Chris Peluso is playing the role of Sir Percival Glyde in The Woman in White at the Charing Cross Theatre
The first ever revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tony and Olivier Award-nominated musical The Woman in White since its West End premiere in 2004 opens tonight at the Charing Cross Theatre. Susan Elkin caught up with two of the production’s stars…
It is during rehearsals between previews for The Woman in White that I catch up with ASHLEY STILLBURN who plays Walter Hartright and CHRIS PELUSO who is Sir Percival Glyde. We’re in the bar at Charing Cross Theatre accompanied by Peluso’s rather engaging, very patient dog Peety.
“This is my favourite part of the process,” says Stillburn. “Each preview has – shall we say? – a character all of its own. Things happen sometimes spontaneously and then we rehearse them and work on them to see whether we’ll go on using them. Our director Thom Southerland is very relaxed and collaborative.”
Peluso agrees. “It keeps a show fresh if you’re innovative but it’s no good setting out to be ‘different’ for the sake of it. It’s essential that you remain true to your character and the situation he’s in.”
The creative process is continuous, they both stress. Stillburn quotes Joan Littlewood’s maxim: “Once a show is finished it’s dead.”
Ashley Stillburn has been cast as Walter Hartright
These two men have worked together before and are clearly very comfortable in each other’s company. They joke that there’s a dinner party scene in The Woman in White that feels like deja vu. “We’ve done this scene together before,” they chuckle.
Peluso is from Pennsylvania and trained in musical theatre at the University of Michigan. He originally came to London (with Peety) to play Chris in Miss Saigon. “I liked it so much I’ve never left,” he says. Since then he has toured with Sheridan Smith in Funny Girl and played Gaylord Ravenal in Show Boat, amongst many other things.
Stillburn is a homegrown product from North Yorkshire who trained at the Guildford School of Acting where, he comments approvingly: “Musical theatre and acting students follow the same core programme in the first year so there’s a lot of emphasis on acting.” He has The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables and Sweeney Todd under his belt.
The show they’re now in is a revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show which was stage at London’s Palace Theatre in 2004. “It’s been substantially scaled down and completely re-imagined for this production,” explains Stillburn. “The cast and band are smaller and the orchestrations are simpler. The set works without projections and a revolve too.”
Peluso continues: “That is partly because we’re in a smaller venue but the down scaling also helps to tell the story more clearly, so there are very good dramatic reasons for doing it this way.”
Lloyd Webber [who wrote the show with lyricist David Zippel and librettist Charlotte Jones] has taken a hands-on interest in the production as it has developed and has often suggested ways of simplifying it further.
Chris Peluso encounters The Woman in White. Picture: Darren Bell
I recall that Wilkie Collins’ long novel tells an extraordinarily complicated story. “Yes is does,” says Stillburn, “but when you create drama from a novel it has to be reinvented freely. For example, some of the characters in The Woman in White have gone and there are far fewer changes of location than in the novel. That helps to focus on the storytelling and Thom is fiercely intelligent in the way that he makes it all work.”
Peluso points out that things have changed so much since the novel – in many ways a fierce protest about the treatment of women – was written. And some of the themes don’t work in a modern context without off-putting didactic explanation.
“My character for example has a shameful secret. In the novel it’s because he’s illegitimate. That obviously won’t resonate with most people in a 2017 audience so the secret has been changed to something a bit darker.”
What is it, I ask both of them, about 19th century novels that makes them such fertile ground for musicals such as Oliver! and Les Misérables?
“I think it’s because they are so descriptive,” Stillburn says. “Those novelists were working in an era without TV, film,
Ashley Stillburn and Anna O’Byrne in The Woman in White. Picture: Darren Bell
recordings, the internet and all the rest of it. They worked with words only and they had free licence so any social comment they make is very clear. And that provides a very strong dramatic platform.”
Peluso suggests that audiences also like shows that spirit them off to another era. “And it works partly because shows like The Woman in White show just how far we’ve travelled. At the time of the novel – although Collins is obviously protesting – it was legal and acceptable for men to lock up their wives and expect them to sign legal papers unquestioningly. The character of Marian Halcombe, played by Carolyn Maitland in our show, is a real prototype feminist. She refuses to sign – assertively and adamantly.”
It’s almost time for two men and a dog (although the latter may have to wait in a dressing room) to return to rehearsals. I can hear singing and work on stage nearby.
I ask them whether they think this show will have a shelf life beyond 10 February when the run ends. They laugh. “Well of course we – and everyone else connected with it – would be delighted if there were some sort of transfer,” they say almost in chorus. “But nothing’s been said yet.”
* The Woman in White continues at the Charing Cross Theatre until 10 February 2018. Tickets are available HERE.
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