Picture: Conor Weiss
Award-winning international theatre and singing star LORNA DALLAS is bringing her latest show Snapshots to London’s Crazy Coqs for two nights this month.
Devised by the star’s long-time collaborators director Barry Kleinbort and musical director Christopher Denny who will also accompany Dallas on piano, the programme will feature a mix of standards and rarities by composers as diverse as Marvin Hamlisch, Kander and Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, Maury Yeston, Jerry Herman and Ivor Novello.
Interspersing songs with personal stories from Dallas’ life and career, Snapshots will play the popular cabaret venue on 21 and 23 July. The 23 July performance will include a ‘Comparing Notes’ post-show interview with Edward Seckerson. Following her set and after a short interval, Dallas will be joined on stage by the writer and broadcaster in conversation.
Born in Carrier Mills, Illinois, the singer’s first taste of the spotlight came at 17 when she won Talentsville USA, a nationwide talent contest sponsored by Coca-Cola. Dallas made her West End debut as Magnolia starring alongside Cleo Laine in Show Boat at the Adelphi Theatre in 1971.
Dallas fell in love with London life and stayed in the UK to appear in various major musicals including Side By Side By Sondheim, The King and I and a famous production of Hello, Dolly! with Danny La Rue.
In concert, the singer has performed at prestigious venues including the Barbican, Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall and Jermyn Street Theatre in London and at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Here Lorna Dallas answers questions from MTR contributor Jeremy Chapman…
Tell us about your surname Dallas. Is it real or is it a stage name and if the latter why did you choose a Texan city rather than one from Illinois, the state you come from?
Dallas really is my true name… the only part I dropped from my given name is my middle name of Jane. I am named after my father Loren, but my name is spelled Lorna, like in the Lorna Doone character in the Blackmore novels and even a cookie we have in the US.
A number I used to sing in one of the acts that Ronnie Cass wrote for me years ago, based on ‘Big D’ from The Most Happy Fella, went like this: “I’m from Illinois, I confess, and this fact sometimes gets me in a mess… ’cuz my name’s Dallas, my oh yes, I said Big D little A double L A S… and that spells Dallas… the name is Lorna Dallas and it gives me pleasure to confess… the name is Dallas, my oh yes, I said Big D… little A double L A… Big D… little A double L A S!”
I guess I have to be grateful to my parents for giving me a great stage name that I didn’t have to change. And I was doubly happy to be called Mrs Dallas-Brown too! I mean, I was married to such a beautiful, charming, witty and adorable man, Mr Garry Brown. How lucky can you get? I pulled back from so many musical shows to be with him. We had a wonderful life together.
Picture: Darren Bell
What surprises do you have for us in your new show Snapshots? You usually find a couple of forgotten or less familiar gems to beguile your audience with from your extensive repertoire. And you are one of the very few to promote the work of Ivor Novello these days. Does he figure on your songlist this month?
Well, I don’t want to give away too many surprises but Snapshots, I think, is one of my wittiest shows yet, and also one of the most diverse. My director of many years, Barry Kleinbort, knows I love challenges and boy, does he throw ’em at me! He is also responsible for many of the special lyrics in the show. I also love to explore the many colours of my voice, as I don’t want to me labelled only “soprano” – that label scares people. I think of myself as the “vessel of the song” and the lyrics have to be treated with truthfulness. I firmly believe that the words come first and to make them believable, sometimes you need to lower the key; just singing a high note isn’t always the right thing to do. You are just showing off. Also, I think of myself as an actress first – as I said, the words come first – and then the voice for me. Perhaps a better tag for me would be ‘singing actress’?
I often tell young singers to look at Jerry Herman’s songs.His writing is so honest, simple and direct, and very telling. You don’t need to embellish and do tricks with his songs, he has given you the gift of a great song to sing. Just sing it as it’s written!
And yes, I am a Novello freak and I will always sing one of his songs in my shows, perhaps with a new twist to it but with great passion and integrity. And here’s where the soprano comes in, because I often say: “He wrote beautiful soaring melodies, absolutely perfect for sopranos. Lucky me!” And I also think it would have been truly magical if he had been blessed to have had Oscar Hammerstein as his lyricist. Can you imagine how totally brilliant those songs would have been with those two giants in collaboration? Astonishing!
And I still get people who profess their love for the album I did of Novello and Kern, The Girl I Knew. That CD won awards and did a lot to bring Ivor’s music to so many singers who didn’t know him and after hearing the CD, they started searching through his catalogue. I am very proud of that. Also, I have sung his music on some very special occasions, including the Royal Variety Show when I sang ‘My Dearest Dear’, which I am told was one of the Queen Mum’s favourite songs.
Snapshots will also have songs from the works of Schmidt and Jones, Cole Porter, Jerry Herman, Marvin Hamlisch and the Bergmans, David Heneker, Maury Yeston, Kander and Ebb, and more. And yes, I will be premiering a song from a new musical which has not be sung in public on either shore yet. London gets it first!
You were opera-trained but quite early on decided on a career in musical theatre and soon you were over here for a long run in Show Boat. You loved London so much you decided to stay. Half a century later we are very glad you did… but what persuaded you to change direction?
I had the most wonderful mentors and teachers who carefully nurtured me from an early age. At Indiana University, one of the most well-known music schools in the US, I had Virginia MacWatters, a vivacious and truly astonishing woman, barely five foot tall, a redhead and always wore impossibly high heels. She had been one of the foremost coloraturas in the US and indeed sang not only at the Met in New York but at Covent Garden Opera House too. From the age of barely 17, I was her pupil, her protegee, and she guided me wisely, pushing me with the right roles in opera and to the Met National Company for a year.
But I always leaned towards the musicals and the writings of Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser, etc. When I was cast as Magnolia in Show Boat with Cleo Laine, it was the right music for me sing and I loved the challenge of singing those divine melodies every night. I had the strong ethic that every night was an opening night; for the audience each night it was “their” opening night. I loved that thrill and with Kern’s music, it was heavenly. And, I learned a helluva lot from Cleo. I credit her with making me look at lyrics and delving into the song with a totally different outlook. It was a masterclass onstage with her every night and I treasure her to this day.
Operas were stuck in one dynamic and critics didn’t care about the drama or the intent, their reviews were based on the sounds they heard. For so many years, it was vocal purity and not dramatic intent. It became superficial and boring to me as an actress so, in short, that is why I veered more into musicals, even though I love singing operatic arias, lieder and art songs too… but give me a Jerry Herman or Gershwin tune any day and I’m in heaven.
With Hello, Dolly! coming back to the West End after a 40-year gap, and opening at the London Palladium just a few days before you do your Snapshots, it must bring back many memories as you had the important role of Irene Molloy the last time we said hello to Dolly. Tell us what it was like acting with the legendary female impersonator Danny La Rue as Dolly for four months at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
I adored Danny La Rue! He had asked for me to play Irene Molloy and I was so happy to do that role. Danny played Dolly so truthfully when we were in Birmingham Rep before we came in to the Prince of Wales, he was Dolly. Perhaps a fact you might not know is that the famous New York producer David Merrick had wanted Danny to be the first male to play Dolly in the US, but Danny was not one to like flying, so that was not possible early on. So Danny threw himself into Dolly with great passion and integrity. He broke your heart with his soliloquy at the end of Act I. When the Prince of Wales Theatre was available earlier than planned, Danny was thrilled but the director, Peter Coe, wasn’t… so he was fired.
When we came into London, Danny and Lionel Jeffries took over redirecting the show. Danny also panicked, as he had always had such incredible followers from his shows at the Palace and the Prince of Wales, so he reverted to playing “Danny” and not Dolly. What a pity! I made the decision and Lionel too that we must keep to the straight and narrow and play our roles truthfully as we had. Unfortunately, the timing was all wrong. We opened in December and it just didn’t work as it had so magically in Birmingham. The critics were not so kind to Danny. He was distraught but God love him, he was such a lovely man and I will always cherish the times with him and his graciousness and thoughtfulness to me and to Garry. He had a heart of gold.
Almost every time I review a cabaret either at Crazy Coqs or The Pheasantry, you’re in the audience, giving your support. You seem to love singers almost as much as you love singing. What tips about the art form would you give a young singer who wanted to build a cabaret act?
Well, I do love to support my friends, and I firmly believe that cabaret is truly an art form. It isn’t something that should be treated without care and attention. In my head, my shows are “one act plays with music”. They are carefully crafted to be journeys through words and music, with my stories that support the song choices whether they are dramatic or comedic. There is a rhyme and a reason for every word spoken and every song sung.
You have to want to open yourself up to expose yourself, break down that fourth wall, let the audience in on who you are and you have to know and believe you are pretty damned interesting for them to know! Working with Barry and Chris over the last 35 years, we have uncovered so many songs that express who I have been at those various times, who I am now and who I will become because of the adventures of life, the losses, the gains, the surprises.
We have uncovered so many songs that express who I have been at those various times, who I am now and who I will become because of the adventures of life, the losses, the gains, the surprises
Young singers should sing age appropriate songs, for a 16 to even a 30 or 40 year old to sing ‘September Song’ is crazy, they haven’t lived! On the other hand, I can’t sing ‘I Enjoy Being a Girl’ now, even though I would like to find a way to put a new spin on it, perhaps very tongue in cheek…
Be truthful with yourself, embrace what you know, who you are, and how you can express that, truthfully and with a sense of humour too. Think of what you want to say, write it down! Learn it! And you will even find that as time goes on, those thoughts change with the knowledge and experience of life, and the songs take on newer meaning, and your song choices change with life’s journey.
That is my advice. Be true to yourself, don’t giggle your way through something. Learn your material, trust it, don’t shortchange the audience. Care for them!
[Bonus Question!] How do British audiences compare with American ones in “getting” you? Are there songs you do that go down better here than in New York and vice versa?
British audiences are pretty hip and savvy now to shows and they get the humour sometimes more than Americans, believe it or not. Obviously, music hall material is better in the UK but I have been pleasantly surprised by Americans loving the British musical material that I put into my shows. I get other singers asking me for suggestions in NY and they loved it when I did ‘Big Best Shoes’ from Valmouth and, of course, they are open to my Novello choices now.
As long as you treat your shows in both the US and UK with integrity and the truthfulness they deserve, then the audiences are pretty well balanced out. And I gotta say, that I long ago fell in love with London, made it my home, so this is where I have “hung my hat” as the song goes.
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