Something in common: Laura Michelle Kelly stars in the musical, Goddess. Picture: Adam Yip Source: National Features
MARY Poppins and her distinctive, parrot-head umbrella cast a very long shadow.
Just ask Laura Michelle Kelly, the English actress who originated the role in the West End stage musical and reprised it five years later on Broadway.
"She has impeccable manners," says the 32-year-old Brit.
"You hope those good traits will rub off on you, but there are definitely moments in my life where I don't use them - usually when I am tired, jet-lagged, or hormonal."
Elspeth Dickens, the frustrated housewife Kelly plays in the new Australian musical Goddess, is probably closer to the woman she is in real life.
"The fact that she made some bad decisions in the process of her journey is very much like me," says Kelly.
Actor and character part ways, however, when it comes to the domestic arts.
"I can't sew. That's a quality my mother had, which is why I really like that Elspeth has it," says Kelly. "In fact, I am terrible with clothes ... Honestly, I don't have a stylish bone in my body."
The triple-threat admits she's not that handy in the kitchen, either. But it is all more than compensated for on the stage, in projects as diverse as A Tribute To Dirty Dancing and David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow with Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum.
Kelly has played dark characters before - a syphilitic hag in Tim Burton's film adaptation of Sweeney Todd, for instance, and more recently The Second Mrs Tanqueray, for which she was given the thumbs-up from The Guardian's film critic Michael Billington. "Laura Michelle Kelly, last seen as Mary Poppins, banishes any hint of the nursery governess and plays Paula as restless, fiery and seductive," he said of the Victorian with a past.
"It was obviously very well written and directed," says the actress. "But she is depressing and aggressive and angry. It takes a little while to cleanse yourself of that.
"So although I liked the challenge (of playing Mrs Tanqueray), if I could choose, I would pick an inspirational character every time because I would really like to learn those traits."
But while Goddess is ultimately an uplifting story, Dickens wrestles with her own demons along the way.
Stuck in a remote farmhouse with two young sons for long periods of time while her whale-watching husband (Ronan Keating) is at sea, the former singer feels emotionally isolated and professionally thwarted.
Out of desperation, she starts performing her music to a webcam positioned in front of the kitchen sink. Before long she attracts the attention of Magda Szubanski's hard-nosed advertising executive.
Success, however, comes at a personal cost - eventually Dickens is forced to choose between motherhood and the opportunity to follow her dream .
Of herself, Kelly says: "I have been so desperate to meet the right man and have kids that by the time Mr Right comes along, I think I will just be content with that. But women are entitled to aim for a career for themselves."
For the time being, Kelly is focusing on her career - having recently collaborated with Sting on The Last Ship and on Ghost the Musical. Now based in Los Angeles, she recently sold her house in Putney.
"It's a clean state. A new start. I feel freer than ever," says Kelly, who is divorced from choreographer Nick Winston.
* SEE Goddess - opens today.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét