Cabaret star Madeline Brewer: ‘I see Sally Bowles as a vulnerable punk’
12.10.2022 - 00:33
/ msn.com
Orange is the New Black. And she’s certainly blazing her way through this autumn. You will be able to see her soon on TV in her Emmy-nominated role as one-eyed sex slave Janine in the latest season of The Handmaid’s Tale, and on the London stage in Frecknall’s Olivier Award-winning production of Cabaret.
Brewer will take over the role of nightclub singer Sally Bowles from Amy Lennox in a show that transforms the Playhouse Theatre into a 1930s Berlin cabaret club, with stars slipping from the spotlight to perch on the knees of audience members. “After so much TV work, I must admit I was surprised by how nervous, how self-conscious I felt back in the theatre,” Brewer tells me on a video call between rehearsals. “I’m used to being in a room with 30 people.
But they’re behind cameras or whatever. So it took a week or so to remember that singing on a stage is home to me. This is what I trained to do!”Born in the Methodist town of Pitman, New Jersey, in 1992 – and crowned Miss Pitman at High School in 2010 – Brewer studied musical theatre at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York.
“I was in musicals from the age of seven, eight. I did community theatre. But I was a very self-conscious child.
Not a natural child star at all. I loved the singing, but I found the acting harder. I had to grow into that.
Now I've done a complete 180!” Raking her hands through her hair, Brewer seems a little uneasy with the interview process and admits she’s “always happier, more alive” playing a role than being publicly assessed as herself. “I can’t do a red carpet unless there’s a character associated with it,” she says. “I’ll base that character on whatever I’m wearing and my stylist always helps with that.
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.