‘Nell Gwynn is such a strong female historic character’
Laura Pitt-Pulford is proud to be following up her breakthrough roles in musical theatre by playing the kick-ass royal mistress, she tells Fiona Mountford
WE DO love a new star of musical theatre in this country — and the next one has been under our noses for a while. The versatile Laura Pitt-Pulford has been, to name a few, a “warmly appealing” Mabel in Mack and Mabel at the Southwark Playhouse, a feisty Milly in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park and, most recently, a quietly soulful Violet in Side Show, again at the Southwark Playhouse.
She’s ripe for the big time — an Olivier Award nomination in 2016 s u g ge s t e d as much — and s h e ’s currently mixing things up a little by following in the notable footsteps of G u g u M b a t h a - R aw and Gemma Arterton as Nell Gwynn.
Jessica Swale’s delightful feministslanted love letter to the theatre itself is about to return, after a national tour, for a limited run at the Globe, where it originally started out in 2015.
I caught the production on tour in Guildford, where Pitt-Pulford, 34, proved a playful delight as the savvy orange-seller-turned-actress-turnedking’s-mistress, not afraid of calling Juliet a “noodle” for being so sappy and lovelorn.
What was the appeal of the part, I ask when we meet in London between tour dates. “It was Nell Gwynn herself,” says Pitt-Pulford, who exudes an Emma Stone-esque likeability and vivacity. “I always thought: ‘Why hasn’t this been written before? She’s such a strong female historic character. If Nell were a man, would she have been written before now?’ People go: ‘Nell Gwynn was all tits and wit’ but you don’t get to where she did just by having tits and wit. Most of all there’s her humanity, which oozes warmth. There’s this ease about her.”
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she previously said that “if Nell were here today, she would have been heading the women’s march with the biggest and boldest placard”. She beams. “Damn right! Come on!”
Pitt-Pulford will be glad to be back at home in London during the Globe run, away from the vagaries of the touring life, which a lot of actors have to face for a large proportion of their careers.
Her worst experience of life on the road came from a stop in Swansea on a previous tour. “I walked into these digs and you literally couldn’t see the floor for clutter,” she says, shuddering slightly at the recollection. “I went into the toilet and — I’ve never seen this in all my life — on top of the toilet seat was carpet. And let’s just say the carpet wasn’t clean.”
Refreshing too is the chance to play such a sparky part, as women with agency are by no means a given in musical theatre. Seven Brides, best known as an unbelievably misogynistic 1954 film, certainly required some judicious tweaking for the Regent’s Park production Pitt-Pulford starred in. “Rachel [Kavanaugh, the director] kept saying, ‘Go there where I know you want to go, play her stronger than maybe she’s written at times’. So we basically gave Milly the puppet strings and Rachel kept saying, ‘Push her even more. Absolutely bollock him for it’.”
Timothy Sheader, artistic director of the Open Air Theatre, is full of praise for Pitt-Pulford. “Laura is luminous on stage,” he says. “She combines intelligence with natural grace, a winning combination in a performer.” I’ve long thought that she would shine in a superior revival of Annie Get Your Gun.
Pitt-Pulford grew up in Rugby and from an early age watched old films, p a r t i c u l a r l y mu s i c a l s , w i t h h e r grandfather. She had, she says, a “fascination” with them and, playing the piano and flute as she did, initially thought that she’d be a theatre musician.
Her first experience of theatre was a pantomime, where a particularly terrifying witch had her “running out of the theatre, crying, hysterical. I said, ‘I never want to go back in there again!’” She pauses. “I think sometimes when you fear something you almost want to go back, like a horror movie.”
Thankfully her first encounter with musical theatre was more benign. “It was South Pacific in my local theatre. I was fascinated by the fact that an actress was washing her hair with real water! Now my question would be: ‘How is she doing that with a mic on?’”
Discovered as a singing prodigy at her first school, she didn’t make the choir at her next until her mother went in and made a special plea. “I