The comedienne chatted to Emma Clarendon about her latest show Bombastic, playing at the Soho Theatre on the 4th April.
Hi Anna, thanks for talking to me. How are you feeling about returning to the Soho Theatre? I am very excited to return. I love performing in the downstairs cabaret bar, the atmosphere is always brilliant and I always love it when an audience can have drinks at their tables while being entertained! I will also be nervous but I think that adrenaline helps me give the best performance I can. I always feel a bit sick in the dressing room before I go on, and my hands shake. But as soon as I am on stage I just lose all nerves and love it!
What characters can the audience expect to see in ‘Bombastic’? I’ve hand-picked four of my all time favourite characters and freshened them all up. The most popular one is the original Bridezilla, Georgina. For this show audiences will get to see her wedding speech and become her guests (in previous shows it was always only a wedding rehearsal). She’s got a new song, new rules and is NOT happy with the Best Man… There’s J’nene the budget cruise ship host, who now offers a horrific Brexit holiday around the coast of the UK, Taylor Tyler the narcissistic Australian teenage influencer who will be advertising her new beauty products. Lastly there is my all time favourite, Jane Doe – the Bake Off winner with a very dark secret. She ends the show with a bang…
How do you go about creating the characters you perform as? It all starts with the voice. I’ll overhear a distinctive voice in a shop, on a bus or in a cafe and it’ll get stuck in my head until I start to mimic it. Then a character comes into life. Georgina is very posh and based on a very loud posh woman complaining in a cafe, Jane is based on a very nervous wobbly voiced HR Manager I met in a temp job who constantly sounded on the verge of tears, Taylor is based on some Australian teenagers I overheard in a shop while over in Melbourne and J’nene’s northern twang came from overhearing two women in a shop complaining about a cruise they’d been on!
Have you any favourite characters who you particularly love to perform as? It changes all the time but at the moment I love playing Taylor Tyler as she’s so precious and outrageous. I’m naturally quite shy and sensitive, so when I’m Taylor it feels liberating to play someone so young with so much confidence and self-importance. I also love doing an Australian accent, for some reason it makes me feel really chilled.
By coming along to the show – what can audiences expect? They can expect to be transported into four worlds and become wedding guests holiday makers, a TV studio audiences and Bake-Off Judges. I create worlds and characters who make you forget where you are and have a fun night out.
After Bombastic – what is next in store for you? The second series of Channel 4’s Lee and Dean returns on 11th April and I’m a lead in that again. I’m also writing two sitcoms with Mark O’Sullivan (who plays Dean). I am taking a year off the Edinburgh Fringe and hope to spend the summer travelling!
By Emma Clarendon
Anna Morris’s Bombastic is at Soho Theatre from 7.30pm on Thursday 4th April. For tickets go to: https://sohotheatre.com/shows/anna-morris-bombastic/