The original West End musical, Once Once, will be staged at Tianqiao Performing Arts Centre in Beijing from 20 to 26 December.
On December 19, the show's producer Cao Yebo brought the male and female protagonists Arthur Darvel and Innes de Clark, as well as two other actors Angus Tika and Sean Keeney to attend the press conference to unveil the highlights of the play in advance.
Arthur Darvel
As a musical based on the 2007 phenomenal Irish film of the same name, Once Was a huge hit when it was performed in 2011, it sold out and became an Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Olivier Award-winning slam musical.
The cast of the show is quite gorgeous, and the actor is played by Arthur Darvel, a well-known British actor, singer, musician, and winner of the 2023 Oliver Award for Best Actor, who is known to Chinese audiences for his role as Rory Williams, the traveling companion of the eleventh Doctor in the British national treasure sci-fi series "Doctor Who". Arthur Darwell also won the 2023 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical this year for his role as Cowboy Kerry in the rehearsal of the musical "Oklahoma!" The heroine is played by Innes de Clark, a crossover actor who has starred in well-known British dramas such as "Small Town Suspicion". In this musical, Arthur Darvel and Innes de Clarke play a boy who sings on the street and a girl who sells flowers, respectively, and the two develop a short, romantic, and regrettable love story. Interestingly, these two people in the play are also a real couple outside the play. Innes de Clarke revealed that he is a person with stage fright, while his lover Arthur Darvel is a more stable person, "I feel more secure when I perform with him." "Although the two of us are lovers in reality, when we face each other on stage, we are fully engaged in the role, just thinking about how to play the role well." ”
The excellent professionalism of the actors will be one of the highlights of this drama, in addition to singing, acting, and dancing, the actors also need to be able to play musical instruments. Among them, the male and female lead actors play guitar and piano respectively, and the other characters play at least one instrument, and even more, some actors need to combine all three instruments to form an orchestra with strings, including guitar, mandolin, violin, cello, ukulele, as well as hexagona, accordion and percussion. The recruitment requirements for "Once" not only did not dissuade the actors, but attracted the participation of many cross-border musicians and band members. Arthur Darvel was also drawn to the live performance, having made his Broadway debut a decade ago and returning this year for his first tour of China. As a professional actor who is active in film and television dramas and stage plays at the same time, Arthur Darwell expressed the different feelings of stage and film and television performances, "I like to act only in front of the camera, but I also like to act on the stage, but the biggest difference between the two is that when I am acting on the stage, the experience of performing with a group of people at this moment is very rare, and the performance of film and television dramas is a relatively long time arc." The feeling of working and creating with a group of like-minded people is unparalleled, and from that point of view, I love the stage even more. ”
It is worth mentioning that the movie "Once", which is also a frequent hit, will be presented again in the musical version, among which, "Falling Slowly" won the 2008 Oscar for Best Original Song. Many of the beautiful singing passages in the film make the audience feel a live house-like audio-visual experience in the theater. At the press conference, the actors showed classic clips and songs with personal characteristics in the play, the male protagonist Guy encountered a team discord during the band rehearsal, almost faced disbandment, and sang his heart "Sleeping" in loneliness; (Abandoned in Bandon) and the most well-known Oscar-winning song "Falling Slowly" were sung by four actors, feasting the ears of the media and the audience in attendance.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Tian Wanting
Photographer/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Liu Chang