Jac’s back with Jason in Joseph
JAC YARROW, who was plucked from the Arts Ed drama school and given star billing at the London Palladium in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, has been officially contracted to return to the musical next summer.
He’ll be joined once more by Jason Donovan. But Sheridan Smith, who won raves for her music hall turn as the Narrator, is expecting her first child — and has various TV projects in the pipeline, too — so won’t be returning.
The show’s producer, Michael Harrison, and director Laurence Connor both said they wanted to work with Yarrow again.
The 21-year-old Welsh actor was picked to play Joseph earlier this year after Harrison saw him perform at Arts Ed in the Disney musical Newsies (he’d read a piece about the show in this column).
Yarrow recalled that his legs were ‘shaking like you wouldn’t believe’ when he arrived for the first time (via a lift) on the Palladium stage. ‘But Sheridan and Jason were like my pillars. They gave me the confidence to make it through.’
He also had some good luck charms — a display of family photographs — in his dressing room. Pride of place went to a treasured wartime picture of his paternal grandparents, Iris and Ken, on honeymoon in London. ‘It’s of them walking up Argyll Street, where the Palladium is,’ Yarrow said proudly.
Joseph will have a nine-week season at the Palladium from next July 2. (Tickets via www.josephthemusical.com).
There has also been a lot of chatter about Yarrow donning the coat of many colours when the musical goes to Broadway, probably in 2021.
Other casting for the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice classic will be done in the New Year.
This Christmas, Yarrow will be playing the Prince in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs at the Birmingham Hippodrome.
Although he now resides in London, his first television show took him back home to Cardiff. He has a featured role in three episodes of the five-part BBC comedy In My Skin, starring Gabrielle Creevy. He plays the class clown.
The series was shot at Cardiff High School, where his mother is deputy head and his sister is an English teacher.