Bristles down the wind for clean-cut star
POPULAR tenor Jonathan Ansell has had to ditch his clean-cut image and turn into a tramp to try his hand at musical theatre for the first time on the UK tour of Whistle Down the Wind coming to the Lyceum next week.
The former lead tenor in pop opera boy band G4 who has rapidly carved out a best-selling solo singing career takes the lead role of The Man, the fugitive hiding out in a barn who is mistaken for Jesus Christ by a group of wide-eyed children.
"I love the style of music and have been heavily influenced by people like Michael Ball and Andrew Lloyd Webber, so this is something I have always wanted to do," he said this week just after the show's opening in Liverpool.
"There are big numbers to sing which held no fears but there is the acting side, the dialogue moments. I had some training in acting at Guildhall but it was more in the operatic mode. So this was more daunting for me but it's nice to have a challenge. It's great to learn knew skills and experience a new environment to work in."
Then there is the role itself. "Yes, an escaped desperate criminal, that's a new one too. Not only that, he's very different physically with a beard and long hair, ragged and bleeding. I'm barefoot with straps around my hand and I'm covered in mud and dirt and blood. It
"I've been growing the beard for six weeks and haven't had my hair cut for two-and-a-half months. The producers are keen that it should be dishevelled and raggedy and they want the growth to keep on expanding, so I will have to keep it going."
There are compensations. "It's certainly easier getting up in the morning," he says. "I can be straight up and out." And then he can move around incognito.
"Now when I'm out on the streets no-one recognises me. In fact some of the people who've come to see the show haven't realised it's me until it's been pointed out to them," he says. "It's actually quite nice, not being noticed while I've been out is something that hasn't happened for a long time."
That would be when G4, a quartet formed with fellow students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama made their mark on The X Factor five years ago and he went on to a solo career and with his first album, Tenor At The Movies, became the youngest tenor to top the classical charts and hit Top 10 in the pop album charts.
Then came his appearance on Come Dine With Me which he described as "a massive trigger for awareness" because it introduced him to a much wider audience beyond the field of music.
Although G4 disbanded in 2007, they remain in touch. "We're all mates and two of them still live down the road from me in Battersea," he reports.
"In fact we launched what we call the Battersea Gaming Club in which we meet up from time to time for a few drinks and some board games. It's really a way of relaxing with no pressure of work.
"You go on the treadmill at drama school on the road to the opera house but I always knew there was potential for other avenues.
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Letters I was following that path as hard as the other people but at the same time I was doing other stuff – busking and being a singing waiter.
“There are very few singers in the world who make a career out of operatic singing, so I had an open mind in wanting to entertain in as many ways as possible.”
He has signed up for eight months on the road with Whistle Down the Wind. With performances usually six days a week, matinees twice a week and daytime rehearsals in each city bedding down the supporting cast of local youngsters, it is pretty relentless, as he puts it.
A theatrical tour is a new experience too, although it doesn’t seem the best of times to embark on one since he only got married four months ago to TV presenter Debbie King.
“I know, it’s sounds a bizarre thing to do but Debbie has been able to join me quite a lot. She’s doing less presenting at the moment and has just launched the London School of Modelling and most of her time is taken up with that.” Whatever must she make of her new Man?
Whistle Down the Wind is at the Lyceum Theatre from Tuesday to Saturday.
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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