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Clive Rowe Gives Sneak Peek of West End Return of THE PRINCE OF EGYPT
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Oct 26, 2022
Last Thursday the popular West End musical The Prince of Egypt, based on the 1998 animated classic from DreamWorks Animation, made its triumphant return to the stage. To welcome back the epic Stephen Schwartz tuner, we sent our very own @WestEndReporter Tom Hayden Millward down to the Dominion Theatre to meet the cast's newest member Clive Rowe.
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Hello, my name's Clive Row and you're watching Broadway World UK
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Greetings and salutations and yes, there can be miracles when you believe
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because another West End musical has made it back to the stage
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Today I'm here at the Dominion Theatre to say welcome back to the Prince of Egypt
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which of course is adapted from the 1998 classic from Dreamworks Animation
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and to meet brand new cast member Olivier Award winner, Clive Row Oh What
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What words What words could I Tell you're called
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Last night Imagine that you're Imagine that you're You've had a drought for 15 months
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And you've not been able to drink water and you suddenly walk into a room and there's an ice-cold glass of water
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with the little dribblets running down the side of the glass. It was, yeah, it was like walking into a wellspring of love
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and the response from the audience was extraordinary and the emotion that myself and all the company felt
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was just out of this world. It was amazing. Deliver us. There's a magic promise us
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I always feel like a new boy at school, you know, first day at school when I walk into any kind of rehearsal space for the first time
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And also walking into the show for the first time in front of an audience
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was quite daunting for me. At least the other people in the company had done it before
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I think it's myself in two of the swings were new. But it's, I think it's part of the show
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but also the personalities that I'm working with, they just such beautiful people And I know in these interviews there a tendency to say oh everybody lovely But honestly everybody everybody is lovely
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Even Anthony Field, our company manager, he's absolutely, he's a gorgeous, gorgeous man
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If I was going to be glib, I would say 15 months of not being working. But if I was not being glib, I would say what entice me to the part was that it's, um
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It's such, it's one of those very weird small parts that is kind of fundamental to the piece
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The song itself, once I'd heard the song, You must look at your life
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Look at your life through heaven. It kind of hit me in a very kind of soft spot
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It just, it sat just right within my psyche at the moment
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And that was the idea that there is a dance. to life and to make to be part of that life you have to join there's no way that you can sit back
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from it you have to be part of that um and uh i'd heard such fantastic things about it i'd i'd done a
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workshop with gary and debby currup who are cast members uh prior to coming in and before i knew
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that i was going to come into the show and gary was playing jethro before me and and they spoke so
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highly about the producers and about the cast and about the show so that when i was asked and
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because Gary's gone off to do a different show to come in, it was like, yeah, yeah, I want to be part of that
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And I want to sing this song, and I want to create this part. The depth of this score is extraordinary
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And, you know, if I'm being brutally honest, I spent a lot of the story. I spent a lot of the rehearsals thinking, oh, these are nice songs
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Oh, yeah, this is, that's a nice song, you know, footprints in the sand, yeah, that's quite nice, you know
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When we got in with the Zitz Probe and I heard the orchestration of the piece it astounding It not just good it astounding I would put it up there with all the work that he done
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He's such a prolific writer and he knows how to do a good tune
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but to not lose the narrative of the piece. And that's what great writing is
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It's not that the tune is more important than the actual what is being said within the piece
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Because if you don't have the framework underneath it, if what is being said is not important and doesn't make sense
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then what is the point? You might as well just go and watch a concert of the music, you know
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And it's the marrying of those two things, and then with the visual, the actors and the dancers are extraordinary
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The choreography is extraordinary. The music is extraordinary. I don't want to refuse too much, but it is just, it's a wonderful, wonderful piece of theatre
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When you be Somehow you win Luckily, I was asked to watch
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The animated film On the first day that I came into rehearsals
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By David, who is the MD He said, you might want to have a little watch of that
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And so I went back dutifully and I watched it And again, it was fantastic
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It's a lovely little piece I can now understand why so many young people love it so much
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The amazing thing that, from what I've seen, because I have seen little bits of it from out front
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but what DreamWorks and the producers and the director have done is that they've paid homage to the animation
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They give you that visual kind of feast that you get, but they've also gone, this is narrative, this is a story, this is our version
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and they draw you in. I mean, honestly, if you haven't seen it, you have to sit in that auditorium and listen to the end of the
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at the end of deliver us. It's extraordinary. I was upstairs in my room and it was like
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oh my goodness I thought England had scored again You know it was it was crazy It was absolutely crazy Well I think there should definitely be
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Well, I think there should definitely be a Broadway transfer. I'm amazed that it's not been that it's not been
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said already. I don't know what Broadway is waiting for. The New York audiences would absolutely love it. They'd love it more if I was in it
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But they would absolutely love it. Yes, this piece has got to travel the world. It's not
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just Broadway. It's got to go everywhere. It's, and because the story, the central story
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is, even though it's based on a biblical story with the story of Moses and it's actually
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about mankind. It's about how powerful one person can be. if they have the right ideals and the people around them and how they can change the world if they just strive for what they want and the goodness that's within people's hearts
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The Prince of Egypt is currently performing under social distancing guidelines, but intends to revert to full capacity as soon as practically possible
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So come and enjoy this epic story, which boasts a stirring musical score by the one and only Stephen Schwartz
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and a production design of biblical proportions. See you next time, folks, on Broadway World, UK
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There's a lyric in that song that I think resonates so brilliantly today
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or is this the beginning of the new and bright of the... Yes, yes
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What goes through your head when you sing that thing? What's my next line? No, what goes through my head
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