Known for her performances in plays such as Sophie Tucker’s One Night Stand and Wicked, Didsbury-born West End actress Sue Kelvin performed the Hope Mill Theatre recently in Bette Midler and Me, a tribute to her own life and her love of the divine Miss M…
Could you tell me more about the show?
The show is called Bette Midler and Me, and though it is about Bette Midler, it is also about my life. The way the show is structured, it makes sure that our lives run concurrently. It obviously involves her music, but the music interweaves her story with my story. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also very moving show.
The reason people have particularly liked it is that they found that it’s not exactly what they expect as it’s not simply a musical tribute to Bette Midler. It’s a piece about me and growing up slightly different and not being an utterly conventional Jewish girl. It’s about being a bit like Bette – a kind of an outsider looking in.
What made you want to incorporate Bette into a show?
I was very much a fan of her and I think she’s a very important figure in show business. At the time in the 1960s and 70s, she was a revolutionary in her own way. She was, and still is, a phenomenal entertainer and an amazing female figure in music and popular culture. She’s a woman who very much ran her own show and created a totally unique presence on the stage. She dared to be different, is incredibly funny and a really fine actress as well as a singer. What’s not to like?
She’s just a real maverick and a person who’s not afraid to be different. She was never conventional and never fitted in and I really admired her for that. I think we need more people like her really.
Are you always drawn to portraying bold characters?
I did Chicago for a while, playing Mama Morton, which is loosely based on Sophie Tucker, a Ukrainian-born American singer in the 1920s and 30s. A friend of mine came to see the show and said “You should do a show about Sophie’s life”, and so Sophie Tucker’s One Night Stand was born.
I am drawn to amazing, strong, incredibly funny Jewish figures that played to their own tune. In a way, Bette Midler is the natural child of Sophie Tucker. She was this incredible woman who was not a looker by any means and didn’t have a particularly great voice but at one point was the highest-paid woman in America and was completely in charge of her own career. She was one of the great female entertainers and sadly there are now very few of them around. Joan Rivers was one too. It’s very meaningful to have played Sophie and Bette, because there’s a natural link there.
Does Judaism influence your work?
I’m not in any way an orthodox Jew, but I’ve always had an intensely strong Jewish sensibility. My humour is very Jewish. I love food, I love art, I love theatre. I love great Jewish entertainers like Woody Allen and Sid Caesar and all those comic Jewish writers. I’ve also worked with some fantastic Jewish artists like Stephen Berkoff.
Jewish audiences are as generous and warm as you will ever get. They are naturally huge theatre-goers anyway and they are completely comfortable as audiences. You always feel embraced by the audience and I really enjoy that. When I was in Sophie Tucker’s One Night Stand, when it came to singing ‘My Yiddeshe Mama’ you could hear a pin drop, or what you could hear was people sobbing in the audience and it was genuinely one of the most moving moments of my life.
Recently, I did Bar Mitzvah Boy, the Jack Rosenthal play, and we just had the most wonderful audiences. While I’m not religious, I feel at my most intensely Jewish in those situations.
Any standout moments in your career?
I recently did Wicked playing Madame Morrible and that was great.
It was very wonderful when Miriam Margolyes came to see Bette Midler and Me in Edinburgh last year. She gets a mention in the show, as we were hurtling towards that moment, I got more and more embarrassed, but we had a lovely chat at the end and she said that she loved it and I was genuinely hugely touched by that.
And a final question, what’s your favourite Bette Midler film?
Oh it’s got to be Beaches! And of course, we do a three-minute puppet show version of Beaches in the show which always goes down really well. We love Beaches and it’s such a great movie – so campy and funny and moving. I’d defy anyone not to cry at it.
