BWW Interviews: Jade Ewen Of TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT!
It's a busy time when a show's well into rehearsals, ready to open in a matter of days, and then there's last-minute script tweaks. Jade Ewen, playing Dee-Dee in the forthcoming UK tour of Tonight's The Night, is calm.
Her pop career may be more high profile, but she's a seasoned veteran of musical theatre, after attending the famous Sylvia Young Theatre School as a child, when she starred in shows including Whistle Down The Wind, The Lion King and Annie.
"That was when I knew I wanted to be a performer, that was when I knew it was what I was going to do for the rest of my life," she says.
After leaving school, she pursued a singing career, becoming one-third of the Sugababes as well as the UK's Eurovision entry in 2009.
"There was still a part of me that thought, 'I want to be doing a show'!" she admits. "It was just finding time to do it - there never was the right time. But now I'm at a point where we're encouraged to do our individual projects, so when I saw the audition for Tonight's The Night, I just thought, 'I'm going to go for it.'
"To be honest, I didn't think I'd get it, because I hadn't done anything since I was about 12, so I was just popping along for the experience and hoping that someone might keep me in mind for future projects. I was really nicely surprised when I was offered it!"
She says that slotting back into the musical theatre routine has been quite easy - but a lengthy UK tour of this nature will inevitably be gruelling. Yet she's looking forward to that challenge.
"My whole career has been me being thrown in at the deep end, sink or swim - I'm used to it now, I just go with it," she says. "I think that's probably better, get the experience of it and learn from it."
She confesses she's not had to tweak her singing technique too much, having spent much of her pop career being told to tone down her power.
"It's harder doing pop recording. I've always had a big voice and a tendency to project. In a small studio booth, they're always whacking on the compressors because it's too loud for the microphone!" she says. "On stage now, I'm allowed to sing naturally, which is really nice."
Catch Jade as Dee-Dee in Tonight's The Night on the forthcoming UK tour, which opens at the Manchester Palace on Monday.
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