Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Star of West End musicals, known for performing in Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre.
On the island
Eight records
Well, this was the probably the most difficult uh one to choose of all. And I've chosen uh the opening of company.
Well, from the marriage of Figaro I would like poor Gia more.
Robert McFerrin and Adele Addison
My third record is um George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and I'd like Bessie as my woman now.
Daphnis et Chloé (Lever du jour)
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
I would like a track from Daphnis and Chloe, because I think this would be a wonderful track to wake up on the Desert Island to every morning.
Ah well, coming to Broadway, this lady reminds me of Broadway, and I'm a great fan of hers. She's Barbara Cook, and I'd like a track from her latest L. P. Called It's Better With a Band, the track called Them Their Eyes.
The Dream of Gerontius (Excerpt)
Richard Lewis with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent
Oh, record number six. I'm going to have A Bit from the Dream of Grantius, Richard Lewis.
SkylarkFavourite
I'd like um Hoagie Carmichael singing Skylark, because it's my favourite song.
I love Ethel Merman. I think she's terrific. She makes me laugh. And I'd like her to sing Blow Gabriel Blow. I saw her in New York on stage with Mary Martin. I think it was one of the best theatrical experiences I ever had.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30Could you endure loneliness?
I find it very difficult. I'm a terrible chatterbox. I find it most difficult, I think, not talking to anyone.
Presenter asks
2:51Any family precedents for the performing arts?
Not really, although my mother has the most beautiful voice to this day, and I think she would have been a singer if uh if ladies went into the theatre at that time.
Presenter asks
3:33What was your first ambition?
To get married and have children, I ... I mean, I didn't have any ambition to come in the business because it seemed such a world apart from the world I knew, and it was what other people did.
Presenter asks
4:37By the time you got to the Guildhall School of Music, had you acquired a vocational feeling about it?
No I wish that I had. In fact, I I wasted a good deal of my time at Guildhall. I wish I had had that time again.
The keepsakes
The book
Moss Hart
Frightening choice. I've gone for something quite flippant, really. But a wonderful book, and a book that I come back to and read almost every year, and it always makes me laugh, and it always makes me cry, and it's Moss Hearts, Act One.
The luxury
Presenter asks
8:21What was the first job you found?
The first real job, I suppose, was a fluke. I was asked to go up to oh, somewhere in the North, I can't quite remember now to understudy the leading lady in Rosemarie. ... and when I got up there she'd hurt her back. The first understudy had laryngitis, and the second understudy had screaming hysterics, because she didn't know the path. And where angels fear to tread, I'd only seen it three times. I said I can do it ... and I went on, and I didn't make one mistake.
Presenter asks
25:46Julia, what are your qualifications as a castaway? Could you look after yourself?
I think eventually I think it might be slow going at first.
“I can't bear being interrupted when I'm playing things that I really love. I like to be completely transported, so there'd be no danger of that on the Desert Island, would there no one would come in and interrupt me.”
“I've put some restrictions on myself. Um one was that I wasn't going to play in the records by friends because as there are only eight choices, I have many more than eight friends who record and they'd all thump me if I didn't choose it.”
“I've been quite a late developer as far as um having any publicity is concerned, though I've been around for an awfully long while. People haven't been aware of me because of this taking over business.”