“I’m not brave. As an actor I’m ready to do anything.”
Musical theatre star Anna-Jane Casey on the importance of courage.
Anna-Jane, or AJ as everyone calls her, has just accompanied her children, aged 14 and 8, to their first day back at school. Mum duties over, she settles down to talk about her latest show, The Band Plays On, currently streaming online at Sheffield Theatres. Tightly wound energy radiates from her as, on a cold morning, she nurses a warming mug of hot coffee or tea in her hands.
It’s a performance – of course it is, having landed her first West End gig at 16, she’s a trooper to her core – but it’s an inspiring one. Like most theatre people she had a tough Covid year, picking peppers at Thanet Earth and delivering parcels for Hermes in a van. It was a story that with her full co-operation was well-covered in the mainstream press and turned potential humiliation into a triumph over adversity. It probably deterred real people from actually killing themselves.
I decide it would be insensitive to pick over the bones of what has been for many actors a wretch…