In a theatre culture that eagerly awaits the next stage appearance of Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon or whomever, there's something equally bracing about surrendering to the thrill of the new: the sense of occasion accompanying one performer or another's professional debut, especially when that performer has real staying power writ large across her or his bid for stardom. How lucky we are, then, in London over the last two weeks to have seen two virtuosic displays of a theatrical unknown grabbing centre-stage with a talent sufficient to suggest that their current bids for attention won't be just a one-off.
First off is 22-year-old Leanne Jones, who not only anchors the UK premiere of the stage musical Hairspray with an ample voice, real acting chops, and a pitch-perfect American accent, but possesses a sheer likeability that you just can't learn at drama school. At the press night the other week, there was a real joy accompanying Jones's solo bow at the curtain call, as co-stars Michael Ball and Mel Smith each gave her a congratulatory kiss and then left the stage, allowing Jones to bask in a reception I doubt she'll be forgetting any time soon. It would have been at once easy and forgivable had the show's creative team decided to bring over an American to play the lovesick Baltimore teenager, Tracy Turnblad. Instead, the Stoke-on-Trent-born, Cambridge-bred Jones leads a UK company clearly determined to reinvigorate this American show for a British public; that they succeed in spades has everything to do with their hitherto untested leading lady. These things tend to start at the top.
Stephen Hagan had himself barely left drama school - Lamda as opposed to, in Jones's case, Mountview - before he was snapped up to embody nothing less than the inspiration for one of the most celebrated works of art ever created: Michelangelo's David, the Florentine statue at the imposing centre of Antony Sher's new Hampstead Theatre play, The Giant. You might argue that all Hagan's role demands is that he look pretty and accede to the competing affections of Roger Allam's sad-eyed Leonardo and John Light's brooding, scuttling, plaster-caked Michelangelo. In fact, though the role does require Hagan to appear naked for extended periods at a time (why not cast him in a revival of Equus?), the actor must also communicate an abiding guilelessness and innocence that command our attention no less fully than the rivalry between two great artists. Hagan's contribution to an unwieldy though often intriguing evening simply can't be overestimated: without his figuratively naked sense of a blank slate through whom the Renaissance could wrestle with its tortured sexual psyche, the literal nakedness on show wouldn't count for much.
The question, of course, remains as to what these bright young things will do next, since early promise can sometimes pall. There are many for whom Kenneth Branagh's finest theatrical hour was his Shakespearean debut in 1984, then barely out of Rada, in the title role of Henry V, while people talk of Vanessa Redgrave's Rosalind in hushed, awestruck tones that even so established an actress has scarcely equaled since. The real joy would come if Jones and Hagan at least continue to commit to theatre. Or will these shows simply represent their calling cards to the screens, large and small? In which case, if you want to see them live, you'd better do it now.
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