Most days Sheridan Adams spends about an hour being painted green. We’re about halfway through our meal when she lifts up her hair and turns slightly so I can see the back of her neck. “Always some of it’s still there,” she says with a laugh. No matter how carefully she showers and scrubs, the musical theatre star never manages to quite get it all. “There’s always a little bit of green in the hairline, but I call it a badge of honour.”
Sheridan Adams stars as Elphaba in Wicked.Credit: Louie Douvis
Adams is immediately warm and laughs easily. For almost a year now, the now-26-year-old has been in her dream job – performing the lead role in Wicked. Inspired by the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel, the musical takes characters and events from The Wizard of Oz and offers a different spin on a familiar story. Here, the emerald-skinned Wicked Witch of the West has a name – Elphaba – and isn’t the villain we all thought she was.
The production tracks Elphaba’s story from just before she is born to a little bit beyond the climactic melting scene shared with The Wizard of Oz, with a focus on the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, “the good witch”. Wicked takes on everything from bigotry to corruption, the abuse of power to ignorance – all set to a memorable soundtrack. It’s fun, with a hefty undercurrent of hard, evergreen truths.
“When I play Elphaba, I think I’m playing, first and foremost, a really intelligent, kind, powerful person. And I love that she’s also a woman,” Adams reflects.
We’re having lunch at Tipo 00 and Adams has come well-prepared, having pre-selected the gnocchi. She suggests sharing a starter – perhaps the charred peppers? – and also a side of the pear salad.
Sheridan AdamsCredit: Justin McManus
She chose the restaurant based on glowing reviews, but it also happens to be within walking distance of where she graduated (VCA), her old workplace, and her current workplace.
It’s easy to forget under all the costumes and story that performing in a high-octane musical day in and day out can be gruelling, and requires significant commitment from performers to stay match fit. “We’re like little athletes,” says Adams. It’s a bit of an understatement.
Her window for a social life has narrowed because late nights and early mornings are now out of the question, and she is careful of what she eats and drinks because of the impact it can have on her voice. Her eyes skip past the alcoholic drinks on the menu – “I’m very much a water girl now that I’ve taken on this role”, she says. “Alcohol really affects your voice, which sucks because I do love a red or a riesling – but I’m happy to sacrifice it,” she adds with a laugh.
The week before we catch up she had to miss a few shows due to silent reflux – and, after speaking to her vocal specialist, it turned out that a contributing factor was likely sushi or, more specifically, wasabi. “So now I just can’t have sushi,” she says. “I try to avoid spicy foods as well.”
Adams doesn’t mind reshaping her life around her work because a career in musical theatre – and playing Elphaba specifically – is something she has wanted for a long time.
Gnocchi - porcini mushroom, black garlic, and pecorino pepato.Credit: Justin McManus
Adams first saw Wicked at the age of 16 at the Regent Theatre – where she is now performing – but the music has been in her life for much longer. She’d listened to the soundtrack over and over again, but didn’t know the full story. “There are quite a few numbers that are in the musical that aren’t on the album – so when you’re listening to the soundtrack at home you’re never spoiled.” Her eyes unfocus slightly, as though she’s seeing the scene unfold in front of her.
She was sitting in the stalls, a little way back she tells me. “I’d already fallen in love with the songs, but I didn’t really know about Elphaba’s arc and Glinda’s arc and their friendship and how it develops over the course of the show”.
“I was in tears by the end,” she shares. The show, she said “made me realise, yes, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life”.
Adams grew up in Hoppers Crossing and performed in shows throughout school before embarking on a bachelor of fine arts after high school. She mentions more than once how fortunate she was to have supportive parents. “They never doubted me,” she says, picking up her fork. “They took me to all my singing lessons, my dad drove me to every rehearsal in Altona and Williamstown, like three times a week. They took me to musicals, singing lessons, acting lessons, which was not cheap as well – again, it’s expensive to put your child through that. My brothers are some of my biggest fans,” she adds.
Opposites attract: Elphaba (Sheridan Adams) and Glinda (Courtney Monsma) in Wicked.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
She describes her career timing as both lucky and unlucky. Adams graduated in 2019 into an industry that was almost immediately shuttered due to the pandemic. Jobs she had lined up were cancelled, and the future was looking shaky. “I always joke that I became a jaded actor faster, because I had a year having to really face the questions of is this what I want to do? Is this viable? Will theatre ever come back?”
For three years she worked on and off as an usher at Her Majesty’s Theatre – a job she cannot sing the praises of highly enough. “I still have really close friends from there, and I visit all the time,” she says. Working “show hours” meant that she could juggle work, classes and auditions. “And,” she reflects, “you’re watching theatre all the time. So you’re in that world.”
When Frozen was staged at her workplace, Adams caught a small glimpse of her own future every night as she watched Jemma Rix – the first Elphaba she ever saw – and Courtney Monsma – who now plays Glinda opposite Adams – step on stage. Watching them perform “vocally quite challenging roles every night, I got to see their consistency,” she reflects. “It was like a mini masterclass”. Now, “there are days where I look at Courtney on stage and I’m like ‘how is this happening?’ It’s wild to me.”
Pappardelle - braised duck, sage and pecorinoCredit: Justin McManus
The theatre provided stability to Adams as her career began to take off. After a role in Cruel Intentions wrapped up, she returned. After a role in Tick Tick Boom wrapped up, she returned. She was working at the theatre when she saw a cast callout for Wicked.
She made a video and sent it off, but kept her expectations low. When she was invited to audition, she was thrilled. “I thought, oh my gosh, I would love to be in the ensemble,” she says. At that stage in her career she had a few stage credits but not a huge amount of experience, so “I knew I would love to play Elphaba, but I didn’t know whether a creative team would see me and be able to go’ yep, we can trust her’. Because there’s so much more to playing a lead role than just getting up there and singing and performing”.
On a friend’s advice she prepared some of Elphaba’s songs for her audition, but once she was in the room was too shy to declare her interest in the role. “Because it’s really hard as a young person to go in front of your possible bosses and be like, ‘You know what you should see me sing? The lead material,’ so I chickened out.” But they called her back – again and again and again.
As she progressed through the different stages of the audition process she grew more and more excited, thinking that perhaps she was being considered as an understudy or alternate. ” I had no idea they were actually seriously considering me for Elphaba,” she reflects. “I feel really grateful that they entrusted me with it.”
The bill at Tipo 00Credit:
Though she describes her audition process as a dream, the problem with landing one of the most coveted roles in musical theatre is that it comes with a weighty history. “It’s intimidating because so many women have played her over 20 years,” says Adams. “One of the hard parts, originally, about the role was actually not the role. It was the expectations and comparison and criticism, somewhat from the outside, but most of all, from within.”
What comes across most strongly during our conversation is how invested Adams is in the character and in the show. She casually drops in facts that give away the depth of her research – about how other actors have approached the role, how one Elphaba had it written into her contract that she would have two minutes alone before every show, about which moments you need to be careful about dropping your pointed hat. Most of all she is aware of how important this particular musical is to so many people, herself included, and how some of the darker themes have likely contributed to the show’s longevity just as much as the hit songs.
Adams is conscious of the power that story has to impact people, having experienced it from both sides. Musicals are often written off as a light diversion, as though songs and colour deflect from saying something deeper. A good story, however, can entertain and challenge, and isn’t over when you leave the theatre. “They really do stay with you, and they can change how you view the world,” she says. “And I really love that I’m in a show that does that.”
Wicked is on at the Regent Theatre until August 25.
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