LETTER FROM LONDON: 3/7/25

TALKING WITH THE TOWN'S NEWEST SALLY BOWLES: MARISHA WALLACE

The photo of Marisha Wallace above is the one used for her bio at the website for the London production of Cabaret. She recently began her run as Sally Bowles in the Kander & Ebb musical and has infused the long-running hit with a presence that has no need to preen even if Sally does. It’s an interesting juxtaposition: Wallace who never has to strain within the strength of her talent and Bowles who is strewn with strain. Here is what I wrote about her in an earlier column when I reviewed this newest iteration of the production:

“[Director Rebecca] Frecknall has directed Sally’s big ‘Cabaret’ number away from its being celebratory, an anthem. It is instead now a one-act set to music. It is filled with angst and anger. It is defiant. It is close to being deranged in how it troublingly tracks how sometimes the only way you can cease to feel endangered is to be perceived as rather dangerous yourself. All of Frecknall’s Sallys have had to find their way toward that without getting lost. Wallace as Sally is a wonder. I told her backstage afterward that it was the most brilliant interpretation of that title song I had heard since I saw Natasha Richardson do it for the Roundabout Theatre’s New York production at Henry Miller’s Theatre in 1998. Wallace is certainly the best singer I’ve ever heard in the role. Hell, she’s the best singer working in the London theatre. But to play Sally convincingly you have to navigate your own talent that got you such a role because Sally Bowles would have never been cast as Sally Bowles. Her neediness ain’t for nothing. It’s a balancing act and many performers stumble a bit as they try to steady themselves. Not Wallace. Sally is barefooted for much of this production and Wallace keeps those feet firmly on the stage, which is her ground and her grounding, while there above them she is baring Sally’s soul, her resolve, in a dizzying revolve of musical numbers and bohemian domesticity and entrenched Nazism. Just as Sally left England to find success and herself in the cabarets of Berlin, Marisha left America to find both in the theatres of London. When I went to see her backstage, freshly freed of her makeup, her stunning beauty was revealed along with her graciousness. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen your freckles,’ I told her. ‘I love them.’ She brings some of that freckled face girl to Sally, too, this Black Becky Thatcher in a land of White Margarets. That takes stamina as does playing the role of Sally Bowles. If you are in London in the coming months, don’t miss her in the role.”

She will also be headlining her own concert at the Adelphi Theatre on Tuesday March 11th. I’ll be there in cheering her own.

Wallace grew up on a farm in North Carolina before moving to New York where she appeared in Aladdin and Something Rotten before getting a call to come to London to appear as Effie White in the West End production of Dreamgirls. The town embraced her and told her she wasn’t going. She’s now a West End star having twice been nominated for an Olivier Award for her performances redefining the roles of Ado Annie in Oklahoma! and Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. She’s now redefining Sally as she has West End stardom itself.

So what’s it like living with Sally?

It’s been pretty crazy. For the first couple of weeks it completely consumed my life. I am slowly now integrating Marisha back into it. Sally sort of takes over. But I am enjoying doing this role every night. When people come to the stage door, they say, “You must be so exhausted.” But it’s weird. It gives me energy. It gives you as much as it takes. I am enjoying telling the story and seeing people’s reactions.

When you sang in churches in North Carolina, you have said that you knew you could make people cry there in their pews. When you played Miss Adelaide at The Bridge Theatre here in London, you have said you could see the joy and hope in the faces in the audience. The audience members surrounding the circular stage at Cabaret at those tables are very close. What do you see in their faces as you play Sally?

I see a lot of tears. A lot of women feel very seen by me. I think because I am curvy. I am Black. I am a lot of “other.” Sometimes you don’t see yourself represented onstage and so I see people seeing a lot of themselves in me. And even though Sally is delusional and a bit crazy - although to some extent we’re all delusional and bit crazy - I think they are identifying with the hurt that she feels. But they also feel her joy too, the mania of it. I think there is a kind of bipolar aspect to it all when people have those manic moments when they get so excited and there’s lots of laughter in their lives and then there is that sudden drop. We suddenly drop them down in Act II. That drop is very steep. They are taking this rollercoaster of emotions with me in the role. It’s pretty amazing.

I just went down a Sally rabbit hole. I love how everything connects. I started with Brooks Atkinson’s review of Julie Harris as Sally Bowles in 1952 in the Broadway production of I Am a Camera. I read a lot about Christopher Isherwood’s years in Berlin. But I never knew that he named her for Paul Bowles because Bowles was fascinated and had a shared affinity with Isherwood’s friend on whom Sally is based, Jean Ross. I had never known that Sally was based on her. Her life was even more complicated than Sally’s fictionalized one. Because your Sally Bowles is a Black woman did your research into the role differ from others who have played her?

Absolutely. When I do a character like this I always think: Who is she listening to? Who are her inspirations? Who would she have been trying to emulate? So that’s what I went back to. On the radio at that time were Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, and all these amazing Black American artists. And also in my version of Sally Bowles she is not who she says she is. This is all an act she’s created to protect herself, to have a job, to protect herself from the poverty she’s probably from. So I went back to that. Josephine Baker is from St. Louis. And there is no trace of St. Louis in Josephine Baker at all. She is a French woman. She moved there from St. Louis and became a star. I think my Sally would have seen that and wanted to emulate that. Billy [Porter who portrays the Emcee] and I came up with our own back story in which Billy was running this club in Berlin and invited me over and I came up with this British Mayfair act. And I have now taken this act outside of the club and it’s now just my whole personality.

I also researched Dona Drake. There were actresses of color during this time who were presenting as white or Hispanic and not black. So they would come up with a whole back story of their lives that the studios would use saying they were from Mexico or some exotic place, but they would really be from Tampa. So I thought it would be cool for Sally to use this mask to assimilate to whiteness or to assimilate into a new country. I went back to that as my reference point. It makes sense with all the delusion but it’s not just delusion for delusion’s sake. It was for survival. I thought that was interesting to explore.

I live my life as a pilgrimage. But you’ve been on quite a pilgrimage yourself from your own southern childhood to New York and now to London stardom. Do you miss America at all?

I feel like I am Sally Bowles. I left my home country to be the star I wanted to be. It’s crazy you have to do that. But Erivo has done that going the other way. So many British stars have gone to America to become famous that I thought, you know what, I’m going the other way and see what happens. In America there was just so many types they wanted to put you in. The Random Black Girl Singing a Solo. The Funny Fat Friend. The Sidekick. And I thought there had to be something more or maybe I can create something that is different. I also felt in New York that I was competing and here I think I am creating. I do miss my family and I do miss my friends. But I also know that I am creating something here that they will be able to come here and be a part of. And bringing Billy over was really the first person I could bring over with a “come join me.” And feel like what it is like to create your art without restraints.

It read in my research about you that you grew up on a hog farm. Is that right?

Yeah. I did.

So growing up around those hogs on that farm did you have any inkling that you would be a West End star in London? That you could be? Was it even in the realm of dreams?

No. I wanted to be a Broadway star. But that wasn’t until I was in high school. I was supposed to be a gospel singer. I grew up in the church and singing anything other than gospel was actually forbidden. I would hide in my room under a blanket to listen to Oldies 107.9. on the radio. It played Aretha and Whitney and Patti LaBelle and The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I would listen to all that. Those were my influences. When everybody else was listening to Britney Spears, I was listening to that. But that affected my sound and why my sound is a bit retro.

And I used to draw pictures of cities on my wall. Because where I am from was very poor . It was very impoverished. There were lots of drugs. Crime.

I’m from Mississippi. I know those areas.

I don’t think people really know what is going on in the south because it is so quiet. Although it’s not a big city, it’s got big city problems. I always knew there was a better place and I knew that I had to just get out of that town. I knew that if I was going to be anyone that I had to leave.

I left home at 19 to move to New York City. I was a baby. I was raised by my grandparents and I have only now 50 years later realized how much they must have loved me to let me go. It makes me tear up every time I now think about it. Have you realized how much your parents must have loved you to let you go?

Yes. I have. I had to get vocal surgery when I was 17 years old because I had a cyst on my vocal chords. My mom didn’t know what they were talking about. She was just like whatever needs to happen we need to get this fixed. She allowed me to get the surgery and it changed my life. I didn’t see it at the time as being such a big deal but it was huge for her to support me like that. She was working in a factory and used her health insurance to help me pay the co-pay. She made sure I was able to get into college and made my car payments when I couldn’t afford it.

They couldn’t be there for me when I was in New York because of money or circumstances. I used to cry all the time because my family couldn’t always come see me in shows. That used to really make me sad because me friends who were performing had families that were more affluent and would come to every show and be at every opening night. My parents couldn’t. Now I fly them myself to come. But they made such sacrifices for me to have this life.

Because they are church folks …

Yes. My grandmother was a pastor. My mom was a choir director and put me in all her choirs.

Are you flying your folks over to see you in Cabaret?

I’m flying my mom over.

What is she going to think of Sally, a woman who chooses yet again to get an abortion?

You know what … I think she’s going to get it. She had my sister when she was 14. There is a lot of that in my story as well. She couldn’t make that choice She loves my sister but if she could have made that choice her life would have been very different than how it turned out. Women having to make those choices is really hard. Those choices are made and people think that women go, “Oh, yeah, I’m just going to get rid of my baby.” No. It’s big deal. To keep the baby is a big deal as well. I think she’s really going to appreciate that. I think she’s going to be crying a lot.

As Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, you sang that you were a girl who just cant’t say no. What can’t you just say no to?

I can’t say no to work. To jobs. To good roles. A holiday. I can’t say no to performing because I love it. Every time I do a show, I go, “Whew, that was so hard, I’m not doing that for a while.” Then the next one comes along and they go, “You want to do this?” And I go, “Okay.” Applause is addictive.

You’re about to get a lot more fixes at your concert on March 11th.

At the Adelphi Theatre where I was in Waitress. We three women who were the leads in Waitress - Laura Baldwin and Lucie Jones and I - are getting back together for a reunion as part of it. We haven’t been together in five years. The best part is that we have a huge band and I am going to be singing all my 11 o’clock numbers.

(Above: Marisha Wallace and producer Scott Sanders and I at a screening of Sanders’s film of the musical The Color Purple a couple of Novembers ago here in London.)

I know you saw Aida - the Elton John musical not the Verdi opera - as your first big professional show when it was on tour. You were still very much a girl but your music teacher, Mrs. Grantham, who took you to see it, turned to you said: “This is what you should be doing.” One of the great Aidas was Leontyne Price who turned 95 recently, She and Eudora Welty were my Mississippi north stars. Who are your north stars?

Jennifer Holliday. I was singing “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” since I was about 10 years old. I would go sing it at state fair talent shows. At the time that song to the Black community was “the song.” Anytime anybody would sing that song on “Showtime at The Apollo” they would win. I was watching that and knew how powerful that song could be. Jennifer Holliday was the first time I heard a voice like mine in a musical. Because that growly hard gospel sound was not what was going at the time. Jennifer changed everything.

You said that people see themselves in your othernesses. What has been the hardest thing to own about yourself?

The hardest thing for me to own was that I was never going to be skinny and white. I thought I was trying to be that - well not that - but just trying to be the norm. I was just abnormal and that was okay.

But you are “normal” for yourself because you are a beautiful woman.

Thank you. But it took me a long time to be okay with that onstage. You know what I mean? Curves are beautiful and that’s just my brand and that’s great.

Did you ever hate your freckles?

I never hated my freckles. I always thought they were amazing. But I didn’t always love my body. I’ve lost 80 pounds. But even when I was bigger, I kind of knew I was fierce. I was sexy. Then I worked on my body to be stronger. I think that was a turning point for me because I finally felt so confident in my body onstage. It is now curvy and strong. And I feel that is beautiful. That has changed my performance.

Also because I never saw too many Black ingenues or Black leading ladies, I just didn’t think it was possible. All we had was Audra. We had Audra and we had LaChanze. And that was about it. The rest of the girls - Lillias White, Jennifer Holliday - had the one show. Just one. So it was like: Where do the rest of us fit? I thought that if I can’t do that, then I’ll just create my own type.

Do you have dual citizenship?

Yeah. I was just approved. I am British now. British and American. I have my ceremony coming up and then it will be real. I am about to be 40 and I feel like I have just discovered who I really am.

Because of Trump and what is happening in America, my pilgrimage is going to steer clear of America for the next four years if I can manage it. But I do have a bit of guilt about not heading home to fight back but I have been fighting these people all my life. Even calling it “home,” however, no longer feels right because it no longer feels like home. Do you have any guilt about not being there to fight back? Are you a political person? Or do you look on your career is an act of activism in its way?

I feel like I’m fighting for America overseas. People in America are looking at us. I think I am affecting America by the work I’m doing here. The world is so global now. A lot of Americans have come to see the show. And a lot of women have come up to me to thank me for doing it because they didn’t even know it was possible to do it until they saw me do it. It does feel like an act of activism in that way. I do plan to go back. I want to go back in my full power and not to what I was doing before. I want to feel like the star I am here there as well.

You’re a star but it still hasn’t gone to your pretty head yet.

Well, we’re southern, Kevin. We gotta stay humble.

I assume because of your upbringing, that you were raised to be prayerful. Are you still a prayerful person?

Very prayerful. Do you think all this came from not praying? I remember I was on my knees in 2016. Usually you just pray silently to yourself or while lying in bed. But I got down on my knees in 2016 and I begged God to allow me to get out of the situation I was in and two weeks later I got a call and was asked to play Effie in Dreamgirls here in London. And my whole life changed. And that is because of prayer.

I always pray for God's will and never anything specific. I pray to be able to surrender to God’s will. So I am glad that God in Her wisdom decided it was Her will for you to come to London and become a West End star.

Who knew. I didn’t even know this was where I was supposed to go.

I have been taught that there’s our plan and then there’s God’s.

Yes. It was God’s will and then it became mine.

Thank you for doing this, Marisha. You know I adore you. You bring a lot of joy into the world. That too is your gift.

Thank your, Kevin.

I’ll see you on the 11th.