Musical star's potty preparation for that famous scene in Ghost

Iconic: the late Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in the original movie
10 April 2012

It is one of the most memorable scenes in the movie Ghost - when Demi Moore is joined at her potter's wheel by her lover, played by Patrick Swayze.

So when actress Caissie Levy won the coveted role of Molly Jensen in the stage version, Ghost the Musical, she decided to get her pottery skills up to scratch.

"I took lessons for a couple of months when I got the job because I didn't know how long that scene was going to be," she revealed after opening night at the Piccadilly Theatre.

Working the potter's wheel on stage was "tougher than it looks", she said.

"It looks very yogic and chilled out but it takes a lot of work. I'm acting and you want me to make a pot on stage every night? At the beginning I wasn't so great," she joked. "But it's a really cool element of the performance. Because it's live, it's changing every moment. I never know how it's going to go."

The 30-year-old actress certainly convinced Jerry Zucker, who directed the original film 21 years ago and was in the audience. He had nothing but praise for the production, from Dave Stewart's music to Matthew Warchus's direction. "The most amazing thing is they have captured the heart and the humour and all the feeling of the film," he said.

Canadian Levy won the part after getting her break in the Broadway production of Hairspray, moving to Wicked and then the revival of Hair which brought her to London. Her lover, Sam, is played by Richard Fleeshman, 22, who was Craig Harris in Coronation Street.

But the performance which brings the house down is Sharon D Clarke as Oda Mae Brown, the fake psychic who ends up being able to talk to the dead.

She said the notion was perfectly plausible to her as when she was growing up in Tottenham, her Jamaica-born mum, Viola, could predict the future.

"I grew up in a psychic household. My mum used to be a seer. She saw things all the time. I've had that in my life so it's not something I'm scared of," she said at the after-party at the new Corinthia hotel in Westminster.

Ghost the Musical began when London producer Colin Ingram approached former Eurythmics star Stewart with the idea five years ago. Stewart worked with Bruce Joel Rubin, the original Oscar-winning writer on the film, to write the stage show.

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