Stag rom-c wow
MUSICALS are back! Hurrah! On hold since March, Sleepless co-starring Kimberleywalsh and Jay Mcguiness will finally burst into life next month at London’s Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre.
And Girls Aloud singer turned musical theatre star Kimberley is delighted. “I’m thrilled they’ve found a way to bring theatre back into our lives so everyone can enjoy a bit of escapism again,” she says. “It’s such a lovely show and so heartwarming. I can’t wait for people to see it.”
Kimberley, 38, has spent lockdown at home in north London with her husband, former boy band star Justin Scott, and their sons Bobby, five, and three-year-old Cole.
“It’s been pretty full-on with the boys being so young,” she tells me. “I’ve been home-schooling Bobby.we’ve actually had an amazing time as a family, though, and the boys have loved every second of it. It’s so rare to get the time to just be together like that, so we tried to make the best of the situation and treat it like a staycation.”
She laughs, adding: “But it’ll definitely be lovely to go back to work and see some other humans.work has always felt a bit like a holiday to me since having children, which I’m sure lots of working parents will understand, and I’m very fortunate to enjoy my work so much.”
Sleepless, the musical version of the 1993 Tom Hanks/meg Ryan rom-com Sleepless In Seattle, sees Kimberley play Annie, a Baltimore-based journalist who finds herself falling for widower Sam after she hears him pouring out his grief on the radio.
Thewanted star Jay plays Sam. The duo previously starred in Big (another musical based on a Tom Hanks film) in the West End last winter.
Jay, 29, has been in lockdown with his twin brother Thomas plus Thomas’ partner and their young baby “so there has been an endless fountain of laughs, naps and nappies”.
He’s delighted to get back to work too, describing Sleepless as “the perfect show in the perfect venue” for these socially-distanced times.
Situated in the old Fountain Studios (once home to the live stages of The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent), the Troubadour is a large, brand new, fully flexible theatre space. Many seats have been removed, ticket holders will be temperature-checked on arrival and required to wear face coverings, and there’s a river and a dock separating the performers from the audience.
“On top of that, me and Kimberley don’t actually meet until the last scene on top of the Empire State Building,” Jay says of the story’s iconic final scene.
“Even then we don’t actually get very close to each other,” adds Kimberley. “If anything it might just create more anticipation and tension for our characters’ final meeting.” Sleepless wa preview from March open to the press o but the producers the production s before theatres closed because the coronavirus It now opens 25 with a specia For Sleepless He performance on A when NHS and car will be allowed up free tickets.
When I met the s March, they had an rapport. “We got o away,” said Jay. “W a laugh doing Big. She made me w during rehearsals.”
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