City role brings all the memories back

Nov 7 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

HUYTON-BORN Sam Kane has swapped the glamour of LA for the bed he used to sleep in as a little boy.

He’s just come back from a successful stint working alongside Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, and now, at 39, he’s happily moved back into the Liverpool family home while he rehearses for his latest role.

Sam, known for his TV work, including Brookside and multiple major musical roles, is taking to the Empire stage in the new production of Our Benny, opening next week.

“It’s great to just come in and sleep in my bed, the one I slept in when I was a baby,” he grins.

“All the memories are coming back.

“I haven’t lived in Liverpool for about 16 years – even when I was doing Brookside, I was going backwards and forwards because I lived down south.”

But when the call for Our Benny came, he fell for the script right away.

The show is based on Silas Hocking’s classic, Her Benny – and has been performed around Merseyside since the early 1990s courtesy of local company ABD Productions.

Renamed and revised, the Empire production is its biggest outing to date, and its stars, including Bernadette Nolan and Ormskirk-born I’d Do Anything finalist Chris Barton, are excited about the new show.

Sam says: “It’s good, I’ve never worked with ABD before, but it is nice. Everything’s down-to-earth, and that means a lot to me – just to be normal in the job I do.

“I knew about the novel and what it means to people in Liverpool and I think it was just about time for it to have another airing.

“(Director) Ann Dalton told me the story and I fell in love with the whole idea.

“At the end of Act One, the audience are going to be in tears – it’s a story of tough times.

“If you didn’t have any money in those times, it was tougher than we could ever imagine.

“Kids were sent out to work and if they didn’t make their quarter they were beaten to a pulp.”

Sam plays kindly Joe Wragg, who ends up taking in the children in the show when they are driven out of their home. There is a hope that Our Benny will be able to be taken on a national tour. Sam says he wonders whether such a Liverpool-centric story will translate elsewhere, but is so fond of the show he would consider keeping on the role.

“It’s a very big sing for me but I’m not worried about it, although I don’t consider myself a singer.”

He’s full of praise for his fellow cast members, including Johnny Kennedy (“what a voice”) and Bernadette Nolan.

The downtrodden Victorian world of Our Benny is a far cry from Sam’s most recent experience, taking the stage show Simply Ballroom, with which he toured the UK this year, to the States, where he worked alongside Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds.

“Dance is massive over there and there was a real target audience for the show. But the best bit for me is I have this photograph of me, Debbie Reynolds and Jane Russell. With me in the middle!

“I had a few meetings with producers out there, too. My ambition is to do film but I’m more pragmatic now, you see a lot clearer when you have children.”

Speaking of which, after Our Benny, for Christmas Sam will be directing and starring in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, alongside wife Linda Lusardi, in High Wycombe.

Their daughter Lucy, 12, is also getting involved, taking on the role of a fairy, and Sam is more than pleased to be keeping it all in the family, and hopes nine-year-old son Jack will follow suit.

“I’ve done panto more or less every year since I started out. It’s changed in a massive way – production values can be equal to a West End show,” Sam says.

“It’s tough work and so many people decry it that it drives me insane. If it wasn’t for panto, a lot of theatres wouldn’t stay open throughout the year.”

OUR Benny is at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, from November 12- 22.

TO BOOK tickets, call 0844 847 2525 or log on to www. ticketmaster.co.uk

FOR more arts reviews and previews, see www. liverpooldailypost.co.uk/arts