Interview – Tyrone Huntley returns to his award-winning role as Judas in Jesus Chris Superstar

Picture: Roy Tan

Evening Standard Emerging Talent Award-winning actor TYRONE HUNTLEY is reprising his role as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar in Timothy Sheader’s production at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre this summer.

Fresh from appearing in the original London cast of Dreamgirls, where he played C.C White, he has rejoined the cast of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Time Rice musical in the part that won him rave reviews.

Other credits include appearing in the original London cast of The Book of Mormon (for which he received a 2013 BroadwayWorld.com nomination for Best Supporting Performance), Porgy & Bess (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), Sister Act (national tour) and Hairspray (Leicester Curve).  In 2015 he starred as Gator in Memphis (Shaftesbury Theatre).

Tyrone also won the Best Actor Award at the 2017 Mousetrap Awards, which is voted for by an audience of 15-23 year olds. He also received Olivier Award and WhatsOnStage nominations for playing Judas last summer.

Tell us about this production of Jesus Christ Superstar and your role in it…

The production has returned to Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre for the summer and runs until 23 September. It went really well at the Park last year. We won Best Musical Revival at the Oliviers and Best Musical at the Evening Standard Awards. It was sold out pretty much at the beginning of the run so it’s an opportunity for people who haven’t seen it to come along and join in the fun.

I play Judas who is the lead antagonist in the show. As many of your readers will know, the story follows Jesus in his final week and up to The Last Supper and Gethsemane before he was taken by the Romans and crucified. Alongside that, we also follow Judas’ story as he struggles to come to terms with whether or not he should betray Jesus and hand him over to the authorities.

Picture: Roy Tan

He’s not really your typical antagonist... 

I think with this show, because you’re following his journey as well, you really empathise with the tough decisions he has to make and you hear a lot of his struggles through the songs he sings. By the end of it you definitely empathise with the difficult choice he has to make.

Is there any pressure taking on a role like Judas? 

It’s the biggest role that I have ever done, it’s the most material I’ve had to learn, the most stage time and just me being on-stage. Well, with the band there, but singing on my own is a big deal. It’s a challenging vocal performance as well because it’s high and very powerful vocally, so you really have to look after your voice outside of work as well as when you’re at work – so there’s a lot of pressure.

I think especially since it was so successful last year, there’s pressure to make it just as good if not better this year, but we had a lot of fun in rehearsals learning the show. We just tried to forget the pressure from outside and focus on the way we wanted to portray it.

How do you keep the role fresh for returning audiences? 

This version of the production is very different, because when it was first written just under 50 years ago, it was written as a concept album so it was never meant to be on-stage, it was more about the music.

What we’ve done is gone back to the music and given it more of a concert feel, more of a festival-type feel, it’s completely different. If anyone has seen it before, like the production last year, it’s going to be very different, it’s more to do with the rock music than telling the story. It’s more to do with people hearing the music and being engaged with the music more than anything.

More than that, we’ve got such a talented, amazing cast, the dancers and singers are phenomenal, and put together it makes a really special show.

We only did it for six weeks last year, which is not a long time in the theatre, so you’re only just getting comfortable with the material. Now we have the chance to really expand on what we did last year and make it better, be more confident in the characters, be more confident in the vocals, and we keep it fresh by discovering new things about it every day. We’ve also come back with different people, 80% of the cast is new, so we’re finding new things with the fresh cast.

What’s it like performing at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in comparison to a conventional indoor space?

It’s really quite extraordinary, you’re outside, you’re vulnerable to the elements, you don’t know whether it’s going to rain or be really hot. I have hay fever as well, so that is an added thing I have to contend with, but it all makes it exciting.

It’s another way we can keep it fresh, because you never know what you’re going to get; birds flying overhead, airplanes, helicopters, you get it all, so more so than in any other theatre, every show is completely different.

When you do the evening shows you start when it’s light out and then throughout the show it gets darker and darker and darker, so that’s a really novel way of performing. The atmosphere changes throughout the piece simply based on it getting darker and that’s really cool. You’re in the middle of Regent’s Park, it’s like you’re in some abandoned forest nobody knows, secluded.

People come and they’re really excited about seeing the show there. Everyone who works there form what seems like a big community – we’re all in together so it’s a really special thing that we’ve got going on there.

Like you said, you can’t always predict what might happen, so do you respond to these elements or just ignore them?

To some degree we’ve got our show so you can’t really go too far away from what has been rehearsed, but your performance will be different if it’s pouring down with rain or it’s really sunny, so it really does depend on the weather, but you sort of adapt it as much as you can.

It’s great because you can play around with the motivation depending on the different atmospheres, so you can change it up a little bit, but obviously but you’ve got to stay true to what you’ve been directed to do as well.

Picture: Roy Tan

You won the Mousetrap Award for Judas, what do you think it is about the character that appeals to a younger audience? 

The music, even though it was written years ago, the way that we reinvented it in a sort of concert style, I think that’s really accessible to a young ear. Also the design of the piece – Tom Scutt gave it that Kanye West/festival feel that I think young people really identify with, so I think it’s just extraordinary. It was written half a century ago and we’ve managed to successfully bring it right into 2016/2017. The audience has really responded well. Young people have really taken to it.

How does playing Judas compare to other roles you’ve played?

I think it’s the singing, it’s nothing like I’ve ever done before, it’s all very demanding vocally. The roles I’ve done before involve singing one or two songs in the show, where here I’m singing way more than that.

I open the show with a massive song, and it gets more difficult in terms of vocals throughout, so it’s definitely a vocal journey. I’ve never really played a lead character, I’ve played a supporting role but never a lead, so there’s a lot of pressure there to carry the story and lead the company. That is something I’ve never really had to do before. Traditionally the roles I’ve played have all been more soul, R&B, gospel-type singing, whereas this one is more rock, so that’s the difference.

You say you’ve done supporting roles but you originated the role of CC in the London debut of Dreamgirls, so will future CCs look to you?

I don’t know really. I think when you get a role you work with the director to create a character that fits with the way you bring things to the table. So what I performed was one way of playing the role, but it’s not at all the definitive version of it. I think while working with the creative team, future CCs will find something that is what they can offer.

I’ve taken a lot of inspiration  for Judas from Ben Vereen and Carl Anderson and people who have played it before. You take what you feel works for you and try and find something that works better for your personal portrayal. My performance might be something that the next people playing the role might want to draw from, but there’s absolutely no definitive way of playing the part.

Tyrone Huntley wins at the Mousetrap Awards 2017. Picture: Alex Rumford

What was it like being involved in the London debut of Dreamgirls? 

It was absolutely amazing. Again, Dreamgirls was written 35 years ago, it hit Broadway 35 years ago, and it hadn’t been to London, so to be in that group of people that gets to do it here for the first time is really, really special.

To work with Henry Kreiger, the guy who wrote the music, such an incredible talent, and then you’re in the room and he’s telling you that you’re singing the song that he wrote well… it’s really quite something. It was a really great experience.

You impressively took on a law degree while performing in The Book of Mormon! How did you manage that?

It was very time consuming, but the thing about performing in a show is you can sort of schedule your life around it. You have your days free, so I could study during the day and then go to work. If I needed to I could study when I got home. You finish the show at 10, but because of the adrenaline you don’t really want to go to bed until about 2 o’clock in the morning, so you’ve got a couple of hours where you can do something fulfilling, and that’s what I started to do.

Law is something I’ve always wanted to experience studying and it was just a good way to tick that off the list. It was what’s called a graduate diploma in law, it’s what is known as a conversion course where you learn the eight core subjects. Then once you’ve got that qualification from then on you start to specialise, but I haven’t got there quite yet because I’ve been a bit busy.

With such an impressive CV, what is the best advice you can share with other budding young actors?        

I think it’s always going to be difficult, there’s always going to be rejections, there’s always going to be the job you really want that you don’t get, but I think my advice would be to persevere. You learn from things that have and haven’t gone your way. And just work really hard.

I think one of the big things in the industy as well is that you can’t afford to be a person that other people don’t want to work with. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you can’t be in a rehearsal room and get on with everyone, then people won’t want to work with you. Be a nice person, learn from the people who have been doing it longer than you, and just make the most of the experience, even if it doesn’t go your way.

What is next for you or what would you like to do next? 

I don’t have any particular plans, but I think I’d just like to broaden my horizons a little bit. I’ve only done musical theatre, which has been amazing, but I’ve done it for six years and haven’t really had an opportunity to do anything else. I would like to maybe do a play or TV or even a radio play, to change it up a little bit. I just think that you have to be versatile as an actor and I want to have that opportunity to hone my skills in other areas, so I’m open to anything really.

* Jesus Christ Superstar continues at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until 23 September.

Tickets for Jesus Christ Superstar are available HERE.

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