After the Opening Night debacle, what next for Sheridan Smith?
Sheridan Smith did not plan to take a holiday until Christmas. The Bafta-winning actress, in the middle of a professional renaissance, was set to play the leading lady in a West End musical until July 27 and, two days later, schlepp up to Newcastle to record a new TV drama series.
Her plans have changed. After mixed reviews, poor ticket sales and reports of audience members leaving early in their droves, Smith’s musical, Opening Night, has announced it will close two months ahead of schedule. Smith, 42, will find herself at an unexpected loose end in a few weeks’ time.
The blow will be that much harder to take because her portrayal of the alcoholic Broadway star Myrtle Gordon provided a chance for Smith to exorcise her own, well-publicised mental health and drink-related demons. Most notably, she took a sudden break from playing Fanny Brice in a 2016 revival of Funny Girl, citing stress and exhaustion.
Opening Night is a musical reworking of the 1977 John Cassavetes film of the same name by Ivo van Hove, the iconoclastic Belgian writer-director, with songs by Canadian-American crooner Rufus Wainwright. It follows Smith’s Myrtle as she is being filmed by a documentary crew (with live pictures on screens in the Gielgud theatre) and prepares to take the lead in a production of The Second Woman. She stumbles towards the opening night on account of her alcoholism, troubled marriage and being haunted by the ghost of a fan who was run over by a car shortly after meeting Myrtle.
The parallels to Smith’s own career are obvious, and she acknowledged as much before the curtain came up. “It is kind of like therapy,” she told one interviewer. “It is very freeing. It has actually been really cathartic, just getting it all out.”
Opening Night should have been a hit. Smith is up for an Olivier this weekend as Shirley Valentine, van Hove was coming off the back of a commercial triumph in the form of the James Norton-led A Little Life and Wainwright can be a compelling songwriter. Instead, it became one of the biggest West End flops since Trevor Nunn’s misguided Gone With the Wind musical in 2008. “She is heartbroken because, for her, it has been a hugely personal experience given the nature of the subject matter,” says a production source.
The show polarised critics, with national papers awarding it everything between one and five stars. The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish awarded two stars because “the evening lurches from one so-so number to the next” but praised Smith for her “capacity to captivate” and said that he hoped it would succeed because it took creative risks that many productions avoid.
Audiences, meanwhile, were baffled by a plot that has variously been described as confusing and aimless. “I had no absolutely no idea what was going on,” says one paying punter who saw it this week. “I was completely and utterly confused from the start to the interval, at which point I left. I feel really bad for Sheridan. She’s a really good actress, but she was set up to fail.” Another who did not return after the intermission says: “It wasn’t engaging or exciting, I couldn’t follow the storyline at all and the songs were rubbish.”
Those close to Opening Night insist that Smith was the shining light, even if the rest of the show was poorly received. “She gave a phenomenal performance every night,” says one of the show’s producers. “Even those reviewers that didn’t actually like the show, there is not one that didn’t give her full plaudits.
Will this reverse damage her standing? “Strangely enough I think completely the reverse: it puts Sheridan in a daring category, a risk-taking category,” he adds. “Let’s face it, Shirley Valentine is not a huge risk. She has shown herself willing to do something artistically challenging. Also something that clearly, from a personal story point of view, was her confronting her demons and pulling it off. Any producer asking if Sheridan is a bit of a risk will be able to say ‘Actually, no.’ She tackled one of the most personally challenging roles and delivered all the way.”
The real blame may well be laid at van Hove’s door. “The person who probably will be questioned is Ivo. He has always been a quirky, bizarre guy and to a degree it has been quirky, bizarre but somehow commercially worked,” says the producer. “I think he will be a bit more challenged as a result.”
The daughter of country-and-western singers, Smith was born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, and started performing at an early age. She was a member of the National Youth Music Theatre until 1999 when she broke through on TV as Emma in The Royle Family, then played Janet Keogh in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps for eight years. Her most high-profile role is still when she played Rudi in Gavin & Stacey, the sister of Smithy (as played by her then-real life boyfriend James Corden). Smith is also a regular on stage, and is renowned as having one of the best singing voices of an actress in her generation.
Fans and critics alike quickly warmed to Smith’s magnetic presence, whether it is on stage or screen, and her ability to play the serious (Hedda Gabler at the Old Vic or the 2022 BBC series Four Lives) and the silly (The Lenny Henry Show and Benidorm). Her emotions are never far below the surface, making her an engaging watch, no matter who she is playing.
Smith, unusually for an actress of such prominence, comes from a decidedly un-showbizzy part of the world and by all accounts grafted more than some of her peers from more fashionable backgrounds. Her mother, Marilyn, “drilled into me: the show must go on”, she once said.
She is also proud of her roots. The local press is littered with stories about Smith going back to her hometown and getting chips and gravy from a popular takeaway.
But things started to unravel for Smith in 2016, when she had a very public breakdown. She missed curtain calls, annoyed audiences and struggled with alcohol abuse after her father, Colin, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “I was running away from a lot, straight to the bottom of a bottle. I was trying to get out of my own head,” she said two years later.
As well as her Olivier nod for Shirley Valentine, which was her first substantial stage role since the Funny Girl debacle, Smith has recently become an unexpected Netflix hit in the series Cleaning Up, about an office cleaner who resorts to insider trading to pay her gambling debts, which is the third-most popular show on Netflix this week.
Musicals are a risky business these days, especially those as esoteric and experimental as Opening Night. Many have said it needed more work, or could have benefitted from launching at a lower-profile venue. “Was it imperfect? Absolutely. Was it flawed? Yes,” says another producer. “But having that type of work in the West End is what we should be aspiring for even if the execution of it could have been better. The alternative is commercial fluff like MJ the Musical, which got middling reviews but is doing really well.”
One of those involved in creating Opening Night says that the show would not have got off the ground without casting an actress of Smith’s stature. “All power to Sheridan for using her star power to greenlight something that is different,” he says.
Even during the previews the show was lumpy, with extensive changes made before press night. One element that did not make the final production was an extended vacuuming scene. “Like any musical, it is risky and difficult and honestly, until you put it in front of an audience, you don’t know what you have,” says one producer. “During previews there was a whole lot of changes.”
Smith was gamely trying to promote the show this week, even though the writing was on the wall. “It is so high end and intelligent and that is what made me want to do it. Because it’s so different to anything else I’ve done,” she told Heart FM. “I’ve definitely got the theatre buzz back again. I’m loving it.”
She was also asked what her favourite role over the years had been and she mentioned Mrs Biggs, the ITV series about Great Train Robber Ronnie’s wife, before turning back to Myrtle Gordon. “I know this sounds cheesy but this part I’m doing right now is the hardest and most out of my comfort zone that I’ve ever had to do emotionally and physically,” said Smith. “So I think I’m most proud of this part.”
The creators of the short-lived musical may console themselves with one fact: when Cassavetes’s film was released it too was a flop. It has since become a cult classic. Smith may yet get a second chance to make a first impression with Opening Night.
