Blood Brothers’ Marti Pellow on Jumping from Pop Stardom to West End Musicals

Pop stars and singers have been crossing over into theater more and more these days, from Shayne Ward (Rock of Ages) and Duncan James (Legally Blonde) in London to Harry Connick Jr (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) on Broadway. But Scottish solo artist and Wet Wet Wet frontman Marti Pellow has taken to the stage in a big way of late, appearing on both sides of the Atlantic (and also Japan) in Chicago, touring the UK with The Witches of Eastwick and Jekyll and Hyde and currently appearing as the Narrator in the ever-popular Blood Brothers at the Phoenix Theatre. Broadway.com caught up with the amiable 46-year-old during a day off from the show to find out about shifting careers and to talk class, fate, and other themes raised by Willy Russell’s musical mainstay.

You’ve done quite a few musicals by this point; what appealed to you about stepping into Blood Brothers?
My first port of call is always, what is the music like? With Blood Brothers, it’s more a play with some music in it and it’s the meter of Willy Russell’s writing that appealed to me. As the Narrator, I love the intensity of being able to hold the stage when you’re not necessarily saying anything; the silences speak volumes about him, and the way he invades the spatial awareness. It’s as if he’s saying: “Are you clocking this? Are you seeing what’s happening?”

The show seems to speak particularly to British audiences with its tragic tale of a working-class single mother, Mrs. Johnstone, forced to surrender one of her newborn twins to a moneyed woman for whom she cleans house.
The piece is as relevant today as it was when it first came out [in 1983]. There’s a great arc to the show that starts with the introduction of the two kids, Eddie and Mickey, and the journey they take. At first, I suppose, when you watch adults playing seven-year-olds, you think, “How can they pull this off?” But within five minutes, that feeling dissipates. You offer yourself up to the piece, and it makes you laugh.

And cry, too! Each time I’ve seen it, the audience is wracked with sobs and on their feet at the end.
That’s because Willy Russell writes so wonderfully for women: The concept of a mother having to give a child away is heart-rending. You can tell that as a child Willy Russell was probably at the table when his mother was talking to her friends. The story tugs at your heart strings, and the imagery feels exactly right.

Blood Brothers certainly makes much of the British class system, even though we’re increasingly told that these are classless times.
[The idea of a class system] certainly isn’t part if my world, and I don’t subscribe to it myself, but I think it does go on. This is a show about people who either have or have not, and we know that much is still true. I suppose there are some people who might perceive Blood Brothers as dated, but what strikes me is that you can learn from the past as a way of looking forward to the future.

Had you always thought you would end up doing musicals?
Absolutely not! The first time I came across musical theater was when Pete Townshend came to me and asked if I would be interested in Tommy. It was the early 1990s and that never really panned out: I don’t think I was ready for the discipline, and six months is a big commitment. Later, I was doing a show at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust and Pete and Roger Daltrey and Ruthie Henshall [an original London star of Chicago] came and sang as my guests. A couple of producers from Chicago looked at the two of us and must have thought, “Maybe Marti would be good for musical theater,” and I thought, “I’ll be damned!” [Laughs.]

Except that your Broadway debut as the lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago was delayed more than a year because of the 2003 musicians’ strike.
I didn’t realize they were going to be that scared of my performance: “Marti’s coming to Broadway! That’s right, everybody out!” [Laughs] There I was in New York on what was to be my opening night standing on the picket line because I believe it’s important to keep music live. By the time the dispute was resolved, I had to go and do another project, but we eventually got there 18 months later.

You’ve done quite a musical theater sweep, from the Chicago team of Kander and Ebb through to Frank Wildhorn, who wrote Jekyll and Hyde, and now Willy Russell.
And each one is so different. The Kander and Ebb [Chicago] score really spoke to me, and the whole burlesque aspect to the show and then the darkness of the Fosse choreography—plus I got one of the best entrances I’ve ever had in my entire career, with all those scantily clad women and the feathers [laughs]. I’d been familiar with Frank’s work through Whitney Houston, so when Jekyll and Hyde came up, I thought, “I fancy doing that, count me in,” and I went over to New York and hung out with Frank to get a feel for the soundscape of what he writes. The good thing about Frank is that he shoots from the heart, which matches my strengths as a singer; he very much cuts his cloth to suit whoever is in the role of Jekyll.

He tends to do better with audiences than critics, as you know.
I do know; I got to see [the short-lived] Wonderland, which had a great cast of people at the top of their game. But those are the breaks of musical theater; you never can tell what’s going to happen. I do think Frank’s a great writer.

Do you ever cast a look around the West End and think, “I’d like to have a go at Rock of Ages or Wicked or Legally Blonde?”
Not those; they don’t appeal to me. I’d love to do something like Macheath in Threepenny Opera. I love those dark characters. I saw Alan Cumming do it in New York with a Scottish brogue and it pinged. I saw Antonio Banderas do Nine, and I thought, “Oh my god!” Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz: amazing!

Would you be interested in a jukebox show covering the music of your pop group Wet Wet Wet?
Anyone with a back catalogue as prolific as ours does get approached, and I have been asked whether that’s something I’d be interested in. But I’m more drawn to shows about today or, most importantly, about tomorrow. People can embrace nostalgia, but for me it’s about moving forward. I’ve just recently finished an album of Celtic music set to the poetry of Robert Burns so I feel, if anything, as if I’d rather just write a new show.

Finally, how did you come up with your stage name, which is very distinctive? [Pellow was born Mark McLaughlin.]
Pellow is my mum’s maiden name, and Marti is just a show-biz name because that’s what I’m in. So I thought, I’ll run with that!