I’VE COME OUT THE OTHER SIDE
SHE totters on to the stage in elegant stilettos and a tight red dress, her blonde hair arranged in an artful haystack. Before she has even opened her mouth the audience go crazy, which is quite some sound from 5,000-plus people in London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Sheridan Smith – actress, comedian, stage star – brought her first concert tour to the capital’s most prestigious venue this week and she can’t quite believe it. “I’m really enjoying being on the road and meeting all the people who have paid to come and see me,” she says. “And fancy little old me doing the Albert Hall.”
At one point in the evening she peers into the darkened auditorium, asking: “Where’s the rowdy box? Oh, there they are – the Donnie lot. Doncaster in the Albert Hall. Unbelievable!”
She waves to her mum Marilyn, who stands up to take a bow, and brother Damian. Along with Sheridan’s father Colin – who died last December aged 80 – Marilyn sang in a country and western duo called The Daltons. “My mum’s started gigging on her own now,” Sheridan reveals in the show’s second half.
“When I was thinking of songs for the tour I went back home and she was singing songs like this one.” And she segues seamlessly into a plaintive version of Crystal Gayle’s Talking In Your Sleep.
Sheridan is universally adored. But then what’s not to like about her? She is funny and warm, she is feisty and sometimes vulnerable, the whole package underscored by blazing talent. But that does not stop her being nervous. She retreats repeatedly to the back of the stage to take a swig of water. “Actually, it’s vodka,” she says but she’s only joking and then confesses why she feels so exposed.
“The point is, I’m not playing Fanny Brice or Cilla Black. I’m being Sheridan Smith. There is no hiding behind other characters. It is just me.”
No one seems to be complaining. She arrived on stage with a roofraising Don’t Rain On My Parade (from Funny Girl) before changing the mood with the Gnarls Barkley song Crazy.
Sheridan is nothing if not selfaware and freely acknowledges the two-year meltdown she suffered after her dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “I’d been run off my feet professionally and I was dealing with terrible grief but having to do so in the public eye. My dad was my whole world. Everything I did I did to make him proud so losing him was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. But I’ve now come out the other side.”
It makes her penultimate song of the evening all the more poignant. Dedicated to Colin, Sheridan opens her lungs – and her heart – for her rendition of This Is Me from the film The Greatest Showman. “I am brave, I am bruised,” goes one refrain. “I am who I’m meant to be. This is me.” You’d better believe it.
ALONG with all the introspection there is also a whole lot of fun. Sheridan’s sense of humour is best described as bawdy. She dons an enormous pair of fake breasts before swinging into Dolly Parton’s 9 To 5. “I just adore her. If I ever go to a fancy dress party I always go as Dolly. I think if I met her I’d just cry.”
She is also very funny at her own expense, recalling the time she was filming Cilla, the acclaimed TV biopic. She had a special pair of dentures to play the role and kept a spare set in her hotel room so she could practise in front of the mirror.
She went out one night for what she calls a “sesh” and apparently took on more liquid than the Titanic. “So I invited half the club back to my hotel and for some reason used my door as the partition