Michael's having a ball
By Tony Watts - Editor - 23/03/2009
It’s hard to stop Michael Ball from smiling about his current role in the hit West End show ‘Hairspray’: great reviews, an Olivier award and, as he says, “There’s even the chance to wear a frock. It’s just the best time of my life.”
It’s a very different Michael than the nothing-less-than-manly person that won accolades for his roles in ‘Les Miserables’, ‘Sunset Boulevard’, ‘Aspects of Love’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera’. But as he’s keen to point out, it’s not that he necessarily went looking for a part that involved donning a gown (and piling on the pounds to pad out the outfits). Playing Edna Turnblad is one of those roles where you really do get to explore what it’s like to be the ‘opposite sex’. Albeit only until the corset and eyelashes come off.
You have to walk a mile in another man’s shoes, as they say. Or high heels, in Edna’s case. “It’s been very empowering,” he tells me. “And very liberating. Edna is a lady of a certain age and overweight and, when you get to that time of life, you can choose to become reclusive or break out and express what you feel inside you. That’s what Edna ultimately does.
“It’s very funny but also very poignant.”
It’s also a show, set in the 60s, with a lot to say about the way society judges people at a superficial level. Edna’s daughter is an overweight teenager whose dream is to dance on a major TV programme – and despite her weight, she wins over the audience - and then sets about launching a campaign to racially integrate the show… effectively making it a social commentary on the injustices of parts of American society in the 1960s.
“The response has been phenomenal,” says Michael. “And it’s so not like anything else I’ve ever done. Is it the best thing I’ve ever done? Absolutely. Who would have thought a big fat housewife from Baltimore would be my soulmate?”
His current high tide of success makes it fitting that he’s chosen this point in his career to launch a retrospective album that includes many of the numbers that he has made his own in the shows he has starred in, as well as songs that – as he says – his concert audiences have enjoyed and which he can ‘bring something to’.
There’s also an interpretation of one of Freddie Mercury’s very last songs recorded before his death – the powerful, potent and poignant ‘The Show Must Go On’. Inevitably the show stopping number from Hairspray ‘You Can’t Stop The Beat’ is in there. And he hasn’t forgotten his second place Eurovision song from 1992: ‘One Step Out of Time’ which, in the time-honoured tradition of British entries (before we started to come last), came second. So would be ever consider waving the flag for the United Kingdom again? “Definitely not!” he says. “Not that we have much chance of winning these days…”
And when he isn’t belting out the big numbers, Michael will be found behind a microphone – hosting his own Radio 2 show ‘Sunday Brunch’. “I just love doing all these different things,” he says. “It rounds you out.” And later this year expect to see him at a concert hall near you as he takes to the road with a new tour: “It’s me and six great vocalists from the West End,” he says. “Which will give us a really powerful vocal sound.”
It’s all a long away for someone who, famously, didn’t come up through a musical background: but perhaps it’s the innate singing ability you’d expect from someone with a Welsh miner for a grandfather. Michael learned to sing by listening to the greats that were played on the living room turntable – including Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, whom he cites as big influences on his style. “But there’s a hippie factor in there as well,” he says. “I also loved Joni Mitchell and Genesis!”
He pursued acting as a career but realised early on, as did the casting directors, that here was someone who could not only hold an audience but also a note. The blonde good looks didn’t do him any harm either, or having someone as well versed in show business to advise him as his partner Cathy McGowan – best known as the groundbreaking presenter of ‘Ready Steady Go’. Until then, DJs were invariably much older than the fans buying the music – and, well, ‘square’. “She’s been my advisor and my guide,” Michael readily agrees.
So what ambitions remain to be fulfilled? “There aren’t many big parts that I haven’t done and still really want to,” says Michael. “But Sweeney Todd – yes, I’d love to do that one. It’s the ‘King Lear’ of musical parts!”
Nothing else? “Well to be talking to you in another 25 years, celebrating my half century in the business – that would be good too!”