PLAYING Evita is one of the great female musical roles but when Louise Dearman was cast in a new UK touring production she didn't have time to think of the enormity of what she was taking on.

"It all happened in a bit of a flash," she says, explaining that she was invited to audition for Evita after a producer saw her in the West End in a show called Make Me a Song.

"I did a few songs from the show and then I sang for Bill Kenwright (the show's producer). I was offered the part on the Saturday and I was in rehearsals on the Monday. It was a blessing really because I didn't have time to think about it.

"I had never seen it on stage, only the movie, but I was well aware that Elena Rogers, Elaine Page, Julie Covington and others had played the role and that they were big acts to follow. But when I researched Eva Peron and the women who have played her I saw that everyone had done it in their own unique way.

"When you play a real person you have to put in a bit of what you have read about them and put in yourself and try not to stress about how other people have played it."

The touring show has been co-directed by Kenwright and Bob
Tomson.

"It's a completely new production," says Dearman. "There's new choreography by Bill Deamer and sets and costumes but probably the most striking difference is that it's a fresher, simpler story. It's much clearer."

It is the biggest role to date for the experienced musical theatre performer who has been performing professionally since the aged of 12 when she was in the chorus of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the London Palladium.

Lyceum audiences have previously seen her in Grease, Jekyll and Hyde and most recently as Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls.

"Touring is hard and some people like it more than others but you can't turn down a role like this," she says. And she has not been disappointed.

"It has felt different," she says. "You're playing a real person and it's a massive role and vocally and physically draining.

"I know that I can't really have any social life while I am doing this. It's home to the steam inhaler – it's great for the voice and vocal chords, it rehydrates you in 20 minutes – and an early night," says the actress romantically linked earlier this year with Declan Donnelly of Ant and Dec.

There is an end in sight. She signed up for the first six months of the UK tour and will finish on November 22 and then she can let her hair down in panto at Wimbledon with Gareth Gates and Alistair McGowan.

After that, who knows? As a musical theatre performer she is dependent on what shows are out there, although she would not be averse to some TV work and more straight acting opportunities.

But what's her big ambition? "To do a really big stadium concert, to see what the atmosphere is like, even if it's as a backing singer. In fact, backing singer would be best because you don't have to worry that it's your show."

Evita opens at the Lyceum on Tuesday and runs for two weeks.


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