“I’m not going to tell you,” laughs Toyah Willcox, her face beaming, “because it’s a big impact moment that works really, really well…” It’s 25 years since I first interviewed the effervescent Eighties’ punk princess, and more than I care to remember since I first listened to her music. Tracks like Ieya, Danced and It’s A Mystery were a huge part of my youth, along with the songs of the Pet Shop Boys and hits of Meatloaf, all of which is fitting as today, via Zoom, we are talking Now That’s What I Call A Musical, the 80’s jukebox musical in which the Birmingham-born singer makes a special, one week only, guest appearance during its Edinburgh run.
No stranger to the Scottish capital’s stages, Now That’s What I Call A Musical brings Toyah back to The Playhouse, a venue she has appeared in concert many times; her Changeling Tour stopped off there in 1982 then she returned, revisiting her early hits in 2004’s Best of the 80’s Tour and again for 2017 with the 80’s Invasion Tour. And it wasn’t just her pop persona, however, that brought Toyah to 3,039 capacity theatre, in 2009 she appeared as the Queen of The Night there, in Steve Steinman’s Vampires Rock, a show she describes as “a lot of fun”.
Long before those trips to the city, it was in 1978 that the singer turned actress made one of her earliest trips to the Capital, to attend the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the premiere of the Derek Jarman movie Jubilee, in which she appeared as Mad. Two years before that, it was her Ieya Tour that saw her first play the long-gone but still remembered Tiffany’s Nightclub. She was back again in 1981 when her Anthem Tour came to The Odeon, Clerk Street, another now lost Edinburgh venue.
It was in 2000, however, that a production called Picasso’s Women saw her make her Fringe debut at the Assembly Rooms, her first acting job in the city. It was through an interview to promote the production that we first met in a rehearsal room of the old Queen Margaret College on Leith Walk. Toyah was playing painter and photographer Dora Maar and it’s a production Toyah remembers with pride as he recalls, “All of his women were completely destroyed by Picasso, he was not a kind man to women. He was a nihilist and self-obsessed and his women were all remarkable talents – Dora Maar did all the drawing for his great work Guernica, which he filled in with paint – and they were never credited with actually helping him move to his next stage.”
She continues, “He was so cruel to Dora Maar, who was his muse for the painting The Weeping Woman, which was just ridiculous, she was actually incredibly strong and he drove her into insanity. I loved being given the opportunity to play her because it was decided, just before I came on board, that Dora Maar would be portrayed in a metal room with no windows, and that she would only be allowed to walk around the edges of the walls. To portray a character with those limitation is extraordinary and I absolutely loved every minute of that challenge.”
Even then, Toyah had discovered an affinity with the historic city, “I absolutely adore Edinburgh. It still has that uniqueness, it hasn’t become homogenised. That is so cathartic,” she said and it seems little has changed. A mention of her last visit, with her husband and King Crimson legend, Robert Fripp, to play the Queen’s Hall last December, brings a huge smile to her face, “It was our first show in about three months, I’d just finished Strictly Come Dancing the day before and the audience were so good. It was an amazing night”.
With Strictly now alluded to, she’s happy to share her thoughts on being a part of the prime time BBC show when asked. “‘Go in with no experience whatsoever, it has to be a journey, you have to prove you can learn and get better and better,’ is what I was told. Which is exactly what I did only to be continually told I was rubbish. I gave 100 percent. If that’s not good enough you just have to accept that you’re not right for that show,” with a laugh, she adds, “but I didn’t think I was as bad as they made out, I didn’t get it”.
One thing Toyah definitely brought to Strictly is her endless positivity and energy, at 66 she remains an irrepressible force of nature, “I come from a very hyper-active family. I love working, I love my work. It’s certainly changing as I’m getting older but I still have a lot of energy.”
It’s that energy that also helped her through another eventful opening night in Edinburgh in 2003, when mid-performance, as the gun-slinging Calamity Jane, calamity did indeed strike when her knee became dislocated during one of her more physical moments on stage.
“My knee has only dislocated five time in my life and it’s a very frightening experience, because I’m disabled,” she shares. “But I can put it back in place. At the time, wonderful Craig Revel Horwood, the choreographer of the show, was in the wings asking, ‘How can I help?’ I replied, ‘You just have to leave this to me…”
The accident happened while Toyah was being thrown up in a trampoline by the ensemble, she takes up the story, ‘A wonderful dancer called Michael saw it all happening; one of the actors caught my ankle which twisted it and dislocated the knee. So, they carried me off stage, luckily I managed to get it back in place in about 40 seconds. I just knew that if I didn’t walk straight back on stage I’d be out. When these things happen you have to immediately face your demons but it was a difficult one, a psychologically hard moment for me; I thought if I don’t deal with this now, I won’t perform again, so I went straight back on.”
That determination is also what will see the diminutive star playing the Rewind 80’s Festival on Dubai Beach just 24 hours before flying into Edinburgh ahead of the opening night of Now That’s What I Call A Musical, on Tuesday 25 February.
The production, which stars EastEnders’ Nina Wadia and X Factor winner Sam Bailey, tells the story of school friends Gemma and April. It’s Birmingham, 1989 and the pair are busy with very important business – planning their lives based on Number One Magazine quizzes and dreaming of snogging Rick Astley. Fast forward to Birmingham 2009, and they’re confronted with their worst nightmare: the school reunion… As friends reunite, drama unfolds, and old flames reappear…
“I play myself,” explains Toyah. “The lead character Gemma is in a horrible situation, getting knocked back and knocked back and knocked back throughout the story. Her’s is a character everyone in the audience can relate to. So, by Act Two they are heavily behind her, willing her to take back control of her life and wanting her to have a wonderful future. In one scene Gemma is talking to a picture of me above her bed, which is quite extraordinary,” she laughs, “for an adult woman to have a poster of me above her bed. She looks at that poster and says, ‘Toyah, what would you do?’ and I come through the wall… but I don’t want to tell you any more because it’s a big impact moment that works really, really well. It’s quite a miraculous sight.”
Now that’s what I call an entrance.
Now That’s What I Call A Musical! guest starring Toyah Willcox runs at the Edinburgh Playhouse, 25 February-1 March. Tickets here.
