Five Questions With: Nancy Allsop

NANCY ALLSOP is playing the lead role of Nicky in Tim Firth’s award-winning joyous and uplifting show This is My Family, making its London premiere (following its Sheffield Theatres and Chichester Festival Theatre runs) at Southwark Playhouse Elephant, running until 12 July 2025.

Nancy’s theatre credits include The Hills of California (Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway and Harold Pinter Theatre), The Fever Syndrome (Hampstead Theatre), God Bless the Child (Royal Court Theatre), Annie (Piccadilly Theatre) and The Sound of Music (international tour); and for television, Young Wallander.

Here Nancy continues Musical Theatre Review’s interview series: Five Questions With…

Nicky is an emotionally rich character at the centre of This is My Family. What was your approach to bringing her to life on stage?

Bringing Nicky to life has been a lot of fun. It’s so great to play someone with so much spirit and optimism. The whole creative team has been amazing in helping me discover her too. Vicky [director Vicky Featherstone], in particular, has been brilliant at giving me the space to discover where Nicky sits truthfully within me. We wanted her to feel driven, gutsy, carrying an emotional life of her own. Nicky feels like the torch into the family, a guiding light, so I’ve really focused on making sure she also leads the audience through the heart and action of the story clearly.

The show blends humour and sadness, how has it been finding the balance between those elements during rehearsals and what is it like collaborating with Vicky Featherstone?

The brilliance of this show is that it lures you into investing in the characters and story with humour and then catches you off guard by hitting you with real emotion. It’s full of characters who are uncomfortable with their own feelings, and they use humour as a coping mechanism. It’s that mix of comedy and vulnerability that makes it so powerful.

Working with Vicky is an absolute privilege — and that’s an understatement! I’ve been lucky enough to work with her before, and there’s something really grounding and freeing about collaborating with someone who knows you well. She’s so open-minded and gives me the space to trust my instincts and explore all the possibilities. She has an amazing way of bringing out the joy in a piece and all the people she works with. The rehearsal room was the most joyous and supportive environment and that was most definitely down to her.

You have straight drama and musical theatre credits on your CV, what do you think it is about Tim Firth’s book and music that makes it work so well as a musical?

I’ve always felt that a good musical’s story should be able to stand on its own as a play — and this absolutely does. The writing and the characters are the backbone of the show, but music allows the audience to emotionally engage even further, giving the characters a way to express the things that can’t be spoken. Tim has described it as a musical play, and I think it’s very indicative of the style it’s written in. Rather than having distinct musical numbers, the speech and songs flow into one another in a beautifully seamless way.

Nancy Allsop with Gay Soper in This is My Family at London’s Southwark Playhouse Elephant. Picture: Mark Senior

You recently starred on Broadway in The Hills of California following its critically acclaimed run in the West End, can you describe what that experience was like and what it meant to you?

The Hills of California was so incredibly formative for me. To be able to go to Broadway with such a poignant play that we are all so deeply connected to, was the stuff of dreams. So much of that play still lives within me and there’s so much I learnt during my time on the show that informs the work I do now. We all formed such special bonds in travelling across the world together, and I will hold the memories I made in that experience with me forever.

Have you got a particular family holiday from the past that stands out as a special memory for you?

If we’re sticking with the themes of the show, my family definitely has a memorable disaster holiday story! I come from a very big family, so there are a lot of people to keep happy. On this particular trip, everything just seemed to go wrong for everyone. My grandad somehow showed up at the airport with the vicar’s passport instead of his own, so we had to leave him behind. Then my nan broke her leg and went missing — she was eventually brought back by the Spanish police after eight hours. And to top it off, my cousin coloured herself in with a blue pen and ended up in A&E with pen poisoning. Ever since, my family has avoided Spain at all costs… though the experience has definitely helped me channel the holiday chaos in Act II!