A few weeks ago I was asked by BACKSTAGE magazine to name the greatest performance I had ever seen in my entire life on either stage, film or tv. This request is, of course, absurd and causes the brain to freeze. I spent a whole week trying to remember everything I'd ever seen since the age of two and oddly I kept returning to a young man named Colin Bates who we saw play BILLY ELLIOT in the West End in 2005. At the end of the show I turned to tt and said "That is the best performance I have ever seen in a musical" so it seemed churlish not to actually choose him for the article even though I knew BACKSTAGE would much rather have me extol the praises of Judi Dench or Ian McKellan.
Of course, I held a faint hope that the young man would hear of the article and know how much I had appreciated his work all those years ago and sure enough, someone brought it to his attention. Colin Bates is now a second year acting student at Juilliard and tonight he came to see PRISCILLA to tell me that the article was pinned up on a notice board and his fellow students were suitably impressed. He's a lovely young man and I hope to see him in one of his grad plays soon.
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