What started your interest in musicals?

always liked the music in musicals and saw one or 2 when i was traveling but the big musical love was started after watching the casting show in german TV for the principal roles for Tarzan in Hamburg. After seeing this and afterwards the show i was totally blown away

Mainly owe it to my nan, disney and panto. I grew up watching Disney movies, I was then taken to pantos as a kid and was captivated by story music and sets. My nan then showed me the old movies of the golden age and when I got older I was progressed from panto to my first musical Barnum...which bored me to tears. luckily a year or so later my nan took me to see the first UK tour of cats and from then on I was hooked

Very topical right now, but it was Mary Poppins. It was, and still is, my favourite film as a child, and I always watched it at my nans house when she used to look after me whilst my parents were at work.

Move forward 10 years and Mary Poppins lands on stage, and is the first piece of theatre I ever see. It remains one of those evenings I’ll always remember, with Scarlett Strallen flying over my head in the Prince Edward.

Move on another 14 years and Mary Poppins comes back to me in the form of the brand new film, which is the perfect nod to the thing that introduced me to this world in the first place!

As a kid, it would have been watching all the classic Disney animated stuff on video or at the cinema (watching Beauty and the Beast was a big favourite growing up. It was the ballroom scene animation during the title song that blew me away). For live action, Mary Poppins and Grease were the go to musical films for me (and still are).

Theatre wise, my first musical must have been back in 1996. It would have been Grease (with Shane Ritchie) at the Manchester Opera House. It was a week or so after the I.R.A. Manchester attack, but the atmosphere inside the Auditorium was something special. It wasn’t just the show (and being able to listen to those great songs from the film) but the sense of the city trying to carry on in the wake of the devistation caused and the ability of theatre to draw people together in a positive way even for a few hours.

Readers of this Board will know that I am always pleased to get an opportunity to talk about my theatre-going career stretching back many years so look away now if you have heard all this from me before!

It all started back in Sydney in the late 1940s when I was a very small child, born in 1937. My mother frequently took me to variety shows at the Tivoli, which did twice-daily performances for the entertainment of American service men who were in Sydney both during and after the second world war. She also liked musicals and I can clearly remember seeing White Horse Inn which featured a rain storm with real water forming a curtain of rain just behind the footlights, and a revolving stage to show something like four different sets and for the finale, the set revolved showing each of the different scenes one after the other.  I can also remember The Desert Song, and was surprised when at the end of the first Act the Red Shadow broke his sword across his knee to show Margot how strong he was. The sword was made of wood, which even to me didn't seem very realistic but it made for an impressive dramatic moment!

But the real milestone for me was the 1947 Australian production of Annie Get Your Gun with the wonderful Evie Hayes.  Although being aged just ten I can remember seeing the show several times and not only were all the songs big hits on the radio but we also had a copy of the vocal score which provided the basis for sing-alongs around the piano for our neighbours!  After Annie we had a succession of the Broadway productions of Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Paint Your Wagon, Brigadoon. Call Me Madam (Evie Hayes again) and Kiss Me, Kate among others. It was always a matter of great regret that Sydney did not get to see either Carousel or Guys and Dolls back in those days, at least until I left Sydney in February 1960 to come to London where I have been frequenting the theatre ever since.

In my late teens I poured every penny I could spare into concerts, as music was biggest passion. I’d always had three shows on my radar that I’d like to see though, Avenue Q, Priscilla and Wicked. I eventually saw Wicked and Avenue Q, and over time I grew tired of the scrum involved in buying concert tickets online and the lengths of time I’d spend standing in the evening of the gig itself. By the time I’d seen another three musicals (bought for me by my new boyfriend/now husband: WWRY, Chicago and Les Mis) I started choosing the shows myself. Eventually concerts were replaced by trips to the theatre, and now I see more theatre in a year than I ever did concerts. I went through a period of being less fussy with what I saw, and took more risks. Now I find its more of a balance between shows I’d love to see and a few risky ones thrown in.

Disney. All the blame/gratitude goes to Disney.

Jumping on the Joseph bandwagon as after seeing a touring production at Ipswich Regent I was hooked and listened to lots of soundtracks after that, though didn't see my first West End show (Wicked) until I was 16 and haven't looked back since.

On a side note, when I was about 3 or 4 my dad took me to watch my mum in a recording session of A Chorus Line when she was working as a session singer for BBC Radio 2 and they sung One as a full ensemble with a big band. It's one of my earliest memories, and my dad said my jaw was on the floor by the end of it!

Seeing a surprisingly good production of Grease in Belgrade in 1995 (everything else I had see before and long after that one at our only MT theatre was pretty awful) and also noticing for the first time that absolutely ridiculous Phantom of the Opera song video with Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley, thinking ''what ON EARTH is this???'' and getting a bootleg CD the next day (this was in 1996 or so) and my interest was finally cemented after watching Cabaret on TV during the NATO bombing in 1999, when I first realised what a brilliant and intricate genre musical is - narrative, songs and dancing all working together to tell a story. Before that I kind of thought that musical and dancing numbers were but amusing intermezzos which didn't impress me half as much as this realisation.
So I blame it on a serendipitous half-amateur production of Grease, ALW's (and Sarah Brightman's) POTO work being weird, kitschy, over-the-top yet strangely fascinating, and Bob Fosse, Kender and Ebb being geniuses. 

It was mandated during Gay Orientation

A handbag? Thank heavens you didn't leave them at Victoria station.

I’d always been interested in musicals from starting dancing at a young age so was always around the music even if I didn’t appreciate at the time. I think my first ever show was an amateur production of Annie and then my first west end show was Mamma Mia then Mary Poppins and Oliver!

I didn’t become properly hooked until I was about 13 and listened to spring awakening for the first time and that show opened me up to different shows like next to normal, les miz etc. It made me realise that musicals didn’t have to be all singing and dancing and happy all the time. Although I still love a big dance number and happy ending.

I’ve been obsessed ever since !