Lettice Cook on having fun on stage and performing with Kerry Ellis

Lettice Cook’s journey to musical theatre began with comedy. She started out writing songs in a duo called Self Tort and then landed in an operatic group, playing Fleta in Iolanthe at the Gilbert and Sullivan Festival at Harrogate’s Royal Hall. During her foundation at Mountview, Lettice devised a piece called camp Campowana based on her original title song. She is now studying in the third year of her Musical Theatre undergraduate degree at Trinity Laban. Roles she has played include Alex the lion in Madagascar, Mrs Darbus in High School Musical, Holly / Gala hostess in Diana at the Eventim Apollo, and a snow daughter in Carousel: A Concert at the Southbank Centre. Most recently, she performed as Sorel Bliss in Hay Fever at the New Forest with the London Touring Players.

What was the first musical theatre production you ever saw?

The first production I ever saw was The Producers. My cousin was babysitting me and brought round the musical on DVD. I’m still obsessed with it to this day! The first time I saw a show in the theatre was when my godparents took me to see Chicago during its run in London. I remember being in the toilet in the interval, trying to see if I could dance and replicate the choreography. Because as a kid, I was just thinking: how do they do that? Will I be able to do that? And here we are.

You made your professional debut in Diana: The Musical in December 2023 at London’s Eventim Apollo. Can you tell us what it was like to perform at the West End?

Diana is a truly ridiculous musical, everyone knows it! The experience went by so quickly. At first, I was really nervous. Getting to perform with people who I’ve grown up watching and listening to was amazing. This is especially true of Kerry Ellis – she’s my hero – I saw her as a kid when she starred in Wicked, so being on stage with her was a dream come true. However, as soon as the performance started, all the nerves suddenly disappeared. The venue was so big that I just thought “I guess what happens happens now!”. It was so much fun and after the big number Kerry Ellis performed, there was a huge cheer. The audience were screaming like she was a literal rockstar right before the interval. Because Diana is such a cult musical, it was a bit like a panto when we did it. The crowd were cheering at their favourite lines. This feeling is something you can’t describe – I think there were about 3000 seats in there, so it was absolutely amazing.

I performed in Carousel: A Concert as well – this was a distinct experience because it’s a completely different style of musical. It was all about the orchestra. My first experience of theatre was feeling the overture in my seat and being awe-struck at the music. Getting to have that experience – especially now that there’s a lot of cut orchestras in the West End – and dancing to a full orchestra was truly incredible.

You recently played Mrs Darbus in Trinity Laban’s production of High School Musical. What was it like to play this iconic character?

I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun in my life! It was just brilliant. I won’t lie, I hadn’t seen High School Musical beforehand. I was in a conversation with everyone and I said that I didn’t know who to audition for, maybe one of the jocks. And someone went, “well, obviously Mrs Darbus!”. And I was like, Mrs Darbus, right… I had to look her up, but when I saw that she was an eccentric drama-loving woman, I thought “that’s me!”. We were really lucky with the director too. One of the things that I love about Trinity Laban is that the people go for personality, they go for “give me everything you’ve got”. I was previously told that my personality’s quite big, that I should try and focus it down a bit. However, in this audition, the director asked me, “Can you take this role almost too far? I want to see what happens.” And then I did it, and the feedback was that it would work, we should go with it. We had so much freedom to play and do everything we wanted. It made the experience magical. Every night, going on stage, I knew that I could just play and that was really fun.

If you could play any character in a production of your choice, which one would you pick?

After performing in High School Musical, I’ve realised that if I were going to do a show every night for a year, it’s got to be a comedy. I recently saw Operation Mincemeat and I want to play Monty. I would have so much fun with that. Women rarely get the opportunity to play men. Being able to play with the cockiness of Monty’s character in a slightly smaller production looks like so much fun. It’s a very modern show in the way that it allows you to incorporate your own creativity as an actor, which you don’t always get with musicals. But if I were a producer, I reckon I’d bring back Mack & Mabel – it’s a sensational show.

How do you strike the balance between training for singing, acting, and dancing in musical theatre?

It’s hard to get the balance right and I don’t think I always do. There’s always a temptation to focus on your strengths. This is the case for me with singing. I wasn’t a natural-born singer but it’s definitely one of my strengths now, so I sometimes I want to concentrate on singing because I don’t have to train as much for it. I didn’t do any dance classes before starting at Trinity Laban, so I found that quite overwhelming, but you just need the discipline. I signed up to a training programme for dancers at the gym for a while because I knew I needed that accountability. You have to do whatever you can to make yourself accountable and ask, “Have I put in the hours that I should?” – it’s so easy to dismiss it as something you’re bad at. Taking your strengths and recognising that you can leave them alone for the minute is important. But sometimes you just need to do what you’re good at to feel good!

My main strength was always as an actor. When I worked out that I wanted to do musical theatre, I found a singing teacher off Gumtree. Singing lessons are expensive, but there was an opera teacher available, Victoria Mulley, who needed to train a student. Victoria was actually a student at Trinity Laban at the time and she was really good. I ended up doing opera for seven years and I was originally going to audition for the opera course at Trinity Laban. But I then decided to go for musical theatre because that’s what I really wanted to do.