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Carrie Hope Fletcher can’t wait to get back on road but there’s one thing she will need to battle each night - sleep deprivation after becoming a new mum.
The beloved West End star, 31, welcomed her first child, a daughter named Mabel Hope, on March 1 with husband and fellow thespian, Joel Montague.
While she describes parenthood as “the best thing I’ve ever done”, there’s no getting around that the lack of sleep can be a killer.
Speaking to the Standard, she explained: “Sleep deprivation is an actual torture. It genuinely is and nothing can prepare you for the sleepless nights, but nothing can prepare you for the love you feel and how everything shifts and becomes this tiny little baby that you’ve got to look after.
“It’s amazing and terrifying, it’s a cocktail of all emotions in equal measures just thrown into one. It’s a kind of love that I’ve never felt before that is all-consuming and very overwhelming.”
That type of love along with all other forms that it encompasses will be celebrated in her new 13-date tour which kicks off at the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford on September 27 and includes a stop at the London Palladium on October 1.
Similarly to her previous Open Book jaunt last year, the setlist has the potential to change every night because the audience at each venue will have the chance to influence it.
They can do this by accessing a QR code with a selection of love letters to people and things that Fletcher loves. Depending on which set of letters they pick, it changes the set list because every letter has a song that goes to it.
“It’s very complicated and very terrifying and I don’t know why I did it to myself and everybody, but it worked really well last year and it kept us on our toes and we had a lot of fun changing things up every night,” she says.
For those wondering how she will be able to remember all the different song lyrics, the London-born star - whose theatre credits include Les Misérables, Cinderella, Heathers: The Musical and Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds - has a trick up her sleeve.
She explained: “Last year we had books so I hid the lyrics in the books just in case I forgot them and I would highlight the bits that I knew I would always forget or the lyric that would always fall out of my head. This year we have letters so it will work the same.”
Speaking about returning to the iconic London Palladium, a venue she first performed at as a child in musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, she said: “I had this memory as a kid of there being a plaque underneath the stage of someone called Billy and every time we crossed under the stage, we were always told to tap the wall and say ‘Hello Billy’ because it was good luck and if you didn’t do it, it would curse that night’s show.
“I thought I’d made it up, that it was just a silly memory I had and wasn’t real, it was just something that my childish brain had invented. So when I went back, I went under the stage and there is! There is a plaque underneath the stage. I think his name was Billy Marsh?”
We’ve done some research and can confirm Billy Marsh - who was widely referred to as the "doyen of theatrical agents" - had his ashes interred underneath the stage in 1996 alongside an honorary plaque, which was "in recognition of his belief, encouragement and kindness to countless talented performers, many of whom have become legends upon this stage".
She has teased songs from musicals which have yet to make their way from Broadway to the West End including Anastasia and Beetle Juice could make an appearance on this tour.
Drawn on what her favourite love song is, the self-confessed Disney fan replies: “Someone’s Waiting For You from one of Disney’s more obscure films, The Rescuers.
“It’s a movie that’s very, very dear to my heart because it’s the film that my husband and I watched just before we got married in Gretna Green. We’re massive Disney fans. It’s such a beautiful song, especially now within the context of having a child.”
