Jumping for joy as Broadway shouts out Hello, Charlie!
CHARLIE Stemp — who made his name in Half A Sixpence — has been leaping to new heights on Broadway.
The South Londoner was cast by Cameron Mackintosh in Half A Sixpence, which enjoyed runs in Chichester and at the Noel Coward in London.
That was followed in quick succession by a Christmas season showing off his comic chops as the eponymous Dick Whittington in the panto at the Palladium.
Soon after, he was in a rehearsal room in Manhattan with Bernadette Peters (replacing Bette Midler), Victor Garber and Gavin Creel rehearsing numbers for Jerry Zaks’s glorious revival of the Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart musical Hello, Dolly!
Stemp, 24, started preparing last autumn when he spent a week watching Midler in the show — paying particular attention to the actor Taylor Trensch, whom he replaced, on January 20, as innocent young store assistant Barnaby Tucker.
However, director Zaks, choreographer Warren Carlyle and producer Scott Rudin had an idea to shake things up.
‘Normally they say: “You stand there because that’s what they did the last time,” ’ said Stemp. ‘But everyone from the team has said: “Let’s try out new things” and “What do you want to do?” It’s all so fresh.
‘Also, I’m about a foot taller than Taylor and there are a lot of new dance steps,’ Stemp told me as he described how he performed the leap, shown in the photograph above, for the first act number Dancing he performs with Peters, Creel and Kate Baldwin.
He added that he’s being treated as part of the family, ‘which is great when you come to a country where you really don’t know anyone.’
He’s getting used to the New York audiences who crowd into the Shubert Theatre. ‘They cheer when you come onto the stage, whereas we earn applause back in London. I have this fear that they won’t cheer at the end,’ said Stemp, who has a 12-month contract.
Zaks declared that Stemp ‘lights up the stage’.