Theatre – Anything Nose

By Viv Hardwick

Singer Victoria Simmonds couldn’t wait for her world premiere as a wooden boy in PinocchioI CAN’T tell you how my nose extends, it’s a trade secret, ” admits singer Victoria Simmonds about her world premiere lead role in The Adventures of Pinocchio at Newcastle Theatre Royal next week.”My nose grows six times altogether, every time I tell a lie, with a whole section where I tell lots of lies and learn from the error of my ways when I see my enormous nose, ” she adds about this exciting family opera created for Opera North by composer Jonathan Dove and playwright Alasdair Middleton.Victoria, who has a two-year-old daughter, Emily, has actually played the role of Pinocchio the puppet before. . . when her mum made her little red shorts with tights marked by a pen to make them look like wood and a joke shop plastic nose for a church drama group production.”It was one of the first things I ever did as a child and because my dad was the vicar I probably got an unfair advantage. We did the Walt Disney version (rather than Carlo Collodi’s classic book which is a lot darker) and my costume is not really that different.You’d never know I wasn’t wooden. . . in a good way, ” she jokes. This is the Leeds- based company’s first full-length commission for nine years and highlights the importance to it of attracting younger audiences to opera.”We’re hoping that this will excite people enough to think ‘this opera is really good fun, not boring like I’d thought it would be’. Opera is quite often funny and, quite often, just like watching a musical, although the music is usually better. Pinocchio also has a lot of those West End musical production values because of the way it looks and the music is very easy on the ear.”The 37-year-old is not that surprised at landing the role of a wooden boy and explains: “As a mezzo-soprano I get to play lots of boys and that’s not so strange, but other people do, especially my friends who are not involved in opera. They think it’s weird and they’re going to think it even weirder when I go cartwheeling across the stage in this. I wouldn’t have expected it to be happening to me at this stage of my career.”In this adaptation, director Martin Duncan has included scenes of Pinocchio being hanged by the Cat (Mark Wilde) and Fox (James Laing) to try and force him to part with some money in his mouth.”There are some dark moments, but they don’t last too long and I turn into a donkey in one scene, which is a real challenge. I have to do it on stage, there’s no creeping off to the wings. So it requires a physical transformation like you see in a movie. That’s probably my biggest challenge in the whole show, ” she says, adding that it’s a case of “wet-wipes at the ready” for Pinocchio’s final switch from wood to flesh.Pinochio will also surprise a lot of Disney fans by killing his Cricket advisor (Rebecca Bottone) early in the show and dispelling the myth of Jiminy Cricket created in the movie.So does all this have an impact on her singing role? “It’s quite mad actually. The good thing is that when I first started doing the show I didn’t have time for nerves because my role is quite full on. I’m not off-stage longer than 30 seconds for most of a two-anda-half hour show, but it’s not overly heavy singing-wise for me.”The singer was initially told by Opera North conductor David Parry to keep her dates free for Pinocchio. “The fact it was Opera North and I hadn’t worked there before was a bonus. I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to sing the world premiere of a piece that was written with me in mind. It was too good to miss, ” says the performer who studied at the London College of Music before becoming a company principal with English National Opera.She recalls that her first professional role was having to massage the back of North-East-born tenor Sir Thomas Allen. “I was so nervous because I was the first person having to sing in the whole blooming opera. . . so that was a baptism of fire.” The Adventures Of Pinocchio runs at Newcastle Theatre Royal on Friday and next Saturday. A new production of Madama Butterfly runs Tuesday and Thursday while Peter Grimes is on Wednesday. Box Office: 08448-1121-21. Www. theatreroyal. co. uk

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