THEATRE ‘I can’t stand putting on all that slap ...just give me a jacket’
THE British theatre world has been tossed around on a sea of uncertainty caused by the pandemic over the past 18 troubled months. So what better to calm those choppy waters and put a smile on the face and a song in the heart of audiences starved of entertainment than the ocean liner-set musical smash Anything Goes?
West End legend Gary Wilmot is taking on the role of part tycoon-part bespectacled buffoon Elisha Whitney when it hits the stage at London’s Barbican this summer.
He completes a trio of British acting royalty in the cast, alongside Robert Lindsay and Felicity Kendal.
But Gary has a confession. He’s never actually seen a production of the Cole Porter musical.
“Like everyone else, though, I know all the famous numbers: You’re The Top, I Get A Kick Out Of You, and the title song.
“The trouble is, when you’re working in West End shows, you get very little opportunity to see any other productions.”
Which is his typically modest way of saying that, in over three decades in musical theatre, Gary Wilmot has rarely been out of work.
There’s not room to list them all here, but from Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl to Oliver! and Half A Sixpence; from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to Chicago and the recent Prince Of Egypt, no production, it seems, is complete without Gary.
And then there are all those pantomime dames.
“The first time I was asked to play a dame was in Snow White in Birmingham in 2013. I was getting a bit long in the tooth to play Buttons again so I said yes.” More recently, he’s played a string of dames at the London Palladium.
It’s always a giggle, he says... although he has another confession.
“I cannot stand putting on all the slap and the petticoats and what-haveyou. All my life, I’ve been used to putting on my shirt, my trousers, my jacket and then walking out in front of an audience. But it takes the better part of an hour to get ready as a dame.
“It’s a little bit like being an astronaut, spending half a day being strapped into a space suit.
“It would be worth it, I imagine, to be up there looking down on Earth, just as it is when I’m on stage with Julian Clary or Elaine Paige – the very opposite of a diva.
“She’s huge fun and does the best impression of Hylda Baker I’ve ever heard.”
Gary celebrated his 67th birthday just a few weeks ago.
But his charmed life shows no signs of abating, and he couldn’t be happier, not least because he’ll be reunited with co-star Lindsay.
“I’d been a fan of his for a long time,” he says. “It was 2014 and I was appearing in The Pajama Game at the Shaftesbury.
“I went to see him in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Savoy and met him backstage afterwards.
“We had a bit of shared history in that I’d taken over from him as Bill Snibson in Me & My Girl at the Adelphi in 1989, my first foray into musical theatre.
“He asked me how much longer I had in The Pajama Game.
“When I told him just two more weeks he immediately said I should join the cast of Scoundrels because John Marquez was leaving. So I did and we had a ball. When the opportunity came to appear with him again in Anything Goes, I didn’t hesitate.”
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Elaine Paige is huge fun – the very opposite of a diva
REHEARSALS are just about to begin although he’s already met co-star Felicity Kendal. “She was absolutely delightful.” But he’s yet to meet Broadway actress Sutton Foster – last-minute replacement for an injured Megan Mullally – who will play nightclub singer Reno Sweeney.
Londoner Gary’s come a long way in
a varied career. But it turns out Gary isn’t Gary at all.
He was christened Harold, known as Harry, but because his father had the same name, the younger version got dubbed Junior. “Any friends I made before the age of 20 still call me Junior.”
When he started on the variety circuit, having turned his back on labouring, his agent suggested he call himself Gerry Wilmot.
“Harry was seen as rather oldfashioned back then.
“But I thought Gerry sounded too American so I went for Gary.”
It was in the 70s that he and professional partner, Judy Mcphee, entered the New Faces TV talent show, ultimately reaching the final. He then broke into children’s television, So You Want To Be Top?, perhaps his most famous series.
But, clearly, he’d inherited some of his father’s musical ability.
“When I got the leading role in My And My Girl, it was a perfect fit. It felt like coming home.”
Dad had come over from Jamaica on the Windrush in 1948 and married a white woman from Birmingham called Rene, mother of his two boys.
Harry Snr played with a group, The Southlanders, whose main claim to fame ( for those with long memories) was a novelty record, “I am a mole and I live in a hole”.
Tragically he developed a brain tumour and died when Gary was six.
“I have a very hazy memory of him. The last time I saw him, he was about to have an operation.
“They’d shaved his head and drawn on a mauve graph.
“I remember thinking that was very funny, obviously not understanding the gravity of the situation.
“I didn’t go to the funeral; kids didn’t in those days.
“My brother and I went to my godparents for the day. I can remember being outside playing on the estate when a little girl came up to me and said: ‘Your dad’s dead.’ And that was how I found out.” There was a small item in the local paper with the headline: “Southlander dies aged 42”.
About 40 years later, Gary was appearing on Songs Of Praise in celebration of the people who came over on the Windrush.
“At one point they produced a copy of the captain’s log. I found my dad’s name and it turned out he’d been 40 when he’d come over to the UK.
“He’d then knocked 10 years off his age. So he was 52 when he died.”
IT WAS ONLY when Gary became a father himself that he realised how tough his mother’s life must have been. “Raising two black boys single-handedly in the middle of a white community in Lambeth must have been doubly hard. “She had a heart condition and, sadly, didn’t live long enough to see any of my success.”
Gary has been married three times. He has two daughters, Katie, 37, an architect, and Georgia, 33, a personal trainer, from his first wife, Carol.
He then married Joanne Murdock, an actress, but unfortunately it didn’t end well. “I haven’t seen Jo or spoken to her from the day we split up.”
In a 2001 production of Pirates Of Penzance, at the Regent’s Park Open
Air Theatre, he met actress Sara Hill.
“But we didn’t get together for a good two years. Then she came to see me in Chitty and that was it. We married eight years ago.”
Third time lucky, then? A contented chuckle. “Oh yes, this one’s a keeper.”
So, happy at home and work that shows no sign of drying up.
In 2018, Gary was made an MBE. He said: “It was a wonderful thing, like being given a gold star for doing something you love doing.
“Mum and Dad would have been so proud. They were there in spirit, though – I know they were.”
Sadly my mum didn’t live long enough to see any of my success
Anything Goes opens on July 23: anythinggoesmusical.co.uk