BWW Interviews: Mazz Murray On MAMMA MIA!

Hi Mazz! Thanks for speaking to us - how are you settling in at Mamma Mia!?

It's great fun. Absolutely brilliant. You spend most of your life thinking that being in a show is work, and then you have children and going to work is your relief! It's fabulous, I'm loving it.

And you're still part of Woman - so you're very used to doing the lady-led harmony - what do you have coming up?

We've taken a couple of months off for me to settle into this, and the girls to settle into doing other things. Last year was quite hectic for us, and so we're enjoying other things but missing each other terribly. We're working on a new album as well.

There's a certain idea that if you're a female musical theatre performer, after you turn 30 you're basically counting down the days until Mamma Mia! call...

*laughs* Roles are limited from 30 onwards, there aren't that many of them, and there's a whole bunch of us who are still mad enough to be still wanting to be in shows who are all up for the same job. Mamma Mia! is one of the favourites because there's three chances!

And they're all such different roles.

They are, they're great roles, and they represent three types of personality. I think most women have all three characters in there somewhere, so you can tune in to all of them. I'm working with such hilarious girls.

Fantastic female cast, but also a lot of very attractive young men - that can't be too bad.

They're stunning, aren't they? They're wonderful!

What's it like to sing ABBA songs? I would imagine it's probably quite difficult.

I sang Queen songs for such a long time, and I'm much more comfortable singing in a man's key, and ABBA are notorious amongst singers - all of their songs are right in the bridge of your voice, and they are really tricky to sing well. All you can do is take your hat off to the originators for having such faultless vocals and making it look easy until you attempt to do it yourself.

And the audience response is as enthusiastic as you're used to at We Will Rock You?

Yeah, but it's a different feeling - We Will Rock You is anthemic, it's a lot more like being at the end of an FA Cup Final, and Mamma Mia! is like being at the end of the wedding of the year. That's the two dynamic. They are two massive parties, but in quite different ways.

Mazz Murray plays Tanya in Mamma Mia! at the Novello Theatre.