Good Evans, it’s blonde X Factor Niki
Blood Brothers at the Grand Theatre, Leeds...Actress Niki Evans on stage at the theatre....20th July 2011.... Picture by Simon Hulme
NEXT week Legally Blonde the Musical comes to town for a two-week run at the Lyceum Theatre with Faye Brookes as the blonde and Les Dennis, Ray Quinn and Niki Evans in the featured roles.
Evans is making her debut in the show in Sheffield and while the tour was in Liverpool this week the X Factor finalist and Blood Brothers star is rehearsing in London with just the director and a piano.
“I’m going up to Liverpool to meet them all and then there will be a dress rehearsal and I will be straight on at the Lyceum,” says Evans, who is playing the best friend role of Paulette.
Based on the hit movie starring Reese Witherspoon, Legally Blonde the Musical tells the story of college sweetheart and homecoming queen Elle Woods who enrolls at Harvard Law School to win back her ex-boyfriend Warner who dumped her for “someone serious” and acquires a knowledge of the law which she uses to help others.
“Paulette is in her forties and owns a beauty salon where Elle comes to dye her hair brunette. She persuades her to remain a blonde and becomes her best friend,” explains Evans.
“You couldn’t find two more different people than Paulette and Mrs Johnson (the Liverpool mother she played in Blood Brothers).
“She’s a blonde from Boston – I’ve dyed my hair blonde for the first time. Since starting Blood Brothers I have dropped three stone so I am looking completely different.”
For Blood Brothers talking Scouse was not too much of a stretch from Evans’ Birmingham accent but an American is something else.
“I’ve discovered I might be quite good at accents,” she says. “There are certain words I’ve had to work at because Boston is very different from New York which we hear all the time.
“There was a guy at the Travelodge where I was staying who comes from Boston and I latched on to him and spoke to him quite a lot.”
The other big challenge was having to dance which she had never done before. A question about how that’s been going is greeted by a hearty laugh. “Well, I have done better than I thought I would when we ran through the whole show in three days. Beforehand they said there was just one dance routine but it ends up as three.
“I am not nervous about anything else apart from performing a jump and a lift with a guy I haven’t yet met. And there’s a five-and-a-half-minute dance routine called The Remix. I will just give everything my best shot.
“Everyone says you are so laidback but really inside my stomach is going, oh my god! I don’t think it will hit me until I am standing at the side of the Lyceum stage with my brushes and colours,” continues Evans. “I think I am more excited than scared and I know this is a fun show to be in. I came out with a big smile after I had seen it.
“I took it on without ever having seen it and so I thought I should and went a couple of times.”
In Liverpool Paulette was played by Claire Sweeney and Natalie Casey was in the West End show when Evans went to see it. “I don’t like to watch another person in a role I am about to play because I prefer to do it in my own way. And that’s what they want from me.
“They first approached me back in August but I have been committed to Blood Brothers and then I did panto in Wolverhampton. I finished on the Sunday and began rehearsals straight away.
“That helps to give me confidence, the fact that they wanted me to do this for a long time and were prepared to wait.”
Legally Blonde the Musical opens at the Lyceum on Tuesday and runs until February 25.
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