Just itching to get back to what she loves doing on the CFT stage

Are people going to be feeling a bit grouchy and unfestive this year?
Rebecca TrehearnRebecca Trehearn
Rebecca Trehearn

Rebecca Trehearn thinks absolutely the opposite – which is why she is relishing the thought of Chichester Festival Theatre’s Christmas concerts this year… quite apart from the fact it will be her first time on stage in months and months.

“I think people are going to be just itching to see something festive…. And I am just itching to get back to doing what I do even for five minutes!”

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Chichester Festival Theatre’s A Merry Little Christmas Celebration runs from December 3-5, due to start the day after lockdown ends. The December 4 concert will be live-streamed whatever happens; if lockdown doesn’t lift, the CFT will review the situation.

Running for around two hours including an interval, the show will see West End singers Rebecca Trehearn, Emmanuel Kojo and Rebecca Caine, matched with five fine musicians, joining join CFT artistic director Daniel Evans and a special surprise guest each night for a range of traditional carols and festive favourites: from In the Bleak Midwinter, O Holy Night and Shepherd’s Pipe Carol to White Christmas, Sleigh Ride and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

Adding to the fun, Simon Callow makes a return to Chichester to share some favourite yuletide poems and prose including an extract from his celebrated one-man adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic tale A Christmas Carol.

“I think it is going to be a great atmosphere,” Rebecca says. “We have been putting together the trailer, all recording individual bits. It is like a guessing game!”

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The company will get together for a day’s rehearsal in a huge room in London about a week beforehand – somewhere they can be confident they will remain suitably far apart: “But our musical director has been brilliant at providing backing tracks so that we can do as much as we possibly can on our own. But it is a quick turn-around, just one’s day rehearsal. It certainly makes it exciting!”

It should be a bright way to end a dismal year: “It has been pretty grim, to be honest. I was in City of Angels in London and we were in the preview period. When lockdown happened, I came down to Cardiff because my partner lives there. I didn’t anticipate that I would still be there now! And that’s a positive thing. It was a long-distance relationship for four years, and it is lovely to discover that we can live together! For us that has been good, and Cardiff is a very green place near the sea.”

Her London landlord allowed her a “mortgage holiday” to start with – and then she sub-let. Plus she has been able to find a job in Cardiff, for a wealth management company. And yes, she notes the irony as an out-of-work performer: “I am helping the rich get richer!”

But she did qualify for the self-employed scheme when many of her friends didn’t: “It makes my blood boil when I think of my friends who have been burning through their savings. It is heart-breaking. They just weren’t eligible for the government support.

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“I can’t think of anyone I know who has thrown in the towel, but everybody I know has been scrabbling around trying to find other work to keep some money coming in, but the trouble is everyone else is doing the same. It has been a very tough time.

“And I am thinking that this year has been a year of my career down the toilet – and that is very hard too.”

It has been a time for reflection: “I have not missed London at all. I have missed my friends and I have missed my normal life and the theatre scene, but it has made me realise that the quality of life here (in Cardiff) is so much better. We have been having discussions about where we are going to live. But I don’t think I am going to stay in Cardiff permanently. My hope is that things will pick up in the spring, early summer, and then I will be able to get back to London.”

And at least Rebecca isn’t questioning her career choice: “Providing I can hang on to this job and provided the self-employment scheme carries on, then hopefully I will be able to pick up things again, but really I am just taking it one day at a time. It is all you can really do.

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“This is all I have ever done. I started off as a child performer. My other skills are quite limited! It is like a vocation. But it has been hard. In some ways it is a career that equips you for this with the uncertainty, but this hasn’t been easy at all. It has been horrific.”