'Curly Watts'

March 2013

I’VE been in the West End with We Will Rock You since 2010 but I’ll be joining the arena tour when it comes to the UK, starting in Nottingham.
Then I go back to the West End and I’ll be there until October.
The show will be pretty much the same as in the West End, except bigger. Queen were an arena band and you can’t get any bigger than Freddie. He was a larger than life character.
We have a massive set and it’s a great story, so this show really lends itself to an arena.
I’m looking forward to doing it. The northern audiences know how to have a good time. And I’ve always found the Nottingham audiences a joy. I did two shows at the Theatre Royal there: No Sex Please We’re British back in 1984 and I did panto about 2004 with (Nottingham’s Coronation Street star) Chris Gascoyne.
I loved it. It’s a lovely place. I was based in The Park and very nice it was too.
It was just working so I didn’t really go out anywhere or see the city. I went to see (Manchester) City at Forest a couple of times. The first time it was a draw. The second time City won. I remember that because when you go to City games it’s imprinted on your memory for one reason or another.
I was originally the bass player with The Smiths but drama and acting has always been my particular thing. It was fine being involved with Johnny (Marr) and that lot but really I wanted to be an actor.
I was playing bass, then Andy (Rourke) turned up and I swapped to rhythm guitar, then something else happened and I went ‘oh I don’t want to do this any more’. Which you do when you’re 14. So I went off and became an actor.
This was way before Morrissey’s time. We were called The Paris Valentinos. Yes, the name was Johnny Marr’s idea.
I’ve always had a great love of music. Music has always been a sort of second fiddle, if you’ll excuse the pun.
I’ve played many places across the world, I’ve got a Gold album, I was signed by Simon Cowell... and all the rest of it. So to be able to put together my love of music with my love of acting has been the perfect marriage. I couldn’t be happier.
This is my fourth musical and it’s good fun. I did this show in Dublin at the O2. And when you get to 50 years of age and you’re rocking out with Brian May playing guitar less than ten feet from you and there are women screaming in the audience – and it’s legal – what’s not to like?
Brian May is a lovely, lovely guy. He’s the most unlikely rock star. You can’t imagine him chucking a telly out of a hotel window.
I never saw Queen. I wasn’t a fan. Since I’ve been in the show I’ve come to appreciate how prolific they were and the quality of the music. I was more into Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher and stuff like that.
So, I’m in this show until October when my contract is up. I could carry on but you never know. That’s the beauty of being an actor; you never know what’s around the corner.
I’ve got a great relationship with Coronation Street and I always have. And I’m very happy that people still know me as Curly Watts because that’s a body of work I’m very proud of. It was 20 years and that it’s remembered so positively is a bonus.
It’s no secret that I’d like to go back and do some more.

We Will Rock You runs at the Capital FM Arena from March 27-30. Tickets are £19.50-£42.50 from the box office, call 0843 373 3000 or go to www.capitalfmarena.com. For more about the show visit www.wewillrockyou.co.uk.

The Ladykillers

October 2012

IT is the story of the eccentric little old lady who lives alone with her parrot in a lopsided boarding house in King’s Cross. Enter new tenant Professor Marcus and his four friends, posing as a group of amateur musicians. In reality they are a criminal gang, planning a security van heist.

The 1955 Ealing comedy is considered a classic, so bringing it to the stage was a given, surely?

“When a theatrical agent called me about adapting it I was nervous,” admits producer Edward Snape.

“That it is recognised is terrific because people are automatically interested in seeing it but there is a risk of the expectations just being too high.

“What we’ve done is pay homage to the film but not simply produced a replica. Otherwise people may as well watch the film at home.”

He adds: “You have to come up with something special for the theatre.”

“The Ladykillers wasn’t simply a case of, let’s get a famous film, take the script and out it on the stage,” says director Sean Foley.

“We’ve developed a proper stage show from the roots of the film.”

The adaptation was written by Graham Linehan, best known for Father Ted and The I.T. Crowd.

“It’s very theatrical,” says Foley.

“There is a lot of physical comedy.”

We’re speaking at the Gielgud Theatre in London’s West End where TheLadykillers opened earlier this year.

The London cast included Peter Capaldi as Professor Marcus, Ben Miller as Louis and James Fleet as Major Courtney.

As well as breaking box office records at the Gielgud, it picked up five nominations for the 2012 Laurence Olivier Awards.

“There have been productions in the past but this is the first time The Ladykillershas been in the West End,” says Snape.

“I believe there was a Nottingham Playhouse production some years ago. But I didn’t see it. It’s always better to go in to a new production with a completely blank canvas anyway.”

It was actually Giles Croft, Nottingham Playhouse’s incoming director in 1999, who put the play on tour that year.

“There have been other adaptations but none on this scale,” says Kindred Rose, the son of William Rose, who wrote the original screenplay for the Ealing film.

“Those I’ve seen have been straight copies of the film. They were done quite well but they took the dialogue directly from the film and didn’t change it much at all.”

His father, an American who settled in Britain after the Second World War, came up with the story in a dream.

“I think he would have admired it,” says the 35-year-old, whose father died when he was 14.

“Thirty per cent of the film takes place away from the house so including the car chase in the play has been done really brilliantly.”

A car chase? On stage? I won’t give it away but it’s one of the production’s bigger laughs.

Says Foley: “It’s a good night out that everyone can come and see. There’s no swearing. I think the worst thing that anyone says is ‘blooming ’eck’.

“And there are some great production values and special effects.”

Foley is fresh from directing Kenneth Branagh and Rob Brydon in the French farce The Painkiller. He’s won awards in the West End for Play What I Wrote, Do You Come Here Often? and What The Butler Saw.

“We’ve done a lot of repeat business, a lot of word-of-mouth business and the response from critics has been very good as well,” he says.

The Express, Independent and Times all awarded it five stars.

Foley adds: “I always do comedy because I like it and I think it’s far more profound than tragedy.”

Shaun Williamson – you know, Barry from EastEnders – is watching as he is one of the stars of the touring production that comes to the Theatre Royal next week.

He’ll be joined by Clive Mantle (Robin Of Sherwood, Casualty, Holby City, Game Of Thrones), Michelle Dotrice (Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em) and Paul Bown (Holby City, My Family), plus Chris McCalphy and William Troughton.

Williamson plays One-Round.

“He’s a boxer who claims he had potential but thought he’d make more money by taking a dive,” he says.

“He’s at the heart of their downfall because he’s a teddy bear really. He is the one who says that the old lady is not going to be harmed. Then they all turn on each other.”

Williamson’s stage roles are usually in musicals.

“Apart from Porridge ,this is the first straight play I’ve done in a quite a while.”

He resisted watching the original film, which starred Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom, to prepare for the role. He also sidestepped the Coen Brothers’ 2004 remake with Tom Hanks.

“I wanted to go in fresh,” says Williamson, who played himself in two series of the Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant comedy, Extras.

“I’ve never played Nottingham,” he says.

“In fact, I’ve only been there once before and that was for a recording of The Price Is Right with Leslie Crowther. My local pub in Worthing had a trip up there in 1987.”

The adds with a laugh: “That’s a bit sad, isn’t it?”

The Ladykillers runs at the Theatre Royal from Monday, October 29, to Saturday, November 3. Performances at 7.30pm, with matinees on Wednesday at 2pm and Saturday at 2.30pm. Tickets are £12 to £29.50 from the box office, call 0115 989 5555 or go to www.trch.co.uk.

Natasha Wood: Rolling With Laughter

The name Natasha Wood may not be a familiar one but her story is both inspiring and bizarre. SIMON WILSON spoke to the 38-year-old about her journey from selling knickers on Bulwell market to Clint Eastwood in Hollywood...



WHAT do you say when you meet a Hollywood legend?
There were no nerves when self-confessed "gobby girl" Natasha Wood found herself in Los Angeles in the company of Clint Eastwood.
"I had a huge laugh with him," she says.
"Towards the end of the conversation I said to him 'so what is it like to be a legend?' And he said 'well, you know, I don't really think about it.' And I said 'Naaahhh, me either. People say I'm an inspiration -- whatever!"
So how did she get there? How did a woman who grew up in Kinoulton and sold underwear on market stalls in Bulwell and Beeston, end up sharing air space with Dirty Harry?
And not only him but Kate Winslet, John Travolta, Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts and Will Smith.
She tells all in her one-woman show Rolling With Laughter at Nottingham Playhouse tomorrow.
Not that meeting celebrities was her goal. That came last year when she performed the show in the West End.
And it's a journey that found her befriending prostitutes in Radford, living in an old people's home, working for the BBC as a TV producer in London and New York, then studying film in Los Angeles.
And here's the punchline: she did it all from a wheelchair.
Natasha was born with a rare genetic condition, spinal muscular atrophy. She doesn't even have the strength in her arms to raise a glass in order to toast her own success.
But Rolling With Laughter isn't about her disability.
"I'm very poor with all the right-on disability s***," says Natasha, 38, who now lives in The Park.
"My idea is that you shouldn't really notice I'm in a wheelchair. You see it but we don't have to talk about it.
"The show is about a little girl's dream to be an actor and who crazily achieves that dream on the West End stage.
"That's how the show opens. Then I go back to the start, to being a kid and selling knickers and bras on my mum's market stall in Bulwell and Beeston."
Not only was getting to the West End a long and difficult journey, it was costly as well. The show – her dream, remember – was self-financed. She remortaged to the tune of £20,000 in order to hire out Her Majesty's Theatre.
Natasha couldn't even enjoy the profits – it was a fund-raiser for spinal muscular atrophy charity, The Jennifer Trust. As is tomorrow's performance.
"This is all in the show," she says.
"There's a bank manager, a prostitute, a Bulwell market customer, my mum and dad, boyfriends, husband, a social worker, an old biddy, my dog... and every single one of them is real.
"People afterwards always say 'your mum didn't really go to Antigua and bring back a baby did she?'
"Yes she did."
What!?
"She's now 22 and lives in Basford."
Tammy was 11 months old when she was given to Natasha's mum on a beach in Antigua by a mother who couldn't cope.
She was legally adopted at the age of ten.
"It demonstrates my mother's incredible drive. That's where I get it from."
Mum is a former beauty queen whose bra size also gets a mention in Rolling With Laughter.
"She's got this double D cup and double D personality. A real Nottingham woman."
The humour comes from her dad, who she describes as "the Elvis lookalike".
"He told me at the age of four that he'd bought me in a store very cheap on account I was broken. 'Why didn't you fix me?' 'We tried that.' 'Why didn't you take me back and get your money back?' 'Your mother lost the receipt'.
"It was with that kind of humour that they raised me and my two brothers, one of whom had the same disability as me."
That was Julian, whose death in 2004 is one of the more poignant moments in the show.
"It is a rollercoaster. You do go up and down during the show.
"And I do relive my brother dying every time I do the play. I can picture every moment in the hospital. Of course it's very emotional for the whole family.
"But the idea of a good play is that you do become attached and love the characters as much as me and that when we lose them you feel it too."
The family will be there tomorrow to see the show.
"And they all bought tickets," she insists.
As have another 700-plus people – it's a few tickets off a sell-out.
Mum and dad will need to avert their eyes – or plug their ears – for one vocally graphic moment.
"There's a sex scene. In a car. In a field behind a church. And there's a Meg Ryan orgasm kind of moment."
The boyfriend would become her husband but the pair split around the time Natasha's brother died, two significant losses that prompted her to move to New York where. with the BBC, she produced the US version of What Not To Wear.
It's through her work with the BBC that she became a member of Bafta. So not only does she vote for in the awards Natasha also gets invited to VIP film screenings with the stars.
A planned year off to train as an actor in Los Angeles took over her life as she began to write Rolling With Laughter, leading to a six-week run at a theatre in Los Angeles. A spot on Fox News helped shift a few tickets.
She then took the show to the Edinburgh Festival and finally the West End– the dream realised.
Now she has a new one – Rolling With Laughter: The Movie.
In the audience at the London show was a woman from the UK Film Council who encouraged Natasha to apply for a grant to turn the play into a film.
"I've finished the first draft of the screenplay and I'm working through the second. The plan is to approach production companies in the summer."
She adds: "I don't even know if it will even be made in my time."
If it does, who would she like to see playing her on the big screen?
"(Laughs) A recent Oscar-winning actress," she says, cryptically. No prizes she's referring to Kate Winslet.
"My brother wants Brad Pitt to play him."
She adds with a laugh: "I'd like to hear his Nottingham accent."