Michael Ball as Edna Turnblad
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Michael Ball needs no introduction as one of the few bona fide musical theatre marquee names in the U.K., a diverse talent who has expanded from his juve-role origins in
Les Miserables and
The Phantom of the Opera to star above the title in Stephen Sondheim’s
Passion, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
The Woman in White, and, currently, as that agoraphobic laundress, Edna Turnblad, in the hugely successful West End debut of
Hairspray, at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Having taken a few weeks off from the show over Christmas and New Year (he and the family went to the Bahamas to a beach house with no phone and no Internet), Ball is now back in a dress and pumps eight times a week, having extended his six-month run in the production into October. Broadway.com caught up with the actor one Friday evening before showtime, in the midst of a flu season that was laying low other members of the company but which found Ball fighting back sniffles and ready for work. The show, as they say, must go on.
Welcome back to a production that you must be enjoying, since you’ve extended your contract another six months.
I’m loving it; I’ve never enjoyed a production more on every level. The cast, the creative team, the audience reaction, the part that I’m playing—the whole thing has just been about as good an experience as you can get. And I’m saying that with the worst cold you can get. I’m living in germ central. But on every West End show you get colds that go around and around and around.
Yes, a friend of mine saw it the other night and there were three principals off—though, happily, you weren’t one of them.
The most we’ve had off at any one time was nine, and that was a good one [laughs]. We were actually going, ‘OK, who sang what line?’ The only time I’ve known it worse was on Les Mis once when we had 14 people off. On the barricades, you’d be saying a line and nobody would answer and then all of a sudden two people would. What’s important is that the audience doesn’t notice. That’s the main thing.
Leanne Jones & Michael Ball in Hairspray
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And it must be such a particular pleasure that this show is a hit—and at this theater, which has been famously cursed.
[The Shaftesbury] was one of the big question marks over the production, it really was. We’re a superstitious lot in the theatre, and people kept saying to me, `Well, if Mamma Mia! Had opened at the Shaftesbury, then it would have broken the curse, and I went, 'Well, I know, and it’s not very nice backstage.’ That’s been the only drag: the backstage of the Shaftesbury. They’re so used to having flops that by the time everyone’s gone round and made their complaints, whatever show it is is off.
But there’s something wonderful about changing perceptions, whatever they may be.
Absolutely. Even as I was a bit worried about the theatre, another little bit of me was going, 'Everyone in the business is going to be saying this,’ so it becomes a mantra and wouldn’t it be great to be the people who broke that curse and we have and the difference in the atmosphere in the place was palpable—even when no one’s there.
I gather the last real hit at your theatre was the original London production of Hair some 40 years ago.
[Laughs.] You’ve got to have ‘hair’ in the title.
What was your take on Edna and how to make her fresh?
Well, when we started, it had been five years since I saw the show first on Broadway and I didn’t remember it that well; I just remembered having a fantastic time. I went and saw the movie and loved it as a movie but knew that it had nothing to do with the stage show and what I would be doing, and I found John Travolta’s performance very endearing, very sweet. The thing with him was it was essentially about the prosthetics, which really gets in the way of a performance. It’s difficult when everyone around you is natural to act through that, hence me doing the De Niro thing [laughs] of eating myself into the role. Physically, I’m still trying to eat for England.
No fat suit for you, then.
Do I need it? That’s my suit—[he points over to a latex outfit hanging to one side]—and they’ve even got nipples, so you get the full on triple-E effect with a huge ass and it’s pretty heavy.
Michael Ball as Count Fosco
in The Woman in White
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Shades of Count Fosco in The Woman in White?
This is different. That was the worst thing I’ve ever done, in terms of its demands. I was all right in England, but I think there’s something terribly unhealthy about the backstage of the Marriott Marquis [in New York, home to the show’s Broadway incarnation] where there’s no real air. I absolutely think there is, especially because they’re so into their air conditioning and at the Marquis there are no windows because you’re in the middle of a hotel complex. Also, because the matinees are earlier and the evenings are later, on some days I was in at 11 30am and out at 11 30 at night and I’d never get out. Plus, it was Christmas in New York with all the viruses, and I would cook in that outfit; I couldn’t shake it. With this outfit, I can breathe; the chest is open and the arms are open.
All of which surely helps put you in touch with your feminine side.
I totally get that whole female process now of getting ready to go out and the agony of it all. It’s like, ‘I’ve got a nice dress but I’ve got to get shoes and a handbag and the makeup has got to be right and what if it rains and my hair will be frizzy,’ and I’m thinking, 'For Chrissake, put on a suit and go!’ But as a woman, this has so much to do with how people react to you. It’s like, 'I’m in the middle of a process here.’ And also, you get to see people’s reaction to you: everyone comes up to me and feels the outfit, especially the girls—they all want to touch the ass.
Michael Ball in Kismet
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It’s really interesting with the straight blokes, too: you can really freak them out. When I’m in the full glam outfit, I get up and go, 'You’re thinking about it, aren’t you? You’re wondering how many pints it would take before you make your move.’
One trusts that the English National Opera Kismet [a noted disaster last summer, with Ball playing Hajj] was never like this.
That’s why I love this business. You’re in a perfectly dreadful show at ENO and suddenly the whole of next year is taken up with you in drag.