Mama, Hairspray's Chloe Hart is a Big West End Star Now
Age: 21
Hometown: Truro, Cornwall, in southern England.
Currently: Winning hearts and cheers as a vibrant Tracy Turnblad in the continuing West End run of the Olivier Award-winning musical Hairspray at the Shaftesbury Theatre.
Graduation Gift: Hart remarkably is making her professional theater debut with this production, which she joined July 27—the same day as co-star Brian Conley, who plays Edna, and Liam Tamne, the new Link. It wasn't until the end of the following week that Hart actually graduated from the Guildford School of Acting, attending the ceremonies in suburban Surrey that morning and then racing up to London to do her requisite two performances in Hairspray's vital central role. She laughs: "That was a very full day."
She's a Big Girl Now: Hart's talent is accompanied by a physique that she, with disarming candor, attributes to an ovary deficiency ("like a male hormone thing") diagnosed when she was 16. "That's why I put on weight around my tummy but have small legs and small arms. It's so hard for me to lose weight. I can do it, but I just don't try very often." Hart says she is the only one of her parents' six children (she is fifth in the lineup) to have this condition. "I've always been a bigger girl, though I've never been bullied. I've always been happy with the way I am." Much, in fact, like the cheerful teenage firebrand that is Tracy.
Ace Accent: Among the many virtues of her performance is a flawless American accent beyond even the raised bar in such matters that now exists in London. That's no mean feat considering that Hart has never been to the U.S., much less Baltimore, where the musical adaptation of the John Waters movie takes place circa 1962. "It's probably all the sitcoms I watch," she says by way of explanation. "I'm a big Friends geek, so that's probably what it is—TV and films helping out. We've had the American associate director, Ben Klein, over and he seemed quite happy with [my accent], so maybe it's OK." It also helps that Hart had seen the production seven times before starting performances herself. "I'm a big musical theater geek, too. I've been to see Wicked eight times!"
Defying Gravity? Hart's impressive vocal instrument naturally lies in the rock belt of Wicked's demanding Elphaba, and she speaks of that role and Scaramouche in We Will Rock You as challenges she would love the opportunity to meet, if those shows' casting directors would consider a larger-sized woman "Oh," she says of Wicked, "that's like my biggest dream! We’ll see what happens." How does she see her career progressing post-Hairspray? "I'm open to anything. Of course, I'd love to do more musical theater, but I know that looks-wise it might be difficult. I might have to wait a few more years until I am old enough to play the more character-based roles. I'd like to make an album and do a little bit of everything. I don't want to pigeonhole myself too much."
She Knows Where She's Been: Hart speaks of a career trajectory in which "everything has sort of happened at the right time," including an entry into the profession without any time out. That's not to say that she hasn't experienced setbacks: "I've had a lot of, ‘Yeah, your voice is right, but you don't look quite right.'" She points by way of example to the Christmas pantomime in her hometown, Truro, where she would audition year in year out: "I was never the cute blonde with pigtails. The judges would be, like, ‘Wow, she can sing, but she doesn't look right for panto.' This happened for seven years and my mom would say, 'Don't cry. If you cry, I won't take you again. It's just for experience.' So I never let it get to me, and then the seventh year, when I was 14, I got in to play the Mayor of Munchkin City in The Wizard of Oz." Any lessons learned as a result? "If you want something enough and you have faith in yourself, you'll get it." Tracy Turnblad surely would agree.