Maestro Michael is back on song and raring to go
THE REVITALISED Michael Crawford is returning to the London stage — and this time he won’t be wearing a mask. The 74-year-old legendary Phantom Of The Opera star told me he’s ‘nervously excited’ about appearing in a musical version of L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between in the West End from late May.
Crawford will play Leo Colston, the story’s narrator, who as a teen went to stay at the English country estate of a wealthy school friend. The Maudsley family are gracious hosts, but use him in a carefree way, and he winds up unwittingly ferrying love letters from the daughter of the house to her secret lover, a tenant farmer.
Class and casual cruelty i nflict lasting psychological scars upon the boy and it’s the older Leo, reminiscing as he leafs through a dusty diary, who finally understands what happened in that long ago, turnof-the-20th century summer.
‘It’s quite a difficult piece to do, and that’s an understatement,’ Crawford told me.
‘At this age, for eight shows a week, I think it’s do or die! That’s the way I’m going at it,’ he said from his home in Los Angeles, just before getting on a flight to London to work further with composer Richard Taylor, writer David Wood and producers Joseph Smith and Bill Kenwright.
Nica Burns, who runs the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue, where The Go-Between will begin previews on May 27 before opening on June 7, told me that when she sat in a church hall recently and
Michael Crawford: Energy listened to Crawford sing, she felt transported. ‘I was watching a master at work,’ she concluded.
The actor was last on stage five years ago, when he played the title role in The Wizard Of Oz at the London Palladium. But he became unwell and left the show, taking himself off to New Zealand. Doctors eventually diagnosed the chronic fatigue illness ME.
‘I just stayed away from everything connected to the business,’ he said. Instead, he spent his time growing and digging potatoes and carrots — and sailing.
‘ It does matter that you eat healthily. I’ve always done, to stay fit.Then suddenly, with this illness, you’re someone else. It’s quite soul-destroying.’ When he was contacted about The Go-Between, he wanted Taylor to hear him sing.
‘Obviously, my voice isn’t the same as it was, and it isn’t as strong in some areas,’ he acknowledged. But he has continued with daily voice lessons (a routine instilled in him by Ian Adam, the celebrated singing teacher who died nine years ago).
‘Ian made me capable of doing Phantom Of The Opera, and changed my life ,’ Crawford said, referring to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.
His rich baritone hypnotised audiences lucky enough to see him as the Phantom, and is still a CRAWfORD benchmark by which I judge other performers.
has kept recordings of Adam’s singing lessons on his laptop. ‘It’s breathing, a nd humming, a nd making sounds. If you don’t do it for a while, then it’s like any muscle: they atrophy, and you have to build it back up again.
‘When you get older, the muscles don’t build up again as easily, so you have to work even harder.’
He added, ruefully: ‘Everything gets harder when you get older. You feel like a ford Anglia.’
One of the things he and GoBetween director Roger Haines will be discussing is how he’ll look for the show. ‘He (Colston) is in his late 60s, though I think we may have to go nearer 70. Either that, or whiskers.’