Oliver! fits The Bill

APPEARING in pantomime with Ian McKellen at London’s Old Vic Theatre was a bit of a dream come true for Cat Simmons. Being on stage with the theatrical knight was great, of course, but she had another reason.

“When I was growing up I always got to play the boys, so it was nice to play a princess for a change,” she explains.

Working with McKellen, who was the panto dame, was a treat. “The more relaxed he got, the funnier he got. I couldn’t really believe it – I thought, ‘oh my God, I’m on stage with Ian McKellen’.”

Now she’s centrestage belting out the heartfelt ballad As Long As He Needs Me and the rollicking, rousing pub song Oom-Pah-Pah in the spectacular touring production of Oliver! She plays the unfortunate Nancy, who suffers at the hands of boyfriend Bill Sikes, as the story of the boy who asked for more unfolds.

She’s getting used to being thrown around the stage by Sikes. “He’s a little bit method and gets fantastic boos at the end,” she says of co-star Iain Fletcher. “I get chucked around. I’ve had a couple of bruises, but I’m very well padded.”

Best known as a TV face, Simmons has gained many musical credits since training at the National Youth Music Theatre. Previous work includes Mary Magadelen in Jesus Christ Superstar, Whistle Down the Wind, Fame and the Young Vic’s sell-out production of Langston Hughes’ Simply Heavenly. Another recent project at that theatre was Been So Long by Che Walker and Arthur Darvil (Rory in Doctor Who) with nu-classic soul singer Omar Lye-Fook.

“It’s the nature of the business, which I don’t mind,” Simmons says of the recognition that comes with appearing in a long-running TV series like The Bill. “I like to do everything. I am a bit spoiled as I get to pick and choose what I do.

I enjoyed The Bill, but it’s nice to have a connection with the audience in the theatre. But if I’m recognised from The Bill, I’m really appreciative.”

She’s been playing Nancy since April and will leave at the end of the Newcastle season. This is her first time in the role, although when she was 14 she played Nancy’s best friend Charlotte in a National Youth Music Theatre production.

SHE knew the show well. As a child her collection of videos included the film version of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!

“The Dickens book is very dark and Lionel Bart has done something wonderful with the story. You can relate to it and understand her heartbreak and the dark things, then the next minute she’s singing in the pub. She’s the life and soul of the party. She’s like Bet Lynch – when she speaks, people listen.

“That’s the great thing about the part, there are so many different sides to her. She’s this motherly figure to the boys, being cheeky and a bit rude in the bar and she’s desperately in love and hurt by Bill. Later on, she realises Oliver deserves a chance and puts her own life on the line.”

There’s no shortage of young co-stars with three sets of 12 boys playing Fagin’s gang and two sets of local children filling out other roles.

Some are as young as eight. “They only learnt to read and write a few years ago and you think, ‘how do you do all these things?’ They’re extremely talented,” she says.

“We have 54 people on stage at one point.

Cameron Mackintosh is holding nothing back.

The company is vast with over 100 of us touring around. That’s what is so lovely, the chance to take something of this standard to cities and towns across the country.”

Simmons hasn’t been to Newcastle since 1998, when she appeared in a show called Soul Girl. It was her second job. She loved the area and is looking forward to returning.

She began performing as a child, with drama lessons at Oldham Theatre Workshop. “My parents didn’t have a choice, I was a bit of a showoff.

I got my first TV job when I was ten,” she says.

Post-Oliver! she’s not sure what’s in store. “It’s all about the role. I’ve been involved in some really interesting work recently. If the part’s right and it excites me, I will try my hardest to fight for it.”

IAIN FLETCHER used to have a fantasy shared with an old friend that one day they’d get in a car and do an end-to-end tour of every major town and important spot around the country. It never happened.

But as he’s speaking to me from the highest point of Dartmoor, you can surmise that he’s getting out and about at the moment.

It’s not quite the trip he imagined, but the big new touring production of Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver! is enabling the former regular on The Bill – 300 episodes as DC Rodney Skase – to see plenty of the country as the travelling show moves on.

Yesterday, the production opened at Newcastle Theatre Royal for a marathon eight-week season, which will give Fletcher plenty of time to investigate the region. He’s already planning on putting on his walking boots to discover Northumberland and the surrounding countryside.

“I’m going to some incredible places. I want to tour the landscape and make the most of it,”

he says from a windy Dartmoor, where he’d driven during the season in Plymouth. “You never know what the schedule’s going to be because we have so many children in the show – you might be rehearsing or bringing in new children.

“Dartmoor is where I used to go as a child. I remember Dartmoor prison, an ominous Victorian structure. It’s every bit as scary now as when I saw it years ago.”

As befits someone playing the villainous Bill Sikes in the Charles Dickens story, it’s appropriate he should be going to places “that are slightly sinister”. He’s appearing on stage with former The Bill colleague Cat Simmons, who played DC Kezia Walker in the long-running ITV police series – and is being reunited with another in the North-East. Looking down the list of theatrical digs he saw the name of The Bill actress Libby Davison, so he’ll be staying at her place during the run.

“I’ve never toured on such a scale. I’ve managed to get home once a week, apart from one week, since the tour began. It’s a bit of a wrench being away from home. I have two children that I only see once a week.

“I can’t imagine being on tour without an iPad and iPhone – and here I am standing on Dartmoor. It’s reinforced my appreciation of the British Isles.”

Fletcher wouldn’t call himself a big musical theatre fan, although he has been in the Abba musical Mamma Mia! in London’s West End. His personal favourites are shows like Guys And Dolls and West Side Story. And, of course, Oliver!

Bill Sikes is the undoubted villain of the piece. Does Fletcher see any redeeming features in a man who is equally horrid to men, women and children. “He’s somebody of that time in that environment. Needs must,” he says.

“He’s in London when one in four East End girls were prostitutes and a society where the poor were kept poor and the rich stayed rich.

There were a lot of people around like him. You had to do what you had to do. Obviously it’s nice to play a Dickens villain, but he’s an absolutely abhorrent person to look at objectively.”

Fletcher is working with dozens of children – both regulars and those recruited locally – and a dog, Bullseye. “So far the old adage of never working with animals or children isn’t ringing true. They’re great, they really are,” he says.

“They keep you on your toes. You have to consider your actions with kids around, they’re very impressionable.”

He did wonder what being asked to play Bill Sikes said about him. “When I was first told, ‘you would be perfect’ I thought, ‘what are you saying about me? Am I a psychotic bully?’.” His own children have seen him on stage as Bill Sikes and “they thought it was daddy in a bad mood”.

He has another six months to go in the Oliver! tour, he would really like to do more TV and perhaps film.

“But I’m a realist about this. I have so many friends who don’t work and it’s a reality that keeps you in check.”

• Oliver! starring Brian Conley as Fagin is at Newcastle Theatre Royal until November 3. Box Office: 08448-112121 and theatreroyal.co.uk