Sharon: I’ve maid it to my dream role

SHARON D. CLARKE can do it all: sing, dance and act. She’s a talented triple threat who’s able to go from one job to the next, whether it’s episodes of Holby City, a show at the National Theatre, a panto in Hackney, or cabaret in Leicester Square.

‘As long as I’m working, I’m happy,’ she told me.

‘There was one period in the Nineties where I didn’t work for six months. I was sat on the kitchen floor, looking at loans.

‘That’s the most time I’ve had out of work — and it’s just luck, because there are fantastic people who aren’t working,’ the actress (left) said as she took a break, along with the director Michael Longhurst, during rehearsals in London for Caroline, Or Change, the musical by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori.

Clarke plays the title character, Caroline Thibodeaux, who works as a maid for a Jewish family in Louisiana.

Caroline scrubs and cleans, and cares for eight-year-old Noah, who has lost his mother but lives with his father and stepmother. She is every thing to Noah — although she resents not being paid to look out for him.

‘She has four children of her own,’ Clarke explained.

‘A son who’s fighting in Vietnam — which is a place she can’t even find on the map.

Her teenage daughter is rebellious. Caroline’s the sole provider and she tries to provide on meagre funds.

‘Caroline can only give her children meat to eat if she misses the rent for a week. It’s touch and go,’ the actress adds with a sigh.

But it’s a great role — one Clarke has coveted ever since she saw Tonya Pinkins (who created the part at the Public Theater in New York) play it at the National a decade ago.

Longhurst — celebrated last year for his Amadeus on the Olivier stage at the National — has assembled a superb ensemble for the show, which will run from May 6 at the Minerva studio at Chichester Festival Theatre.

Longhurst invited Kushner (who had been working on another of his creations, Angels In America, at the NT) to chat with the Caroline company. He told them how the characters in Caroline are loosely based on how he and his brother were raised in Louisiana.

Kushner’s book is intoxicating — but Longhurst noted that Tesori’s score is like a central character, too.

‘There’s Gospel, klezmer, opera,’ said Longhurst, as he and Clarke discussed the musical variations.

During the rehearsal, I watched Clarke do a scene with Nicola Hughes, as another maid, and Angela Caesar — playing the Moon (a part she took ten years ago at the National).

The scene comes early in the show, and all three women sing.

As their voices soar and meld together, you just sit there and pray for the song to carry on, for ever.