Jenna Russell interview: 'We need to nurture British musical theatre talent like they do in America’

Desperately romantic: Jenna Russell is starring in The Bridges of Madison County
Matt Writtle
Zoe Paskett16 July 2019

There are a few actors currently synonymous with British musical theatre — Sharon D Clarke, especially after her magnificent turn in Caroline, or Change; Rosalie Craig, who brought a whole new side to Sondheim’s Company; and Sheridan Smith, now in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the West End.

Added to that auspicious list is Jenna Russell. She’s been Fantine in Les Misérables, Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls and Dot in Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, for which she won an Olivier. And that’s only a tiny portion of an acting career that began in her early teens.

We meet at the Menier Chocolate Factory, where she’s in rehearsals for Marsha Norman and Jason Robert Brown’s musical adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County, which had its Broadway debut in 2014 and now gets its UK premiere in a new production directed by Trevor Nunn. Next door, the rest of the cast are doing vocal warm-ups. When we speak, they’re gearing up to do their first full run-through.

“It’s always terrifying, this bit,” she says. “But it’s also really nice because you get to link it all up. You get the momentum.”

Russell, 51, is playing the lead role of Francesca, a married woman who has a short but life-altering affair with a photographer who passes through her small Iowa town. She turned down the part at first, when, a few years ago, while playing Michelle Fowler in EastEnders, producer David Babani rang her up and floated the idea.

“I thought, oh God, she’s Italian. Oh God, she’s wandering around in lady dresses looking desperately feminine. Oh God, she’s a soprano. So I panicked and said to David, ‘I just don’t think this is a good fit for me’.” But she just couldn’t shake the idea and a couple of months ago, on a trip to see A Star Is Born at a cinema in New York, Russell told Babani she wanted in.

Robert James Waller’s original romantic novella was turned into a film in 1995 directed by Clint Eastwood, who also starred in it alongside Meryl Streep. Nunn’s direction of the tale has a “filmic quality”, says Russell.

“My other half [actor Ray Coulthard] has worked a lot with Trevor, mostly at the National, and so I saw all these plays. He is the master of making it flow seemingly effortlessly. He’s employing those skills beautifully for this show, and in saying, ‘Don’t show me, just be.’”

The Bridges of Madison County is a quiet story. Naples-born Francesca has been married for 18 years, and has two teenage kids with her husband. The affair, which takes place when her family is out of town, awakens something in her that she never knew existed.

“When this play came along, I thought, this is my last stand in a leading role in a romantic sense,” she says, “because it is desperately romantic.”

Russell in rehearsals with co-star Edward Baker-Duly
Johan Persson

Russell’s career has been markedly varied. As well as reams of musical theatre, she has played a host of straight theatre and TV roles including EastEnders, Born and Bred and Doctor Who. I ask if she makes a conscious choice to pick a variety of roles. “I really do. Or I did. Less now as I’ve got older, but our business does want to put people in pigeonholes. We don’t have many of those stories, we really don’t.

“I’m well aware that the clock is ticking for me. As a woman — and I’ve been an actress since I was 14 — your casting shifts. I’ve been a girl, I’ve been a teenager, I’ve been a young woman, I’ve been a mum. Now, I’m veering very happily into character actress, which is kind of what I’ve always wanted to do because I never felt like I was a typical ingénue type.”

If anyone was going to provide the sort of roles she craves, Sondheim would be a good bet. Or “Steve”, as she calls him. "I had a Sondheim group at school when I was 15,” she says. “Then I first worked with him when I was 20 on Follies and it was a dream come true. To meet a proper idol ... life-changing. Now we’re friends, we see each other, we email occasionally. I still can’t quite believe if I get an email back from him that he knows I exist! Thank God he’s writing again. How exciting is that? I’m desperate to hear his new work.”

There’s an American slant to the musicals Russell has performed in. What does she think about the British musical theatre scene? “We’re getting there. The talent is there but I think in the US they nurture it more. I just wish there was a more protected environment for new writing that isn’t trying to be a massive commercial venture.”

In all the talk of musicals throughout our interview, Russell takes pains to make one point clear. They can be inspiring, moving, transcendent even — but only when written well. Writing is everything, she says. A great musical can change lives.

One such play is Fun Home, the adaptation by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori of Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, which ran at the Young Vic last year and was directed by Sam Gold. It is the first musical to revolve around a lesbian main character, and Russell played Bechdel’s mother.

The show had a profound impact — reviews were positive and people are still begging for a West End transfer and yet there has been no sign of it. I ask why.

“That’s the nature of theatre, isn’t it?” she says. “I feel that with shows like this and Sondheim’s shows. They’re not meant to be around for 10 years in the West End. I like that about it. I do. It’s magic, you see it, it’s gone.”

The Bridges of Madison County is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, SE1 (menierchocolatefactory.com), until September 14

London theatre still to come in 2019

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