West End performer Scarlett Strallen has stepped into the title role of Mary Poppins for eight weeks, as Verity Hunt-Ballard takes a well-earned break. Neil Litchfield caught up with Scarlett in her dressing room at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney early in her stint in the show.

Scarlett has now taken over the title role of Mary Poppins four times, twice in the West End, on Broadway and now in Sydney.

How does stepping into a role compare with creating it from day one?

“It’s always amazing to originate a part; to have an eight-week rehearsal stint where you just really explore. Originally when I took over (in London) the creatives gave me that freedom. I was very different to Laura Michelle (the original London Mary). I also danced quite a lot, so they created lots of new steps for me, so it felt like my own.

“Every time I’ve been very lucky that the creative team, or the resident team which put me in, have given me enormous amounts of freedom, certainly in terms of the characterization and my take on who Mary is and how she behaves. It’s never felt like I was filling anyone else’s shoes.”

How different was stepping into the Australian production?

“The backstage plot for Mary is about as busy as the onstage plot – there’s hat changes, there’s brolly, there’s costume changes, there’s putting harnesses on and taking them off, and this set is very different. In New York and London we had a house – it was real, there were actual rooms. This is more storybook, with the Doll’s house. I think it’s just exquisite. But there’s less stairs, which is great for me, but parts are smaller, and you have more running on. ”

Coming into the show here, how much rehearsal time did you get before stepping in?

“This was absolutely the shortest time – I think I had about a week and a half – with jet lag as well. But because I originally come from a dancer’s background, my brain is very quick.  If I’m meant to be on a different side of a stage that doesn’t throw me, or if the step is on a different leg I can do it quite quickly, so I think they were quite shocked as to how quick I was. But my job is to be here, and to be on stage, and filling on for Verity.”

Is there something about the Australian production that’s been particularly challenging?

“I’d never done the new number, Playing the Game, until now – and you have the harness on for that. So just having the harness of for 10 minutes longer took a couple of shows to get used to – and singing as well; it’s kind of like squeezing the air out. That’s been the thing really. And to understand what Mary’s doing in that number, because it makes her magic very apparent. It wasn’t before, whereas she makes these toys come to life and dance.”

What are some of those new things you’ve found?

“I’m definitely more confident about her each time I come back. She’s so much fun, because she has this sternness and she can be very stern and tart with the children – witty, but then she has this rebelliousness, and this childlike quality, and magic, as well, underneath it – but she’s quite an ordinary down-to-earth woman. So I feel like I can experiment with that. And it’s who you’re with in the cast and how they play. Phillip Quast is amazing to me because he’s been doing it so long and he’s so fresh. He invests so much, and he and Pippa work brilliantly together as Mr. and Mrs. Banks. They’re very moving.”

And flying? Did you do any special training?

“No, absolutely not. It’s just a fearlessness that you have to have. Actually I’m not very good on fairground rides or going up high and big drops, or anything like that but for some reason it’s much easier in the moment in the actual show, because the lights are so bright. I can see everyone’s faces every time I go up, but I don’t look down. When you’re rehearsing the lights aren’t on, so you can absolutely see how high you are, and my stomach kind of turns a little bit, but no, it’s probably the easiest part of the show for me, because the rest is everything – the singing, the dancing, the magic, pulling hat stands out of bags properly and not breaking them. Just standing in a harness and being flown up is easy-peasy.”

And how does it feel to fly? For audiences it’s certainly magic.

“It’s pretty magical for me, getting to be that close to people’s reactions, and it really does cross such an enormous age range. You can have the grandmas at 80 weeping, and the little kids screaming and waving. It just crosses such a broad spectrum, and that’s quite cool - to get to see their reactions.”

Is the flying different here?

“It’s very different here – it’s much higher, and I think it’s deeper as well.”

Scarlett Strallen comes from a musical theatre family. Both her parents were in the West End production of Cats when she was a child, and Bonnie Langford is her aunt.

What was growing up in such a theatrical family like?

“It was kind of wonderful really, because my parents got paid to go and dress up. It wasn’t like work. But saying that, my parents were both in Cats at the same time, so I remember my sister and I were a bit like Michael and Jane Banks. We had about ten different nannies, until our Mary Poppins came, this woman called Linda, who was just like an angel.

“We were quite naughty. I don’t think we liked the fact that they drove off to work, but I did get to spend a lot of time in the theatre growing up. One of my earliest memories is Cats.

“Later, every Saturday afternoon I’d go with my dad, who was the Dance Captain in Sunset Boulevard, and I’d sit in the lighting box and do my homework while the show was going on. It was absolutely a part of my upbringing.

“My grandmother ran a dance school – she still does. She’s 82 years old, and she still has three or four hundred kids every Monday and Thursday.  Then my aunt was quite famous, and I really looked up to her because she was an absolute triple threat.

“My sister and I were completely obsessed with the MGM musicals, so we’d watch them relentlessly. We woke up in the morning, and it wasn’t cartoons, we just stuck on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or something. So that’s kind of all I’ve known. My three younger sisters are all actresses too.”

Do you have any particular memories of the time that your parents were dong Cats?

“I remember my mother’s first night. She was the white cat. There’s a moment when she’s alone and in the spotlight – and I must have been only about four, but I remember it so vividly. I remember her one hand just slightly shaking, and I remember thinking, ‘Keep going mummy, keep going.’

“Now she’s like a nervous wreck whenever she comes to see us in something. She knows, and that’s what is kind of wonderful about the family. We all know what it’s like, what it takes, and the ups and downs of it. “

Was your home life theatrical as well?

“It’s very hard to compare it with anything else, because that’s all I knew. I think because we used to rehearse so much – my grandmother’s school would have us rehearsing concerts and shows - that when we got home we were really exhausted and doing homework really frantically.”

So that’s where you got your first training?

“My mother would teach when she wasn’t in shows, so I massively modeled myself on how my mother dances. She’s so expressive and when she gave up performing I remember it almost feeling like a death of sorts – the fact that she wasn’t going in. Every night she’d get a bit jittery around the half time, because being a dancer and a performer is just so much of who you are, and your spirit.”

Was there ever any doubt that you would be anything but a performer?

“I don’t think so. I was eight years old when my father was in Aspects of Love, and, again, I used to go in on a matinee day, and they’d let me sit in the dressing room and do my homework. I begged him to let me audition for the young Jenny part, and he went, ‘Are you sure?’

“So it was never you must do this, you must follow, it was just natural. And you know, watching my parents go off and play dress up to earn a living, I couldn’t really imagine doing anything else. I never really had the same passion for anything else.”

So Scarlett began her stage career at the age of eight in Aspects of Love, followed by Annie Get Your Gun with Kim Criswell.

“From there I wanted to go to a theatrical school, where you do your studies in the morning and then you dance all afternoon. Then at 16 I got into the very first cast of Mamma Mia, and that was 11 years ago.

“I worked my way up, understudying for many years, until I got a role at Regent’s Park. They used to do a Rep season, where they did two Shakespeares and a musical. In the Shakespeare I was like a spear-carrier, and understudied Imogen and Olivia, then in the in the musical I was the leading lady.

“From there the casting director for Mary Poppins came to see me. They weren’t going to come and see me, because I’d done Witches of Eastwick with Cameron (Mackintosh), and his memory of me was as a young, 17-year-old bubbly dancer girl, and he didn’t ever imagine that I could have played Mary. From there it was all luck really – luck and a bit of hard work along the way.

Were your instincts then that you could do it?

“I’m probably the least confident person you’ll meet, in one sense. I certainly don’t recognize the 23-year-old girl who had the guts to play Mary Poppins, and step into the shoes of Laura Michelle, who was so magnificent in it and won the Olivier Award, but I’m glad I did.”

What do you love most about the character of Mary Poppins?

“There’s so many things. I love her mission in the story. Of course she’s a massive part, but she kind of just guides the family to get back on track, and you don’t really know how she’s going to make it work until the end, with Anything Can Happen, and then she actually discovers that the children are teaching the parents as well. I think it’s that which really moves me.

“And also the level of detachment which she has to acquire. The relationship with Bert, especially, is poignant. When I was first rehearsing it, Richard Eyre (the Director) described the final scene – the goodbye scene between Mary and Bert – as a Brief Encounter moment. It’s this great love story that she can’t have because she has a higher purpose. She’s there to fulfill a role, she does it and then she flies off. It’s incredibly sad and moving, because if she was a human she would run off into the sunset with him. So I like that too.”

When Scarlett returns to England, she will play the Debbie Reynolds role in a new West End production of Singin’ in the Rain, in which she recently starred at the Chichester Festival Theatre. It’s a transfer that came out of the blue.

“While things do sometimes transfer, with our particular show there was no preconceived thought of that. Some shows nowadays back home have a real view in mind of a transfer, but this was just a fun, jolly summer gig. But the audience came and went absolutely ballistic for it. I don’t know if it was the economically bleak time we’re having in England, and weatherwise it was a bit grim this summer, but they just came and went mad for it. Then suddenly producers were coming to see it, and now we’re going into the Palace Theatre. I still can’t quite get over it.”

So you’ve gone full circle to from those MGM musicals of your childhood, and you’re playing the Debbie Reynolds role. How was that?

“I suppose it’s how you look at it. And it’s the same with this, because I was obsessed with Mary Poppins the film, and completely obsessed with Julie Andrews. She’s a huge idol, of mine. Of course they’re enormous shoes to fill, and they’re so well loved; so iconic. So many people know these characters, so you just have to put that to one side and make them your own, but always have their spirit in mind, because it was their spirit that made people fall in love with them in the first place.

“So we certainly play homage, in our own little way, to things in the film. For instance, we don’t set the Good Morning scene in the living room, where they use and jump over sofas. We set it in a park, and we use park benches, which is very similar to how they end it in the film, but slightly our own take.”

The West End transfer of Singin’ in the Rain represents another full circle journey for Scarlett.

“The choreographer of Singin’ in the Rain went in to have a look at the theatre, because they’re going to do quite a lot of building out, so the audience gets splashed, like they did in Chichester. One of the Stage Door guys, who’s a very old chap, remembers that my mother used to smuggle me into the theatre under her coat when she was doing Song and Dance at the Palace. And he said this to the choreographer – ‘We remember Scarlie, but as a three month old baby’ – so it is a little bit born in the trunk.”

Scarlett Strallen plays the title role in Mary Poppins at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre from October 5 to November 27, 2011.

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Our earlier Mary Poppins articles and videos

Scarlett Strallen Flies In As Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins for Brisbane 

Mary Poppins in Sydney

Mary Poppins Solves Philip Quast’s Mid-life Crisis

Mary Poppins - A View From the Ensemble

Practically Perfect in Every Way

Sydney Rehearsal Preview Video.

Mary Poppins Composers Sing