Musical star Olivia: I enjoysinging... if no one’s listening
Olivia Colman is baffled as to how she’s managed to wind up in back-to-back, singing movie roles.
‘i’m not a great singer!’ the award- winning actress protested. ‘People won’t rush to give me a record deal when they hear me.
‘i’m happy singing in a group, and i’m enthusiastic at home when no one’s listening.’
When she met director Rufus norris to talk about being in the film version of the musical london Road, he had no doubts about her acting. But her sing- ing? So he sent her to meet the film’s musical director David Shrubsole before casting her.
‘i did the same to Tom Hardy — if they couldn’t sing, then they couldn’t be in it,’ norris said, when i visited the set of the film, which opens on June 12.
Thankfully, both passed muster with Shrubsole.
Olivia’s second musical role is in lobster, a surrealist movie directed by Yorgos lanthimos that i caught in Cannes.
She plays the manager of an unusual hotel and all but steals the picture when she entertains guests with a song. in the beautifully made london Road, Colman joins anita Dobson, nicola Sloane and linzi Hateley as residents of an ipswich street that becomes the hunting ground for a serial killer.
Her character, Julie, and her neighbours are determined to repair the damage done by the monster.
‘They want the place to heal after what happened there,’ she said.
‘They come up with the idea of making the street beautiful, with gardens and hanging
baskets. I love my own garden, so I was pleased to do this.
‘I don’t really know what to do in the garden, but I love being in it,’ she confessed.
Olivia was relieved that in scenes involving hanging baskets she didn’t have to get her gardening gloves on and put trowel to compost.
‘I was praying the props department would have already made it up — and they had, thank God!’
Norris directed the show, written by Alecky Blythe and composed by Adam Cork, to great acclaim on two stages at the National Theatre: the Cottesloe (as it was known then) and the Olivier. On stage, Norris had a cast of 11, with the actors playing several characters.
‘That was never going to work on film, so in this case we’ve got a cast of 70, with another 100 extras,’ he said.
As the piece grew in scale, he had to remind himself that he wasn’t making an epic.
‘ The story was still about a community,’ he noted of the movie, which has been backed by BBC Films and NT Live.
To that end, it was important that the London Road depicted on screen was believable. He and his team opted to shoot on locations in London, not Suffolk. They picked a street in Barking with a gasometer looming over some of the houses, like a physical embodiment of the danger the residents had just endured.
All the cast from the National have roles in the film, and Norris was delighted that his old friend Hardy, whom he directed in Festen at the Almeida, agreed to a cameo as a mini cab driver.
‘We were going to film the number he sings in chunks because it’s difficult to do while driving. But he sang the whole number through each and every time,’ said Norris, clearly impressed.