity the voice naturally changes, it has a more rounded, probably slightly darker tone to it. It’s not as light, if you know what I mean.
‘‘A young voice can be quite strident. I think my voice has mellowed somewhat. But you know, what you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts, or is it the other way around?’’ she laughs.
Performing songs from her favourite artists, along with her own greatest hits, Paige says when she’s on stage, the characters, Eva, Grizabella, Florence and Edith, all come flooding right back to her.
‘‘I always feel as if I’m connected back to that character. I suppose it’s due to the fact that when I was playing these characters in these musicals, the director gave me various pointers, or we discussed various things. The outcome of those discussions remained with me.’’
These days, Paige hosts a popular weekly radio show on BBC Radio 2. Currently pulling a staggering 2.38 million weekly listeners, she firmly believes the sticking power of show tunes comes in the way they’re tied to such memorable narratives.
‘‘I think it’s got something to do with the fact they’re based in something that has a real story. A musical has a beginning, a middle and an end. They’re not just a pop song, which fundamentally are for the young, and usually deal with love – and only that subject.
‘‘Musical theatre songs have more depth to them in a way. They’re little playlets in their own merits, and so I think that’s possibly why they stay in the imagination, and that the public connect to them and stay connected to them over the years.
‘‘Somebody that has seen the musical will remember that scene, and where the song comes in the piece, and so it has more guts and grit to it, because of that.’’
Still recognised on a near daily basis, conversation returns to the place of celebrities in modern society, in particular, those who seek fame for fame’s sake.
In a world swarming with influencers and Kardashians, it’s an aspiration Paige has no wish to understand.
‘‘Today, so many young people seem to want fame and fortune. I mean, I couldn’t have thought of anything worse.
‘‘It’s wonderful to be anonymous, really.’’
Paige performs at Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre on January 19, Christchurch’s Isaac Theatre Royal on January 21 and Auckland’s Bruce Mason Centre January 22.
‘‘So many young people seem to want fame and fortune. I couldn’t have thought of anything worse.’’ Paige was the first person to play Grizabella in Cats. The role ultimately saw Paige lay claim to Memory ,a song that’s now her signature.