Hi Caroline. Welcome to BWW:UK. What led you to wanting to do an album and why now?
Hi. Well, I have always had the idea that I may record an album some day, but I didn’t just want to do an album of all my audition songs. I think new musical theatre is developing in a really interesting direction so I wanted to bring the new writers of today into a bit of a spotlight.
I had the idea when I was working in Leicester on The Light In The Piazza. It was such a special experience and such an honour to work with Adam Guettel that I felt the need to save some of it for posterity. It was then that the idea came to me about showcasing new writers of musical theatre and it all stemmed from there.
So it was a conscious decision not to choose the well-known musical theatre songs that people would be able to recognise just by reading down the CD cover? Aren’t you concerned that there are people that won’t buy the CD because of this?
I think, that even though I have tried to highlight new writers there are still names that people will recognise, it’s not an undiscovered writers album. Maybe that will be my next one!
There are some songs on it, which are completely new and unrecorded which I am really proud of. I’m especially pleased to have a song on the album that was originally written for my character in The Witches of Eastwick, but was cut after the fourth preview.
That’s the song Isn’t This What Every Woman Wants?
That’s the one. It’s a very sweet song, but was at the wrong place in the wrong part of the show so it had to go, but that’s showbusiness! I’m so pleased to be able to revisit it on the album, and I have Sarah Lark and Jasna Ivir on the song playing various Townswomen, so it was a bit of a reunion for us as well.
Were there any songs that as soon as you decided to do an album that you knew you wanted on there?
Yes. I definitely wanted to put The Light In The Piazza on there. I also wanted to do Carrie Makes a Decision, which is a song by Grant Olding from a musical I did of his called Three Sides. Once I started with a couple of ideas the rest just slotted in. I mainly started with writers I liked and then chose the material from there. I have sang with Jason Robert Brown and Georgia Stitt at concerts they have done in London, so I put the songs they chose for me to sing on there too.
You have your husband duetting on one of the songs with you. Did you always know that you wanted him singing with you or did you choose a song and then decide that he’d be a good choice to sing with you?
