WHY ELAINE IS TURNING A NEW PAIGE
Elaine Paige, the First lady of musical theatre, is hanging up her dancing shoes.
The award-winning star is not retiring. She has booked-up concert tours around the globe, television appearances — and she’s topping the bill in panto at the london Palladium in December, playing Queen Rat opposite the West end’s youngest new star Charlie Stemp, from the Cameron Mackintosh production of Half a Sixpence.
But she told me she cannot imagine doing another musical. She said her five-week run in Dick Whittington, from December 9, would be ‘perfect’; unlike musicals, which are ‘an eight-show-a-week thing, for months on end’ — and exhausting, to boot.
‘i just find it too tiring, the long runs and all of that. They want you to commit to six months, or a year; and that’s a long time now for me,’ she said, adding she can do concerts all over the world, for seasons as long (or short) as she wants.
Plus there’s her popular BBC Radio 2 Sunday show. and projects like the ‘telly’ — she was filming in the lake District when we spoke on Wednesday (the BBC comedy Home From Home, in which she plays Johnny Vegas’s mum).
Paige has some of the best musical theatre credits in the business, appearing in Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair before lead roles in evita for Tim Rice and andrew lloyd Webber, and Cats and Sunset Boulevard for lloyd Webber.
‘i was lucky to be around in the era of all of those,’ she said. ‘it was the renaissance era of the British musical, and i was a part of that.’
She appeared in an effervescent anything goes and an intense Chess — though she has less fond memories of The King and i, the last show she did at the Palladium, 17 years ago, because ‘there were too many kings’.
‘i ended up calling it The Kings and Me! So i’m hoping Queen Rat in Dick Whittington, with a bunch of fun people, will be very different.’
She will clash with Julian Clary’s Spirit Of The Bells in the Qdos production and, with luck, get to do some ‘energetic dancing’ with fellow performers Diversity, and Charlie Stemp.
Paige said her last panto at the Palladium was a one- off 1971 BBC TV Christmas Day special: aladdin, starring Cilla Black. The last one she performed there for a proper run was Babes in The Woods in 1965 with arthur askey, Frank ifield, Sid James, Roy Kinnear and Sharon arden . . . now better known as Sharon Osbourne.
The Palladium is new territory for 23-year- old Stemp, who ends his triumphant run in Half a Sixpence at the noel Coward on September 2.
But he’s no panto novice, having appeared in Snow White at the Orchard Theatre in Dartford, which starred ann Widdecombe and Craig Revel Horwood. ‘ i was a rather interestingly dressed servant, with lots of leather straps.’
He grew up watching pantos at the Orchard with his family, so he knows the kind of ribbing he’ll get from the likes of Clary. not to mention Ms Paige, who was already savouring the famous ‘looking for Dick on Hampstead Heath’ line.
Stemp was hailed as a star in the making when he opened in Half a Sixpence in Chichester and said he’d ‘ loved every second’ of the extended run, though it’s been exhausting.
He’s had to take a break from his beloved rugby and surfing because of the risk of injury.
His precious free time is spent with his girlfriend — who’s not in showbusiness. Charlie told me he was wary of dating insiders because ‘as my friend always says, if it goes bad, it goes bad bad — and we don’t want that, do we!’
Oh no we don’t.