Nailed on Evita

EVITA is one of those roles that most female performers want to play, but don’t know if you’ll ever get the chance, reveals Rachael Wooding about taking on the famous Lloyd Webber- Rice musical which brings the colourful story of Argentinian icon Eva Peron to life.

“To have the opportunity is amazing and every day I find something new and it’s an incredible role for me. I’d been in the West End for two years and, because of my age, I was beginning to think ‘maybe I’ll never play a role like that now’,”

she says.

“It was really weird how it happened. I’d had a couple of auditions and I was due to sing for Andrew Lloyd Webber and I was in Hairspray in the West End. The audition was cancelled and I was flying out to Beijing for a corporate gig for a week. I thought ‘well, that’s it, it’s not going to happen’ and when I was in Beijing on the Saturday I got told ‘you’ve got to come back and sing for Andrew Lloyd Webber on Monday’. So I was straight off the plane and singing in his office and then it was ‘yeah, you’ve got it, get to Cardiff and rehearse’. It was all very rushed.

“So by the time I realised ‘oh yeah, you’re going to be famous’ I was in some little house in Cardiff and thinking ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’. It sounds like something from a TV plot, but it actually happened,” she says with a laugh.

Wooding, who is from Doncaster and played Amber Von Tussle in the hit West End show Hairspray, admits she didn’t have much time to do any research on her starring role until she was already in rehearsal.

“You can read as much as you want, but there was a guy who was doing a signed performance for the show who was actually at Eva Peron’s funeral. He was amazing to talk to and although he was only a kid at the time, his father remembered everything and he said it wasn’t this hideous time with the country in ruins,” she says.

“I play her as a feisty, ballsy woman who gets what she wants. I’m not saying I’m all that, but I think I’ve got a bit of that in me. I’ve been working for ten or 11 years now and I’m so lucky that I’ve never been out of work. It’s hard, but I’ve loved every minute of it,” she adds about landing roles in Cats, Starlight Express, Fame, A Chorus Line, Footloose, Return To The Forbidden Planet, Loveshack, Saturday Night Fever and We Will Rock You.

“Everything I’ve done before has equipped me for this role.

When people audition on TV, even if they are talented, they’re not equipped and ready for all that. When I got my first job I looked up to the other people in the show and was intent on soaking up everything like a sponge. I do think that appearing in two, and sometimes three, performances a day does sort out the men from the boys. Those that serve the apprenticeship know that they’re meant to be doing it... I do think I’m meant to be doing it and I don’t want to do anything else,” she says.

Wooding loves the buzz of performing live because she knows that there is one moment in every show where she feels “yes, that was great”. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina is the pressure song because it comes at the start of Act Two and “everyone in the audience knows that one” and sometimes she feels “once that’s out of the way, everything is all right”.

“It’s not the hardest song to sing and when it’s right it’s amazing but if not, it’s whoops,”

she says.

Wooding also delights in the complexity of Evita’s many costume changes as she ages from 15 to 33.

“I watched the show before I joined but, sometimes, I wish I could sit outside myself and see that moment when the lights hit me as I walk out to sing Argentina. It’s the hair, the dress and the glamour and everyone says that moment is so beautiful, but I’m thinking ‘but I can’t see it’,” Wooding comments.

She calls Hairspray a breath of fresh air that is like a rollercoaster ride. “Michael Ball is in the show and the fact that he loves it so much proves that it’s a great show. He’s been in showbusiness 25 years and last year I did some open air concerts with him. This year he’s doing a tour with five West End performers and I’m looking forward to that as well,” says Wooding who has a contract with Evita up to the run in Newcastle Theatre Royal, June 22-July 4.

“Watch this space, it’s going to have to be a hell of a role to deflect me away from Evita,”

she replies when I ask if she’s continuing in the role when the show plays the Sunderland Empire in October 19-31.

“I’m not usually this type of person, but if I haven’t got my red nails on I can’t do Evita. I’m not like that at all normally, but this red nails thing is now a superstition and one day I was at the start of the show and said ‘oh no, I must put some red nail varnish on’ and as the curtain came up I was painting red nail varnish in the wings. I’m such an idiot, but I still have to do it...

I’ve got bottles everywhere, in my bag, at home and in the dressing room.”

■ Evita, Newcastle Theatre Royal, June 22-July 4. Box Office: 08448-112-121 and Sunderland Empire, October 19-31. Box Office: 0844-847-2499