Best known to TV audiences as Essex man-eater Dorien Green from Birds of a Feather, popular actress Lesley Joseph will soon have live audiences roaring with laughter as, in March, she takes to the stage in the latest nationwide tour of Hot Flush! – The Musical.
In the show she plays Myra, a successful divorce barrister, whose rat of a husband has left her for a blonde bimbo. We also meet Jessica (Ruth Keeling), struggling to understand life in the midst of a mid-life crisis, while Sylvia (Lori Haley Fox) has been married to Joe since she was 20… and bored since she was 21! Helen (Anne Smith), a widow, is trying to take one day at a time; it’s just that sometimes several days attack her at once. Starring opposite the four women, Matt Slack takes on the roles of all 15 men in the various women’s lives.
Recently I managed to catch up with Lesley and I started by commenting that, with the re-launch of Birds of a Feather and the national tour of Hot Flush!, she must be very busy at the moment..
“I am really”, she replied, “I mean I’ve got five weeks off but we’re filling it with publicity and with various other bits and pieces so I am still doing lots, but I think I’m always busy, I’m very lucky like that.”
Well, as the tour is about to start, what can you tell me about Hot Flush!?
I’ve done Hot Flush! twice before, and it’s actually been staged about four times, and it’s very very funny. You could call it a menopausal musical because it’s about women of a certain age. There are four women and one man, who plays all the male roles, and it’s like an entertainment as it’s a series of vignettes, short scenes that emphasise particular moments in peoples lives.
It’s really very difficult to adequately explain it but he four women have, what they call, the “Hot Flush Club” and they meet once a week and get uproariously drunk. It’s a lot of fun to do and it has some fabulous songs. It has also got some very moving parts in it and it’s got some things that women of a certain age will really relate to, but it’s also a very positive musical so by the end we’re really saying “listen, this is the best time of your life”.
When we opened, the first time I did the show, we had to add over 10 minutes to the running time to allow for the laughter which is a huge amount and it gets what I call rolling laughs. It’s a bit like one of those saucy picture postcards from the seaside, it’s not crude it’s just funny and it leaves some things to your imagination. For me, it also gives me my musical fix for the year because I love doing musicals.
What kind of audiences are you getting for the show?
Well, Hot Flush! is in the same sort of genre as shows like The Vagina Monologues where you often get an audience who may not be particularly used to going to the theatre, which is fantastic. I think what The Vagina Monologues did was to bring a whole new audience into the theatre and hopefully gave them such a fantastic time that they will continue coming. There are a few shows like that, Dirty Dancing is another, that help to show that theatre is not just for the elite. They have opened the door for a lot of people to come in and maybe see something that they weren’t quite expecting.
Also, everyone is going through hard times at the moment and some people may not have been to the theatre for a while and what Hot Flush! does is that it gives everyone the chance to leave their troubles at the door and just have a really good belly laugh, and I think that’s what the show gives them.
How much of Lesley is in the characters of Myra and Dorien?
Nothing at all, well, when I say nothing at all there is maybe just my comic timing. I have always said that I am very unlike Dorien but I must admit to having bought half of her clothes which are now sitting in my wardrobe. I actually “found” Dorien when we did the very first series and I put on a huge pair of heals, a long pair of nails and some short tight skirts and suddenly this person trotted out of the room and that was Dorien – and she couldn’t be further from me if you tried.
Myra is the same, although the characters in Hot Flush! are not so much specific people but they are amalgamations of all sorts of women. So, in a way, you end up playing every woman although, at the same time, you are playing a specific character as well.
What’s it like stepping back into the role of Dorien after 16 years away?
Well, don’t forget, we did two stage shows during that time and that “brought us back to life again” so to speak. We did 17 weeks the first time and 12 weeks for the second and I think that’s what made the television companies think “my goodness, this chemistry has never gone away” and we knew that the characters still worked so it was just a case of taking them back to television instead of the stage.
We were worried, to a certain extent, about bringing it back because times have changed now. We are 15 years further on and we have much more internet access now than we had then and we’re much more computer literate and all these sorts of things make a difference.
We’ve got to the point where people will Tweet during the advert break or the interval of a live show and if they don’t like you they’ll Tweet and other people will know straight away so all that’s a bit scary.
And, will there be another series?
Hopefully, yes. Who knows? We’ll have to wait and see but I think that’s the plan – the Master plan. I don’t think anyone will say “yay” or “nay” until we get to the end of this series and they examine the figures but, if it goes on as it is, touch wood, we’ll do another one.
Hot Flush! – The Musical starts a full national tour from March 4th and can be seen locally at The Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells on Sunday March 9th, The Orchard Theatre, Dartford on Thursday May 8th, The Hawth, Crawley on Monday 19th May with the tour’s finale, of course, in Essex at the Civic Theatre, Chelmsford from Wednesday May 21st – Friday May 23rd. Tickets for the full tour are already on sale and can be booked through the show’s website, www.hotflushthemusical.com