BWW Interviews: END OF THE RAINBOW's Stephen Hagan

Hi Stephen, welcome to BWW:UK. It must be exciting being involved with such a successful show.

Yes, it's been amazing - from doing it in Northampton at the start of lastyear, and then coming into the West End, and it taking off, it's been very exciting.

And that must have been a great experience too.

It's nice coming into the West End, and it's nice to get home and be on the sofa by 10.30 at night!

I suppose Tracie [Olivier-nominated Tracie Bennett, playing Judy Garland] doesn't have that luxury.

I'm normally out by the time she's finished the encore! She's got make-up and wigs to take off so it takes her longer to get out, never mind wind down.

You guys offer such support to her - is it emotional for you too?

It is hard work. Sometimes you have to remind yourself, when you're being shouted at and getting a constant tirade of abuse, and trying to keep her on the straight and narrow, but it's quite exhausting for all of us, to be honest, to be on stage with that presence and that whirlwind running about the stage, it's definitely a challenge for all of us.

Your character, Mickey Deans - did you know anything about him?

I didn't know anything about him until I auditioned for the part, and when I started to do a bit of research, I started to find out a lot more. He's one of those ones who falls by the wayside - everybody knows about her other husbands, the famous ones, but there are two that nobody knows anything about, one of which is Mickey Deans. Also I found out that a lot of their life was based in London, which was also quite interesting - they ended up marrying in Chelsea and living around Sloane Square. These are the things you don't hear about Judy Garland's life until you look into it.

How did you go about researching the role?

The first port of call was he'd written a book about Judy Garland, called Weep No More. Everybody who's seen the play will know him as Judy Garland's fiancé, but he was actually a very good jazz pianist himself, and he was very musically minded, which isn't really touched upon in the play. He still kept trying to get vaudeville theatres up and running again, with variety acts, which is something nobody knows about, so obviously he didn't do a very good job of it. He seems quite cocky, quite arrogant, in the sense that he thought he could bring Judy Garland back to being the big star that she was. But when she was in the state she was in at the end of her life, it's very hard to change someone.

Do you feel sympathy for Mickey?

I felt that there's a lot of people who think he's just an evil being, but I think he did love her in his own way. He felt that he was looking after her. Once he realised that she couldn't survive without the drugs, because she'd been on them for so long, he thought that he would be able to look after her by looking after the drugs, but obviously that led from one thing to another. Whenever a person has been on prescription medication from such a young age, it's very hard to change that.

That comes across in the show - the ambiguous way that Mickey's motivations are played. The obvious thing would be to play him as a villain.

That's one of the big things. The script is a dramatisation; once you read it, you realise that he was backed into a corner. He tried everything that he could until he realised the only thing that could get her back on stage was if he kept her on the drugs. I don't think he did that in an evil way or a bad way, to harm her, but in a way that he thought he would be able to bring her back to her former glories.

How long do you have left in the run?

It's seven weeks.

Now, Tracie said at the Oliviers that there's talk of Broadway.

There's talk. There's also talk of a national tour in the autumn, but that's the furthest any chat has gone at the moment.

What do you have lined up for the summer then?

Just before I started the show, I filmed an ITV drama called Injustice, which is out over the summer. It's a lawyer drama. Once I'm out of the Trafalgar Studios, it'll be on with trying to find the next thing!

End of the Rainbow is running at the Trafalgar Studios.