Webb Sight

West End star Marti Webb has been treading the boards for five decades but confesses she is a still a bag of nerves before every single performance.

“I am always petrified and the day I’m not is the day I would have to give it up, because I’d know I’d lost it,” she says.

“You live off your nerves in this business and it’s actually about the excitement of just wanting to get out there and do it.”

The 67-year-old’s glitzy career includes starring opposite Tommy Steele in Half a Sixpence and taking top billing in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash hit musicals Evita and Cats.

But she is probably best known for her role in the one-women show Tell Me On a Sunday, which included her 1980 top three hit Take That Look Off Your Face.

Now she’s back on tour, playing ageing prima donna Dorothy Brock in Broadway hit 42nd Street, which comes to Oxford’s New Theatre next month.

Marti reckons audiences will identify with the show, packed with toe-tapping numbers such as Lullaby of Broadway and We’re In the Money.

“The play is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, so the characters are all down on their luck and need something good to happen,” she explains.

“It has a little bit of a parallel with the times we’re in now, what with the recession and gloom and doom everywhere.

“People want to be entertained and want something to lift their souls and this show is such a joy.

“They are just such a fantastic, talented young cast and the costumes are beautiful.”

She started dancing when she was four and found herself at stage school by the age of 12, after a teacher spotted her talent and persuaded her mother to send her for audition.

She credits that early training and the fact that she does not come from a showbiz family with keeping her feet firmly on the ground.

“Being at stage school from an early age taught me this is a job of work and that I was always replaceable. It was very disciplined.”

Plucked from obscurity to play opposite Tommy Steele in Half A Sixpence while still a teenager, she remembers being intimidated by his fame.

“I was so frightened to meet him because he was this huge rock ‘n roll star and I thought ‘Oh my God’ but he was lovely and very kind to me.”

Over the years, her leading men have included David Essex, Wayne Sleep, Jeremy Irons and Phantom of the Opera star Dave Willetts, who she teams up again with for 42nd Street.

And her address book reads like a Hall of Fame, packed with showbiz luminaries like Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh.

Lloyd Webber co-wrote Tell Me On a Sunday with her in mind and she’s known McIntosh since the late 60s when he was assistant stage manager and she was Nancy in Oliver!

More recently, she’s been playing to packed houses in Hot Flush, a musical about the menopause, Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers and Oklahoma.

Despite all this, she says she is rarely recognised when out and about and that’s the way she likes it.

“Nobody knows who I am and that’s nice. If they hear my name sometimes people pick up on it but otherwise, I’m quite lucky in that I can just go about my business.”

So, now in her late 60s, does she ever think about ditching the constant round of rehearsals and touring to hang up her dancing shoes for good?

“On a day when you get all the words wrong and mess up all the dance steps, yes, but on a good day, no, absolutely no way,” she laughs.

“Please God, I can just keep going because I love it and thank goodness there are jobs out there for me.”

* Marti Webb appears in 42nd Street at Oxford’s New Theatre from Tuesday, June 5 to Saturday, June 9. Call 0844 871 7627 for tickets.