When elfin, gay, 27-year-old Jack Wolfe was cast as Gabe, the teenage son of Caissie Levy’s mentally unwell suburban mother in Michael Longhurst’s Donmar production of the Broadway musical Next to Normal, he already ‘had history’ with the show.
‘I grew up in this tiny Welsh town [Cei Newydd] no one has ever heard of and in the kitchen we had the one family desktop computer. Aged 14 I discovered the Tony Awards on YouTube, and watched the Broadway cast doing the big kitchen argument scene over and over,’ he recalls. ‘That Christmas I got the vocal selections book to play on the piano and the soundtrack to listen to in the car. I discovered that musical theatre could be current and real. It was a hugely formative show for me growing up.’
