Hello, Charlie ... Bouncing Brit wows Broadway
CHARLIE stemp sure knows how to wow Broadway.
The 24- year- old leaps and cartwheels across the stage of the shubert Theatre as store salesman Barnaby Tucker in hello, Dolly!
stemp, whom Cameron Mackintosh cast in half a sixpence in Chichester and the Noel Coward Theatre; and who showed off his comic timing in the Dick Whittington panto at the Drury Lane at Christmas; joined the hello, Dolly! company in January after Bernadette Peters took over the title role from Bette Midler.
he’s the fifth-billed player in the show’s credits, yet it was his name that led the New York Times’s enthusiastic review last week. Critic Jesse green hailed stemp as a ‘dimply new star . . . and he’s delightful’.
The praise hasn’t gone to Charlie’s head. When i met him after a show this week he chatted happily with fans waiting by the stage door, and posed for pictures.
Later, at the Bond 45 restaurant, the ladies at a neighbouring table checked him out approvingly, and eavesdropped, ever so politely, on our conversation.
as we were leaving, one told me they were headed straight to the shubert’s box office to buy tickets to see stemp.
he told me he’s enjoying working with a Broadway company, and learning a different way of doing things. ‘i’m taking singing lessons, dancing lessons — and acting lessons . . . They all do that here.’
and Jerry Zaks, the show’s veteran director, has been passing on some tips. ‘he said: if they laugh, don’t talk. if they don’t laugh, say it again. he calls me ‘“kid” or “sweetie”. When i called him Mr. Zaks, he responded: “sweetie, that’s my dad’s name!”’
Zaks and Warren Carlyle, the show’s British choreographer, have expanded the dance and comic possibilities for stemp, and he has jumped right in and grabbed them — and his performance works brilliantly within the framework set by leading lady Ms Peters.
Charlie’s mother Lianne, a yoga and pilates instructor, has been over to visit. ‘she was excited to see me — and to see sarah Jessica Parker, who sat just behind her,’ stemp joked as he ate spaghetti and meatballs.
he called his mother his toughest critic, and biggest cheerleader. ‘ so many people blow smoke in this business; but she always tells it as she sees it.’
she also helped him early on in his career, when he got a part in Wicked in London. he’d told the choreographer he could do a backflip when, in truth, he couldn’t. ‘My mum got me home and taught me how to do them.’
The run in hello, Dolly! is for 12 months and Charlie intends to enjoy every minute of it. ‘ i’m single and i’m in New York. What can i say?’