‘Just about a dream come true’: Michael Ball returns to the West End with musical that helped make him a family title

Michael Ball says it is “pretty much a dream come true” to be returning to the West End with the musical that made him a family title and gave him a chart-topping tune he is nonetheless heckled on the street about to at the present time.

“I get ‘Michael! Does love change everything?!’ Oh yeah, yeah, yeah!” the theatre star laughs.

In 1989 Love Changes Everything – the Andrew Lloyd Webber ear-worm – hung round within the charts for 15 weeks, introducing the world to musical theatre pin-up Michael Ball.

Now over 30 years later he’ll be singing it once more as Aspects Of Love will get a London revival.

“This show literally changed my life on every level,” Ball insists “to be doing it again 34 years later is pretty much a dream come true.”

The manufacturing is a bit more problematic to stage now.

In order to resurrect the story of lust, which skirts on the edges of propriety – with out it seeming predatory, it wanted tweaks.

“In the original production the role of Jenny, my daughter, was 15,” Ball explains.

“She’s awakening sexually and everybody felt that was difficult these days, so by shifting her age to 18 and likewise by making the present about her empowerment, she’s not being coerced, she’s not being groomed, what she’s doing is discovering her personal company as a girl and is answerable for that. That was vital

“It’s weird, isn’t it? This is not something that was ever a feature in 1989, but now it very much is. And we have to be sensitive to those issues and change the narrative. It’s important.”

What additionally wasn’t talked about a lot then was psychological well being. It is not broadly identified that, as his profession took off again within the late 80s, so too started a interval of hysteria, despair and panic assaults.

“Everything should have been amazing, but my world imploded, and I made the error of not talking about it, not getting help.

“It’s the worst factor which you could really feel on a stage, stood there with folks watching you, and immediately you’re feeling your world collapsing.

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“It’s an awful feeling…it makes you vulnerable, and it makes you very aware that you need to be well. A lot of it is is is about finding the way to trick your mind, to not go into this spiral.”

Thankfully, he did not should be anxious when Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber got here alongside to see an early preview of the Aspects revival.

“He came up afterwards with tears in his eyes, put his arms around me, and just thanked me and said, ‘the only time I felt this was on the first preview of Phantom’.

“It actually was so not like him!” Ball cackles, before adding, “however we need to make him proud, he is the boss.”

He also wants audiences to “behave themselves” after they come alongside to observe.

Back in April, in Manchester, a efficiency of The Bodyguard was stopped due to folks singing over the lead through the last tune.

“There will be murders,” he says, musing over the prospect of audiences becoming a member of in with Love Changes Everything. “They can’t hit that top note!”

“I hope it doesn’t happen because there is nothing more disruptive….behave yourselves, you’ll have a better night!”

Theatre goers, you have got been warned.

Aspects Of Love runs at London’s Lyric Theatre till 11 November.