She's just a scared hustler with a kind heart - Ghost's Oda Mae Brown

But as Jacqui Dubois, who is playing her on the UK tour of the show, points out, the key thing is that she is a woman who is scared. Very, very scared.

Ghost the Musical is at Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre from March 25-29 – the tale famously of Molly and Sam.

Walking back to their apartment late one night, a tragic encounter sees Sam murdered and his beloved girlfriend Molly alone, in despair and utterly lost. But with the help of a phony storefront psychic, Sam, trapped between this world and the next, tries to communicate with Molly in the hope of saving her from grave danger…

Jacqui, whose Chichester productions include Crazy For You, Me & My Girl and Carousel, is the phony storefront psychic, and in a career which has seen Jacqui enjoy so many different roles, this one is certainly right up there: “It is so well written that it is very easy to get into.”

Inevitably we tend to think Whoopi Goldberg when we think of the role: “And Whoopi Goldberg was fantastic but I am not her and she is not me. I am playing Oda Mae Brown. I'm not playing Whoopi Goldberg playing Oda Mae Brown, just as Whoopi Goldberg was not playing Whoopi Goldberg. She was playing Oda Mae Brown.”

It’s a role which comes with plenty of challenges, not least the fact that Oda Mae Brown is the only person who can actually hear Sam but she cannot see him: “You must never make eye contact with him and that's actually quite exhausting. But actually the biggest thing with the role is that you've got to lose all your inhibitions. She is someone who just expresses herself so freely but you've also got to be scared, really scared and that can be embarrassing. But she is also very kind hearted. I just think she is a hustler who's got herself in trouble. The show is about people's choices and about the consequences of our actions. For every character it is all about making a whole heap of choices.

“She is slightly God-fearing but I would not say that she is particularly religious but in her fear she calls on God as a lot of people do. She's very outspoken and quite blunt and that makes her funny. She doesn't think twice about what she says but she does have a big heart.

“And the point is that she doesn't realise that she does actually have the gift and then suddenly this guy comes out of the blue and she can hear him. He is talking and suddenly he wants her to do things. But it's all new to her. This has never happened before. She has family members that had the gift and they told her but she hasn't had it before and then suddenly she is visited by hundreds of ghosts, and that can make appear mad especially in the bank scene.”

But she’s certainly a lovely character to play: “And it feels as if she and Molly at the end will become very good friends. There are not many people who have had this experience together and I suppose it's a bit like the people that you were stuck with in Covid! It's a very unique experience!”