A perennial musical theatre favourite, the current Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat tour brings rising West End star Jac Yarrow back to his old stomping ground at the New Theatre this month. Chris Williams got on the phone to find out who he’s been rubbing shoulders with since.
Fans of musicals know Any Dream Will Do from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, but this is not the case for the current Joseph. For Cardiff’s Jac Yarrow, only one dream would do.
“It’s been a dream of mine to be in the West End since I was a kid,” he says of his first professional role. Part of that dream was also getting nominated for an Olivier Award, which indeed happened: “Such a huge honour. Really exciting.” This was all quite bittersweet, however. Due to the limited run’s success at the Palladium, Joseph was set to return in 2020. Of course, that March theatres in Britain went dark.
“Maybe in a couple of years’ time, I’ll work with people who saw Joseph and decided that’s what they wanted to do.”
Jac Yarrow
Luckily for Yarrow, he filmed a TV show in Spain for two months during the pandemic – but, he says, “a lot of my friends were doing nothing. I graduated in 2019 and a lot of them were still waiting to get their first job. They weren’t able to go to auditions, which gave a lot of people anxiety about their life choices, their career choices. I was lucky – I was able to keep kind of busy, but it was a strange time for sure.”
Other than the filming, he kept himself busy as the rest of us did, “doing home workouts and trying to eat well. FaceTiming a lot of people – I was up in London and my family were all in Wales, trying to keep in touch with them.” Plus, he could look forward. “I was able to keep sane knowing that we were doing Joseph again.”
With theatres reopened, Yarrow says the pandemic is still lingering backstage but we are heading in the right direction. “We still take precautions – wearing masks backstage, hand sanitiser and daily COVID testing – just to make sure that everybody’s safe. We’re doing the best that we can and we’re definitely getting there.”
As the Joseph tour stops at Cardiff’s New Theatre, it’s a homecoming for Yarrow: not only did he catch the show there in times past, he used to be a member of Cardiff’s amateur dramatics company, Orbit Theatre. “We did our shows there so it’s going to be weird getting back on stage.”
For someone who not long graduated, he’s already worked with some musical theatre legends – I had to ask him about Elaine Paige: “She’s exactly how you expect her to be, so old school in the best way. The loveliest woman – just hysterical and very naughty.”
Joining him on the tour is 90s Joseph, Jason Donovan, aka “the loveliest man in the world” in Yarrow’s words. “So supportive of us, and a really funny guy. When you’re doing a show for that long, you need someone around to just be a little silly. Me, him and Alexandra [Burke, who plays The Narrator], we all have a laugh and mess around – within reason. He’s really great to have around.”
And obviously, there’s The Lord. Yarrow calls Lloyd Webber a genius, saying he knows exactly what he wants while also giving this cast the freedom to slightly change things and, at the same time, give the audience the Joseph they know. “There are a couple of different things I do that no other Joseph has done before and I had to get approval – he had to come in and see them and make sure that he liked them. He’d go away and think about it, and come back and let us know. He takes it very seriously.”
Next, Yarrow says, he’d like to do something different; “brand new, that nobody’s ever done. Put my stamp on it”. He also looks forward to working with the next theatrical generation: a full-circle moment, if you will. “It’ll be cool, in a couple of years’ time, to maybe work with some people who saw Joseph and decided that’s what they wanted to do.”
Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, New Theatre, Cardiff, Tue 3-Sat 7 May. Tickets: £24-64. Info: here
words CHRIS WILLIAMS
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