All About Manchester

Talk of the devil

From Wet Wet Wet frontman to solo jazz artist and stage musical actor, Marti Pellow has proven time and time again that he is not afraid to take risks in his career. We catch up with him at the press launch of his new show, The Witches of Eastwick.

Forty-three-year-old Marti Pellow looks perfectly at home in a room full of journalists. Decades of media training will obviously do it for you, but Pellow also has the benefit of an incredible natural charisma that makes him instantly endearing.

He moves across the room with sparkling grace, all sharp suit and toothy grin. He shakes hands with the male journos and kisses their female counterparts continental style. Then he takes a seat and gets down to business. Business on this occasion being the promotion of Cameron Mackintosh's The Witches of Eastwick, in which he plays the role of the devilish Daryl Van Horne.

If you had told him 20 years ago that he'd be the main attraction in a stage musical, he would have looked slightly puzzled.

"I didn't know anything about musicals," he admits, although he recalls watching them with his mother on the odd rainy Saturday afternoon.

But surely enough the offers started rolling in for the 90s pop sensation.

"Many years ago they approached me about Tommy and at the time I was doing 20,000-seat arenas a night singing in a band. I never saw myself in a musical; other people saw that in me and that was a pleasant surprise."

He turned down Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar, but jumped at the opportunity to step into Richard Gere's tapping shoes in Chicago, and he now says he can't wait to take to the stage as the devious Mr Van Horne in The Witches of Eastwick - a character that was immortalised by Jack Nicholson in the 1987 film version.

"Director Nikolai Foster was one of the reasons that sold it to me. His enthusiasm and passion for what he does is phenomenal and I need to be around people who can raise my game. He's a very eloquent and innovative director, and a very gentle man.

"And as a singer/songwriter I loved the score. It's quite a sassy, grisly score. The arrangements and structure of the songs are superb and some are quite funky but most importantly accessible. It's all about melody, which is something that this show has in bucketfuls."

The musical also boasts one of the wackiest characters ever conceived, Daryl Van Horne, and you must be barking mad to turn down the opportunity to get under his skin.

"This character is the devil so you can really push the envelope with the manipulation of the ladies.

"But what I love is that in the end I get my ass kicked. No change there. In the end it's about the power of the women. God damn it!"

Everyone laughs. Well, everyone except one journalist who is too stuck on one small detail to see the joke. "But you're not an actor," he points out.

"That's debatable," Pellow fires back and argues, rather unconvincingly, that there is not much difference between being an actor and being a songwriter. "They are both about engaging your imagination."

Being challenged about his acting skills in Manchester must sound ironic to Pellow. After all, this is the city that bestowed upon him his first musical theatre award after his three-week run with Chicago at Palace Theatre in 2003.

But journalists are famously fickle creatures and when we think we have hit on some sore spot we can be very persistent. So you don't have any reservations about tackling this role?

"No, no, no, nooo! Why would I want to put myself on the front line and embrace something like that for so many months if I didn't have my shit together? When I did Chicago, obviously I had a fear; I'd never done anything like that before. But I realised that by being part of a good team that could be drawn from me."

Did I say journalists can be persistent? I meant we can be a pain in the backside. Like when we insist on pointing out the obvious. Are you worried about the inevitable comparisons with Jack Nicholson?

"If you're coming to see Jack's performance please don't because you are not going to get that. That's not what I signed up for. Jack did the movie; I'm doing the musical. Why? Because I can."

No, he is not worried, he repeats. Yes, he does have something fresh to bring to the role, which is his imagination. But as he grows slightly exasperated with questions that are admittedly a bit mean, his eyes glint with something restless and that answers our questions more eloquently than any of his practised quotes.

Suddenly we remember that Marti Pellow is painfully familiar with the dark side. He has had the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, complete with substance abuse and near death experiences and he's lived to tell the story through his increasingly darker work. So what if one day he rolls into town as the frontman of Wet Wet Wet and the next as a solo jazz artist? So what if then he returns a couple of months later as a smooth-talking, horny devil in a musical? Since when has this stopped being a free country?

"People say 'I've just got you in this box, that's who you are'. Don't tell me who I am; I haven't a clue who I am, it's something that you grow into and you diversify. And to have an audience that affords you the luxury of doing that is a wonderful thing."

The Witches of Eastwick comes to the Opera House, Manchester, from October 13 - 18. For more information visit www.LiveNation.co.uk/Manchester.

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Talk of the devil

From Wet Wet Wet frontman to solo jazz artist and stage musical actor, Marti Pellow has proven time and time again that he is not afraid to take risks in his career. We catch up with him at the press launch of his new show, The Witches of Eastwick.