Award-winning singer Self Esteem says she is having “the best time” after making her stage debut in the hit musical Cabaret.
The musician, real name Rebecca Lucy Taylor, plays dancer Sally Bowles in the show set in a Berlin nightclub as the Nazis rise to power. Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears stars as The Emcee.
Taking on roles first played in this production by Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne, she said they were having “the best time”. She added: “I’ve just loved it, it’s the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole life. I feel so looked after and cared about and the music industry didn’t do that for me.”
The Mercury Prize-nominated musician previously produced the music for Jodie Comer’s award-winning one-woman show Prima Facie.
She said: “I learned a lot from Jodie Comer for sure. I loved making music for theatre because I really wanted to be in theatre. That project was so important and so aligned with what I’m about. Cabaret and Prima Facie are both very Self Esteem adjacent projects so I’m so lucky. For me it all makes complete sense.”
Shears said appearing in the show at the Playhouse Theatre, which is transformed into the seedy Kit Kat Club, was like being in an episode of This Is Your Life. He worked with Sir Elton John and playwright James Graham last year on Tammy Faye — a musical about a US TV evangelist — and said watching his co-stars in Cabaret inspired him to write a song for the show, which was recently shortlisted in the best musical category at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
He said: “Something just clicked when I was watching that and I went and wrote a new set of lyrics that we are working on a brand new song right now so it’s just like it all feeds in and it’s one big ball of something”.
