Kerry Ellis | Interview

Kerry Ellis is about to return to the role of Mimi in the 20th Anniversary Concert tour of RENT, her other credits include Elphaba in Wicked (Apollo Victoria, London and on Broadway), Nancy in Oliver! (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane), Fantine in Les Miserables (Queens Theatre), Ellen in Miss Saigon (UK Tour), My Fair Lady (National Theatre and Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Merry We Roll Along (Yvonne Aenaud Theatre), Magic of the Musicals (UK Tour), Svetlana Sergievsky in Chess In Concert (Royal Albert Hall), Godspell (Palace Theatre, Mancester), Children of Eden (Prince of Wales Theatre), West End Men (Vaudeville Theatre) and Beth in The War of the Worlds - The New Generation (UK Tour). Some of her solo concerts include Kerry Ellis Sings the Great British Songbook (Shaw Theatre), Anthems (Royal Albert Hall and UK Tour), An Audience with Kerry Ellis (Shaw Theatre), The Born Free Tour (UK Tour) and Kerry Ellis in Concert (London Palladium). She has released three solo recordings; Wicked in Rock (2008), Anthems (2010) and Acoustic by Candlelight (2013). I caught up with her to talk about her appearance in RENT and her career… 

When did you realise you wanted to be a performer for a living? 

There was never a question, I was always going to perform.

West End Men: Theatre Review

West End Men is a concert filled with Musical Theatre classics as well as some surprises, Currently playing at the Vaudeville Theatre until the 22nd June having previously toured last year. The show features West End talent such as David Thaxton, Glenn Carter (until 8th June), Lee Mead, Matt Willis and Stephen Rahman-Hughes (from 10th June) with special guests Kerry Ellis (until 15th June) and Carley Stenson (from 17th June). I’m glad that they’ve featured some of the more modern musical theatre talent rather than the ‘Michael Ball’ type people, they’re really updating what people think about West End leading men. Admittedly, these aren't the names I’d come up with if I was putting together this concert but they are all incredibly talented and really show why they are leading men within this show. 

The set list is interesting, for example I really liked the opening number. They mashed together Pure Imagination, Being Alive, Love Changes Everything and Music of the Night; a very odd choice of songs to put together but it was a really nice, relaxed introduction to the show. Another highlight was the West Side Story medley which opened the second act, I really liked that they paid homage to this but they went for the obvious choices of musical theatre songs like things from South Pacific, Chess and Les Miserables. Don’t get me wrong, these are great but you’d think with this more modern feel to the show they’d go for contemporary musicals as well. I would have loved to have seen some surprise musical theatre numbers in there like something from Newsies or Next to Normal or something along those lines! They were far to safe with the set list.