Barbara speaks to Viv Hardwick from the "Northern Echo" about 'The 7 Ages Of Woman' and why she constantly looks to the future...
BARBARA'S BEST CONCERT IN AGES
Singing the songs of a musical journey called The 7 Ages of Woman would seem a daunting task for most females of the species... unless you happen to be Barbara Dickson. Folk singer, pop star, musical lead, actress and a "prostitute" on TV (in ITV's Band of Gold) are some of the accomplishments she has crammed into 50 years of life. Not to mention a husband, Oliver, and three sons, Colm, Gabriel and Archie.
"The 7 Ages of Woman is probably one of my toughest projects," admits Dickson, who has already picked up one award for the show which can be seen at York's Grand Opera House later this month (July 20-25).
"It takes a lot of energy. Not jumping up and down but the sheer brainpower and concentration to keep up with each scene being set by the music.
"Chris Bond created it with me in mind and selected the songs for each age. All I had to do was pick up the challenge," she adds modestly.
The musical ages which use compositions from Sondheim to Lennon and McCartney take the audience from childhood to old age.
"The show doesn't neatly dovetail into ten year stages. Many parts of a woman's life cross over the age boundaries. It does deal with death but because this is an entertainment it would be wrong to finish with the grave. There is a very positive ending," says Dickson.
Not that you'd expect anything else from a singer who feels that the best years of her life are always ahead of her.
She says: "I know I'm not a pop singer any more. I don't live in a world where I have to keep making hit records. To be honest I never did see myself as a glamorous showbiz figure like Shirley Bassey.
"I've always seen it as something rather pathetic to keep living in the past. It's rather like those who sue for something that happened in 1968 that they claim stopped them from doing anything with success. I don't think you can blame people for what you've not done."
"I live in the future," claims Dickson who could well have become a frustrated performer herself having played the original lead of Mrs Johnstone in hit musical Blood Brothers. Despite having a string of hits with songs from Evita (the I Know Him So Well duet with Elaine Paige her best-known chart-topper in 1985) starring roles in musicals didn't follow.
She finally broke away from the roundabout of concert tours and album releases with the part of Anita Braithwaite in Band of Gold in the mid-1990s.
"Now I'm concentrating on the folk singing and acting," adds Dickson who was recently seen in the stage drama Friends Like Us starring opposite Roy Hudd at Newcastle's Tyne Theatre.
It was a near-the-knuckle part of a housewife who doesn't fancy sex with her husband and tries a lesbian relationship without much luck either!
"After playing parts like that I want to do more drama on TV," she says.
If there is one regret over her own ages of womanhood so far it is being on the road so much in pursuit of a career and missing her family growing up.
Says Lincolnshire-based Dickson: "It is a pretty negative side of my life, being away all the time. It requires the strictest kind of philosophy to put up with that."
The up-side is that 7 Ages is destined for a West End slot where Dickson is likely to gain the kind of acclaim she should have got for Blood Brothers.
