West End Star Gina Beck on What Wicked's Glinda & Phantom's Christine Would Think of Her Role in Show Boat

Gina Beck has taken over leading roles in Wicked (as Glinda in the West End and also the U.S. tour) and The Phantom of the Opera (as Christine), but at long last the performer is opening a London production with the arrival in town of Daniel Evans’s Sheffield Theatre production of the 1927 Broadway landmark Show Boat at the New London Theatre. Beck chatted amiably one recent lunchtime about playing innocent, traveling America, and—in her words—being “set free.”

How do feel playing Magnolia in Show Boat, which is widely regarded as the mother of all musicals?
Can you imagine what it must have been like to see this show when it first opened? They’d have seen the follies and big social numbers and a political story and black and white people on a stage together. But they obviously adored it at the time and it did very well.

How well did you know Show Boat before the Sheffield production late last year?
I didn’t really. I’d never seen any of the films, and I didn’t really know the storyline. All I knew going in was that it was often done by opera companies and can be more about having a big ensemble and big numbers and singing the songs beautifully, whereas what we’re working on is acting the piece through song – which is how it was written to be performed.

What about the score?
“Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” were certainly among the standards that I’d heard growing up but, weirdly, I didn’t even know it came with this great opportunity for a soprano. So when I was given “You Are Love,” I just thought it was the most amazingly romantic song for a soprano to sing.

How does it feel to open a production in the West End after years of takeovers?
I think potentially the only reason I hadn’t done it before is that there aren’t actually any soprano roles that people are writing, and I had kind of exhausted all the big ones in the long-runners. And because I trained solely in acting [at the Central School of Speech and Drama] and never had that desire to be a song-and-dance actress, those parts that also required a dancer—like in Top Hat or Singin’ in the Rain—weren’t on offer to me.

Do you regret not having added dance to your skill set?
I do slightly now. I would love to be able to dance. I look at our Ellie Mae and Frank in Show Boat and they are just unbelievable.

What do you make of Magnolia as a character, given that innocence can be hard to portray onstage?
I just think she has had the most amazing childhood—an upbringing led by her father [Captain Andy] without barriers or boundaries or racial prejudice who has lived in this world of the show hanging around people much older than her. She’s become sort of the mascot of the boat and they all adore her; she’s having a lovely time.

She goes on quite a journey.
She does! I enjoy playing the first act, which is all about love and freedom and dancing with all the black folk in the kitchen, and Magnolia’s sense of innocence comes across in her love of life. The second act is quite a stark contrast: she gets taken away from the boat and everything falls apart.

How do you retain the intimacy of such an epic piece?
We’re actually doing the Goodspeed Opera version, which has a cast of 24 so it’s quite concise and some numbers have been cut while others like “Hey, Feller!” have been put back in. And because the Sheffield Crucible is an intimate space with a thrust stage, we’ve kept that for London. So in fact, we can see the audience’s faces, which can be quite disturbing when you spot someone you know.

What do you think some of your previous stage heroines would make of Magnolia—Glinda, for instance?
Glinda would like Magnolia, partly because Glinda has that loyalty thing and I think she would respect Magnolia for the kind of courage in adversity that Glinda thinks she has by the end of her show.

And Christine Daae?
Christine has the vulnerability that Magnolia has, as well, but weirdly it’s Cosette [in Les Miserables] who I played before all of these who is the one most like Magnolia, in my view, in terms of the innocence and the whole falling in love thing. When I began to rehearse Magnolia, I thought, “I’ve been here before when it comes to that awakening to a romantic feeling.” And they all have really long curly wigs.

Is it hard in these takeovers making the role your own?
You do have some flexibility, and you can’t ever try and copy. What happens is that basically you have to walk to the right position but within that, you can do your own performance. That’s especially true with Wicked, and especially in America where we were a lot more free in terms, say, of [the song] “Popular,” where they would encourage you to do what you wanted with that big number. They were keen for you to go a bit wild.

How do the Phantom and Wicked fans compare?
The Wicked fans are a whole different ballgame. The Phantom ones are nice but there seem only to be about four or five regulars whereas with Wicked there are, like, hundreds, and they start to become friends with each other and travel together and visit together and it all becomes very social for them as they follow you from show to show.

What about a Sondheim show?
Would you believe that I have never auditioned for a Sondheim show? I basically just trapped myself in long runs over the last 10 years and now it’s as if I have been set free. That was good for the bank balance, and I loved it, but now I can afford maybe to be more artistic.