Sixpence leads to golden opportunity
FLASH, Bang, Wallop — what a picture! Newcomer Charlie Stemp will star in the 21st-century version of the musical that helped cement Tommy Steele’s fame.
Steele starred in the original London and Broadway productions (and film version) of Half A Sixpence, the story of Arthur Kipps, a Cockney lad who inherits — and then loses — a fortune before realising that true love is the real treasure he seeks.
Flash, Bang, Wallop is an exuberant, number by David Heneker, who wrote the original show in the early Sixties with Beverley Cross, adapting it from H.G. Wells’s tale Kipps: The Story Of A Simple Soul.
George Stiles and Anthony Drewe have written new music and lyrics that will be included, along with a few numbers from the original show — such as the aforementioned Flash, Bang, Wallop, Money To Burn and If The Rain’s Got To Fall.
They revised the show with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, and the musical will run at the Chichester Festival Theatre from July 14.
Joining Stemp in Half A Sixpence will be Devon-Elise Johnson. The pair already know each other, having gone on an international tour of Mamma Mia! together.
Producer Cameron Mackintosh, told me that his two young leads were ‘very special’. ‘They’re exactly the age of the characters in the novel.’
Stemp, 22, played Kipps in a production at college when he was just 19. In the audience was Andrew Wright — now the choreographer for the new Half A Sixpence. Wright remembered him, and the young actor later auditioned for show director Rachel Kavanaugh and her team.
Stemp, who shares a flat in Blackheath with his older brother, said he’s a proper Cockney from his mum’s side of the family.
‘I really don’t have to act the role,’ he added, as he showed off a few dance steps for my photographer. His mum enrolled him in the Belcanto theatre school.
‘I hated it at first — all jockstraps and tights,’ said Stemp. ‘But I started to enjoy doing the ballet and acting.’
His father is an executive at Manchester City FC. Charlie supports City but he’s more of a rugger lad: ‘I don’t play, only watch — it’s not possible to play rugby and act.’