In Conversation With... Rowan Macpherson
If you’ve visited our venues over the past few years, Rowan’s face might be a familiar one. Ahead of exciting career news, we sat down with the Front of House team member, performer and musicologist (don’t worry, we’ll get there) to hear about what they’ve been up to.
Written by Aaron Cawood
When I sit down with Rowan, I’ve caught them before one of their last shifts at The Grand ahead of what is set to be a very exciting summer. We’re sat on the sofa in Bar 1878 – the building around us is slowly rustling to life ready for a matinee of Rocky Horror Show, and Rowan is already in their uniform.
It’s nice to get to sit and talk with her, really – anyone who has known Rowan in her time so far at LHT knows that she is constantly up to one adventure or another so, while I see her in passing a lot, I am excited to have ample time to pry. We’ve got fifty minutes before they’ll be starting work, and a lot to get through;
Tell us about your time at LHT so far – what’s the history?
“Gosh,” she sighs, throwing her eyes to the back of her head as if recalling distant memories. With a knowing smile and a laugh, she goes on;
“I’ve been here since September 2018, so nearly seven years. I started when the teams were separate, so I started as a Front of House member. And then obviously we had the pandemic, so I wasn’t here for a bit. The teams merged, then, so I was Bars and Front of House, and then, as of the past year, I’m back to being Front of House again! So I’m a Front of House girlie through-and-through.” I catch her laughing at herself; “It’s been crazy. I’ve gone through like seven different haircuts.”
So, what does a day at work look like now?
“I’m here,” they say, and it sounds like a complete answer. “When I’m here, I’m just here, you know? I’m vibing. Me and Andrew will play Switch in the morning.” She’s referring to another member of the team with whom she lives; Andrew, who you might remember from another interview on the blog. “I’ll come in super early.” We get distracted for a while talking about Mario Kart, and Rowan’s plans for getting a Switch to pass time in her dressing room for the summer. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
Rowan in their natural habitat
What’s your favourite venue and why?
“City Varieties,” they say so assuredly, and so fast it almost snips off the end of my question. “I just vibe with it more – I always have a better time there. Some of my favourite shifts are always at The Varieties. Even though I love a musical, obviously, and I love loads of the stuff we see here [at The Grand], I discover more at The Varieties. I’ve discovered a lot of comedians.”
That leads us to the next question – what’s your favourite show you’ve seen? Or discovery you’ve made, I guess.
“That’s huge,” says Rowan, with wide eyes. “Oh gosh. A big one is Grace Campbell. She’s a City Varieties queen. I’ve seen her so many times – you can always count on Grace. And I always get on well with the audience, because it’s Grace Campbell.” We eat into our time, again, by enthusing about Grace Campbell for a while. “There are things that I’d never seen that I finally saw [at The Grand]…” There’s a pause before they excitedly say “Sister Act! What year was that?” It was 2023. “That’s wild – was Sister Act that long ago? I hate that. Wild! I’d never seen it, and I really, really vibed with it. And Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), obviously.”
It’s an unwritten rule among staff at LHT that we sort of all unanimously adore Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) – and from its two visits here, the audiences seem to agree! We get distracted, laughing as Rowan, for the third time so far, says “Off the record,” and tells me a story. We have only been sat down for five minutes. There’s a funny moment, as she’s saying “Oh, I’ll absolutely dance at the curtain call at work,” she breaks out into a brief rendition of Sunday Morning Fever, from Sister Act. It’s essentially note perfect, and then I’m the one rolling my eyes knowingly – there’s still a few questions before we get to Rowan’s immense talents.
What’s your favourite memory of working here?
“Well I met Andrew, who I live with, so that’s pretty good. I made a bestie. I wouldn’t have Andrew without LHT so thank God for LHT – kinda cute! And I love a panto. I used to work at a panto back home, and it’s nowhere near as fun. This panto here, I’m seated! I’m sat. I just love it – so much joy. I think it’s because I love live music.” Our Rock ‘n’ Roll Pantos at The Varieties really are a sight to behold, especially as thousands of audience members over the years will attest to!
“I have one memory that will never leave me, like it is burned into my brain, and it was after we reopened from COVID and it was when everything was run on pre-orders, so nobody could order things at the bar. We were still social distancing. So, I was working on stalls, and I was still wearing the shoes I wore at school because they were my smartest shoes – I didn’t have my Docs at this point.” Rowan has an iconic pair of black Doc Martens that I would call an integral part of her personal brand – she’s wearing them now.
“And it was this run of comedians in 2021, and we were using the backbar stairs. So I was running up and down all shift – from Upper Circle, where we were doing the pre-orders, to Stalls, with these paper bags that kept breaking. I had countless blisters on my feet after this one shift, and I remember that’s all we did all week while we reopened. And I’m clumsy! And I think I can carry more than I can! So, I’d be carrying them, and the handles would break, and there’d be cans on the floor, rolling down the stairs, it was like a farce. A satirical movie.” We joke that the whole ordeal sounds like a Mischief show. Front of House Goes Wrong. “I actually remember, this is so funny, do not put this in…” And then Rowan tells me another hilarious story. I am highly tempted to put it in, because it is so very funny, but my journalistic integrity must win out.
We obviously wanted to sit you down because of exciting theatre stuff happening in your life – this interview is only happening because you’re booked, busy and blessed. Where does your theatre backstory begin?
“Started when I was eight – like everyone does, at local amdram. But I actually started because it was, like, a local summer school thing where they do a show in two weeks, at my local theatre where I ended up working. I’ve got two older sisters, and we all did it. Comparatively to other things, it was pretty cheap childcare there, so they ended up with loads of kids – so they’d put on a show with 80 kids, or whatever. My mum’s always been to theatre. She’s how we all got into it. We sort of having a running joke now because, obviously she raised me on it, but then I really took that and ran a bloody marathon with it, and got way too into it, and decided to do it as a job.”
“And I nerd out on it all the time, so now my mum will be listening to Elaine Paige on Sunday and say to me ‘Oh, is this so-and-so,’ and I get to be like ‘Oh, I’ve raised you so well.’ Because I just went so far with the theatre nerd thing and now all I do is talk to her about it. We were watching Legally Blonde on the train yesterday and I’m sat there like ‘so he was in Falsettos originally, but then he was in the Falsettos revival, and then they did this together!’ – So that’s what she’s encouraged in me.”
Rowan as Moritz in Spring Awakening
“I remember being fourteen, and this is a rogue show to do with 40 kids in Telford, but we did Songs for a New World.” Songs for a New World is an abstract song cycle where four performers play a vast number of characters going through ‘turning point’ moments. So, yes, a rogue choice. “It was, unironically, one of the best things ever. And, since it’s not the most well-known show, it was not as well attended as it definitely should’ve been because there are people in it who were extraordinary and are now on the West End. If you looked back at the kids in it now, there’s at least five of them who have been on the West End in the past year. From Telford, all of places! Not a particularly well-funded area, or culturally diverse area, and yet it’s this little pocket of the world. Big up Telford!”
“But yeah, I remember doing Songs for a New World, and my older sister was doing it, and me and my other sister had a duet. I remember rehearsing one of the songs, because the music in that show is so up my street, it’s one of my favourite shows – I remember rehearsing one of the songs and being like ‘Oh. I really want to do this.’ Like that was when the switch flipped, at fourteen. Like – I love this. This is my thing, actually. Absorbing it, but also performing it. That’s what I’m going to do. But then I got to eighteen, and I was always an academic girly, so I decided I wanted to go uni. I was a Maths girl, so I was off to do Maths and Music as a joint honours. I just had it in my head – I was going to uni, and that was always my path. “
“Never even considered drama school, I was too scared. Because in my head my logic was, if you’re going to go to drama school and you’re going to do Musical Theatre, you have to be in 100%, you have to put all of your eggs in one basket, and dedicate everything to it. And I get where I was coming from, but that’s not realistic for anything. Nobody nowadays is 100% just a performer, that’s not financially viable. We all have to do different things. It’s like 0.2% of people who are lucky enough to not have to do another job again. So I do get where I was coming from at the time, and that was it – I basically chickened out. I never even auditioned for drama schools. So I went to uni, to study Maths and Music, in Leeds. And that’s how I’m here! And that’s how I met you.”
“Failed three Maths exams,” they go on, so matter-of-factly I can’t help but laugh. “Re-sat two of them in summer, whilst at Edinburgh Fringe. So I had a week at Edinburgh Fringe with my a capella group, which is my other personality trait. Midway through the week, I had to come back – I did two shows, came down on the Tuesday night, missed a show on the Wednesday to re-sit the exam, then went back Wednesday night after the re-sit. My mental health was shattered.” Rowan contextualises their first year at university to me with further details, and the story she’s telling only becomes more impactful. “It was the worst week of my life, and I just went back up and finished the week at Fringe. I don’t know how I did it. It’s one of those things that makes me look back and go, well, if I can get through that, I can get through anything. And looking back, I was such a fragile little bear. I’d still find it tricky now, but I’d have ways to cope. I do not know how I did it. But that thought’s got me through every hard day ever since – if I can get through that, I can get through anything. I’m tough as nails, mate!” We’re both laugh again before she amends herself; “I’m really not. But I can actually do anything.”
“I came back to Leeds for a week after Fringe had ended and it felt like all of my dreams had run away and everything was really sad, and I still had another re-sit to do! But it was okay because after that exam that morning, I got on a train to Sheffield and I was a part of the street party for the filming of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.” Rowan, for as long as I’ve known her, has always had a knack for dropping insane stories you somehow haven’t heard before like it’s nothing. “I mean, you can’t see me, because there was thousands of us, but I was there! I look completely different because, obviously, different haircut. But I was right in front of where Richard E Grant was on the balcony. He was throwing popcorn to us. Core memory. It was the wildest two weeks of my life. Yeah… What was the question again?” On the tape, I let out a stupidly loud cackle and remind Rowan that we’re talking about their theatre backstory.
“Oh yes – end of first year, pass those exams to go into second year, but I drop Maths. So just music from then on. Did two more years, finished, first class degree, BA in Music. Wrote my dissertation about musicals, obviously. And then, because COVID had hit during my second year, I had never done at musical at university, like in the society. And I wanted do more a capella and stuff because I wanted to musical direct again, and do the arrangements and whatever because that’s my thing. So I did a Masters. Because I could. I did a Masters in Critical and Applied Musicology, because I could align it with my skillset.” I pause to ask Rowan what Musicology actually is, and I learn that it’s the study and research surrounding music. Rowan, the musicologist. “All I did for a year was write essays. And I wrote some fun essays. Go on, ask me what my essays were about?” I indulge them. “One of them was titled ‘Let me be your father figure’ and it was looking at George Michael as a socioreligious figure. It was really fun. And then my actual Masters dissertation was about the role of the Bond girl in the musical landscape of Daniel Craig’s Bond films – so how much was the musical language informed by the women, essentially.”
“So I graduate, I finish my Masters, and then I work here full-time for six months while I try to get more of a career job. And then I do, when I end up working in a secondary school. But while I’m here, I remember being on the bus one day and being on the phone to my mum and going… actually, other than the obvious financial hurdles, there’s nothing physically stopping me from trying to do musical theatre. I was looking at Masters courses then, but you can only be funded for one Masters degree in the UK. And then, on a whim, I did one more show at uni – I went back do one the year after I’d left. And they’d filmed all those shows I’d done with uni. There was three and they’d filmed them all, so I just cobbled together a reel. I don’t have a self-tape setup, but I’ve got clips of me on stage. I emailed about forty agents over two stints, and I got meeting requests from two. I just emailed every agent I could get a hold of whose books were open, and I got two replies that weren’t rejections. One of them didn’t get back to me about a meeting, so I met with one, and they signed me. And that’s how I got an agent. And I’m so glad that I met with the one I met with, because I love my agent.”
“So, crazy. And after that, he told me I needed to get new headshots. This was October 2023, and then it’s just silly, silly whirlwind. December I got the headshots done which meant that January, new year, start of 2024 they could launch me as their new client. So I had some tapes for things and then February 10th 2024, I had my very first in-person audition… which was for Babies. And they didn’t recall me. The casting director had said I was still in the mix but me, not knowing how these things work, I was like – well I’m not getting the part. They’re seeing other people and they’re not seeing me.”
“Fast forward to February 19th – I’m still at work, at the school, and I get a call from my agent. I really shouldn’t answer my phone, but my agent’s never rung me before. And it’s that thing, that your agent only really rings you when you got the job. So I answered, and I got the job.”
Babies is a WhatsOnStage Awards-nominated pop-rock musical, staged at The Other Palace in 2024, surrounding a group of teenagers tasked with taking care of plastic simulator babies for a week. Rowan was cast as Cover Jasmine/Alex/Lulu.
Rowan outside The Other Palace
Babies feels like a turning point – what was that process of your first professional contract like?
“Well, I had three days to accept the offer. So now I had to look at my finances, I had to look at whether the school can accommodate it; can I be cheeky and ask for time off? I was a Music and Drama technician, so I assisted those departments, which was so much fun. Can I afford it if I quit my job? Can I justify it if I don’t have a full-time job to come back to? Because I knew it was a fixed, ten-week contact. So, I accepted the offer two days later, and then it was just ‘now let’s see if the school comes through and let me have the time off.’ And they did! They let me have ten weeks off. If I’d have worked in the science department, it would’ve been harder. But I worked hands-on with the choir, I ran music theory club, I was basically in the Drama department. By the time I finished the contract, I knew I’d have learned so much, my mind was going to be blown, and I think that can be really valuable to kids in those departments.”
“What was really nice was, I was twenty-four, and there were some people in the cast who were twenty because they were still in their final year of drama school. There were at least five debuts, out of a cast of twelve.” The D-word has been dropped; debut. Debuting is rite of passage for performers – whether that’s a professional debut, a West End debut, the debut of a cover playing a certain role for the first time, or otherwise.
Rowan posing with a titular 'baby!'
In Babies, Rowan was a cover for multiple roles, which meant that they were only on-stage when cast predisposition or engagements meant they had to step in. I push Rowan on what debuting felt like amidst this whirlwind; “It was crazy. We’re coming up on the anniversary, because it was halfway through the run. It was crazy anyway because it was a Sunday, and I just knew the night before that I was going on. I knew that I was going on, and I knew which track it was going to be. I think, because I knew… well, I knew that the girl I was covering wasn’t feeling well.” More laughter.
“It’s that thing – you don’t want to get ahead of yourself, and you want your colleague to be well – but in my head, I just knew in my gut that it was happening. It was two weeks into the run, and everyone was working so hard, and I just knew I was going on. I couldn’t sleep, because I was running the track in my head all night. I woke up to a call from the Company Manager asking ‘How do you fancy making your professional debut?’ And I think I said ‘F*ck it, let’s do it.’ And the craziest thing was, it was Father’s Day, and because of the Sunday matinee times, it meant my parents could come last minute from Stafford to London to see it. Two-show day, debut. Wild. And then, the next weekend, I debuted another track. And then on the Tuesday after that, I did my third track. Swingo!” Swingo is one of my all-time favourite theatre terms. It refers to swing/cover performers hitting a proverbial ‘bingo’ by performing all of the tracks they’re contracted to cover. It’s not always a guarantee for covers and swings that they’ll ever get to go on for each track – so, when it happens, it’s fabulous. “I did all three of my tracks within nine days of each other. Swingo. And I did eleven performance all together. It was two weeks of not being on stage, and just running the show with the other covers, and then two weeks of being on stage most of the shows, and then two weeks of not being on stage. It wound up all being so concentrated, it was really hard.”
“It’s that thing, again, of being like – I did that. I can’t believe I did that. I remember when I got offered the job, because I’ve seen friends swing before, and I think they do swing projects at some drama schools, but you can’t be taught to cover with the same intensity that you’ll feel when you’re in the job. So, I remember thinking at the time, I guess the only way anyone knows if they can be a swing is to just do it. So I guess I’m just going to have to do it! And I really didn’t think someone with my wibbly wobbly brain could do it. But it’s so interesting, and actually what I found is that it wasn’t the retention of the information [of learning all the tracks], because I actually think now that if it had been a longer run, I could have covered the other three female tracks on the show too. It’s not about the space in your brain for the information, it’s actually about time. You just need the time to rehearse it. Like, I need to be able to physically walk through the path on stage before I can do the track – it’s not hypothetical, I have to physically do it before. I’d have my cheat sheet for everything I did in the show for each character, and I’d literally walk through the whole thing double speed – move this locker here, and then we go out, and then we go there. We’d do a rehearsal for the more technical number, and that was it. Then I was on. I debuted my first track before we’d even had our first cover rehearsals.”
“If I can do it, I think anyone can.” We both chuckle at this, but Rowan’s being sort of serious. “Because I was dead set, I didn’t know how I could physically do the job. If you study it, you actually just can.” She does then tell me a story about going on stage and briefly forgetting her baby which, in a show called Babies, about plastic babies, is very funny.
So, we’re building up to talking about what you’re doing this summer – but what has been happening between Babies and that?
“A whole load of, lucky me, workshopping new musicals.” This comes with a big smile. “There’s one composer in particular who I’ve worked with twice, called Carmel Dean. She’s going to be a lot of my summer. But I’ve worked on two shows with her now, on project for a few days in October and then the other was in January. So it’s kind of leapfrogged and then we went back to the first one in May, so just finished two weeks doing that, and then the one we did in January is going to full production this summer. So I’ve worked with her a lot.”
“I’ve worked on one I can’t talk about because it’s not been publicly released, but that was incredible. I did a ridiculous show which was the most intense week that just felt like a day, called Jane at The Other Palace, which was Jodie Steele’s musical. So we rehearsed that in… three days? Three days. And then three days of shows. Three days, and five performances. It was wild, and Martha Geelan was directing it, who directed Babies, so I loved that. It was the best thing, and the wildest cast. All of that when, a year prior, I was literally getting my headshots done.”
“In the past year that’s been my life, and when I’m back on stage this summer it’ll be a year since I was on stage. But in that time I’ve worked on about four or five new projects. Four, and I did a new musicals concert at Birmingham Hippodrome. New work! Love new work!”
Go on – tell us about what’s happening this summer.
“So it’s a new musical. Maiden Voyage. This is the world premiere production of it, at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant. It’s been workshopped once in the UK and once in America, years ago – obviously, I did the UK workshop. It’s based on a true story, set from 1986 to 1990 and it’s about the first all-female yacht crew to race around the world in the Whitbread boat race.”
“Women weren’t in sailing at all. So, come 1986, this sailor was looking forward to the Whitbread in 1989 and she got her best friend Jo on board to cook. And she wasn’t a sailor at all, but she gets her on to cook because she wants her with her because she’s her friend. And then she puts the word out, and assembles this crew of women from around the world, and they’re the first women to ever do it. And the media backlash is horrendous. It’s all completely derisive. Literally, one of the headlines called them a ‘tin full of tarts.’ And that’s what they were known as.”
“The music’s really fun, it’s very nautical. When we workshopped it before, it was piano, cello and violin, so it was really nautical feeling. The music’s by Carmel Dean, who’s an Australian composer – Grammy-nominated Carmel Dean. And Mindi Dickstein has written the book and lyrics, who wrote the Little Women musical among other things. So, how iconic? I play a woman called Sally, who is a sailor from Scotland, and she works at the helm. Yep, I’m Scottish in the show, and that’s a delight for everyone. Come hear my highlands accent.”
“Southwark Playhouse Elephant. Previews start Sat 19 July, opening night on the Sat 26 July , closes on Sat 23 August.” Reader, please know that Rowan does not have a press release in front of her – her excitement and passion for the project is genuinely just spilling out.
Rowan’s final words of wisdom…
It’s only as I’m asking Rowan for some final words of wisdom that I clock the time; we’ve flown through 45 minutes, and she needs to start her shift in five. They ask me with a smile; “Shall we walk and talk? Let’s walk and talk.” For the rest of the duration of this interview, please imagine Rowan and I walking through The Grand at speed – flying through further discussion as we leave Bar 1878, head back through stage pass, and wind up eventually in the green room. So, as we barrel through the building, the final words;
“Everything is a learning experience.”
“Comparison really is the thief of joy.”
“There are so many things you can’t control – and that’s kind of liberating, because it doesn’t matter how good you are.”
“Everyone’s good. The industry right now – everyone is flipping amazing. They might be the right height. They might look better paired with that love interest. We need that person who’s got that swing experience. It’s fickle, and sometimes that lands your way, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Whether you get the job or not is usually nothing to do with you.”
“Be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else – they’re them, be you. If you meet things as you, and they cast you, that was meant for you. Someone else got [a role Rowan was up for], and debuted, and it was meant for her. Mine’s somewhere else. That’s hers. And that’s brilliant.”
It feels like a perfect note to end it on, as I free Rowan to get on with work. It’s nice to get an opportunity to revel in the successes and lessons of people here at LHT, where the staff is made up of hundreds of people each doing such interesting things. And while she’s leaving us for London for another summer so she won’t be here to welcome you for a little while, you can catch Rowan in Maiden Voyage at Southward Playhouse Elephant starting next month! In their words, “I’m seated! I’m sat.”
