Marti Webb - Musical Theatre Career

Musical Theatre Career

In 1982 Tell Me on a Sunday was combined with Lloyd Webber's other successful album Variations, which had featured his brother, cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, to create the show Song and Dance, Webb reprised her role as the unnamed girl in the first act. In the second act Wayne Sleep and a dance troupe performed choreographed routines to Variations. The pair toured with the show extensively in the latter half of the decade.

In the mid 1980s, she again succeeded Elaine Paige, as Grizabella in the musical Cats both in the West End production at the New London Theatre and subsequently on a UK tour.

In 1995, at the age of 50, Webb reprised her leading role in a UK tour of Evita, opposite Chris Corcoran as Che and Duncan Smith as Peron. Despite some criticism over her age, the popularity of the tour, produced by Robert Stigwood and David Land with the orchestrations, stage design and direction of the original 1978 London production, led to it being extended throughout 1996. 1995 also saw the release of an album entitled Music and Songs from Evita as part of Pickwick Records' The Shows Collection series. Webb contributed a number of tracks, performing alongside Jess Conrad, Carl Wayne and Dave Willetts.

In 2003, Webb joined the UK touring production of The King and I, taking over from Stefanie Powers in the role of Anna Leonowens opposite Ronobir Lahiri as The King. Elaine Paige, Webb's predecessor in Evita and Cats had appeared in the London version of the production three years earlier. Later in 2003, she appeared in the original London stage production of Thoroughly Modern Millie uniquely alternating the role of Mrs Meers with Maureen Lipman, to allow Lipman to nurse her terminally ill husband.

At the beginning of the following year, she again reprised her role in Tell Me On A Sunday, first for a limited run before the closure of the show in the West End and subsequently on tour. The show had been substantially rewritten for a production starring Denise Van Outen, but a combination of the new and original scores was created specifically for Webb. She appeared in many of the principal venues on the tour, but in other locations the show was performed by Faye Tozer and Patsy Palmer.

In 2007, Webb played alongside Sheila Ferguson and Rula Lenska in Hot Flush, a new musical about the menopause.

From September to December 2008, she appeared as Mrs Johnstone in the UK touring production of Blood Brothers, succeeding Linda Nolan who left due to illness. The producer of the show, Bill Kenwright had been trying to persuade Webb to play the role for around 20 years and she was only free by chance. As Nolan was ill, she had just a week and a half to rehearse, around half the time normally expected for the rehearsal of such a tour. Birmingham-born Niki Evans was playing the role in the West End at the time, so while the tour visited Birmingham, Webb briefly took over in the London production to allow Evans to play her home city.

During her later career, Webb has spent many Christmas seasons in pantomime in venues throughout the UK, such as 2006 where she played the Fairy Godmother in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at Theatre Royal, Windsor.

Webb starred as Aunt Eller in a 2011 UK Productions touring version of Oklahoma! alongside Mark Evans.

Until November 2012 Marti is appearing as Dorothy Brock, a past-her-prime Prima Donna in a UK tour of 42nd Street opposite fellow stage veteran Dave Willetts.