Emma is a rapper’s delight for play’s European premiere

Jewish Telegraph, November 2024

MUSICAL theatre star Emma Kingston has built an impressive career with her vocal talent. But her latest role is a singing-free zone — although there is some rapping involved.
Emma is starring in European premiere of Dan McCabe’s The Purists at the Kiln Theatre, Kilburn, from November 14 to December 21.
She says having a musical theatre background has helped her with the rapping.
“It’s no different really to Shakespeare or poetry and all the raps are written in the script,” Emma told me.
She doesn’t find doing a straight play more daunting than a musical.
“Whatever you’re doing, storytelling has to be at the forefront,” she said. “So whether you’re acting and telling a story through the art of singing or whether you’re not shouldn’t alter the way you approach a character.”
Emma, the daughter of Liverpudlian Mark and Argentina-born Lisette Kingston, is playing Nancy Reinstein in The Purists.
“She’s an aspiring theatre creator, and she loves musical theatre, but she’s also heavily influenced by hip hop,” Emma explained.
“She actually has a show opening that she’s written and starring in, but she hears from one of her side hustle bosses, Gerry, that he is friends with a rapper who she is obsessed with. So she begs and begs for a meeting if she can hit a certain target at work.
“Gerry gracefully introduces her to Lamont Born Cipher, a legendary emcee.”
The Purists sees Nancy and Val (Tiffany Gray) put their rap battling skills to the test and they are forced to confront their convictions on race, sexuality and music.
And struggling with secrets and their fears for the future, they realise they have more in common than they thought.
Gerry is played by Jasper Britton, while Sule Rimi is Lamont Born Cipher and Richard Pepple is Mr Bugz.
Emma added that the experience has opened doors to “new people whom I haven’t worked with before, which is really nice, because it’s such a change from what I’m used to”.
Last year, the Kiln Theatre staged Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) which then transferred to the Criterion Theatre in the West End.
But Emma refuses to think beyond The Purists’ run at the Kiln.
“ I would love for the play to be well received, but to go into something thinking of what’s coming after it takes you out of the moment of what you’re doing right now,” she said. “You’ll never get to the after if you don’t focus on the now.”
When I spoke to Emma she was in the third week of rehearsals and was “having the best time”.
She explained: “It’s such a lovely group of people, such a creative group of people. And so much energy in the room.
“I can’t believe how far we’ve come in such a short space of time that it’s probably the most chilled rehearsal room I’ve ever been in.
“I feel very confident with The Purists that, from day one, people are going to really enjoy it.”
Emma, who was raised in north London, has enjoyed considerable success on the stage.
After studying at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, she almost immediately landed a role in a UK tour of Grease.
She has also performed in, among others, the original London cast of In The Heights, the 30th anniversary cast of Les Miserables, Fiddler on the Roof, the international tour of Evita, the coveted role of Heather Chandler in Heathers: The Musical and The Band’s Visit.
Zorro, in which Emma starred in Manchester, became a victim of the Covid pandemic after just a couple of performances in March 2020.
But while the theatre industry shut down during Covid, Emma took part in a filmed version of BKLYN.
Emma believes the shutdown of the theatre industry “actually took the pressure off as suddenly there was no anything.
“You realise then that everyone is on an even keel and a level playing field. Then I thought, well, you know, we’re all equal, I guess, when it comes to Covid. So why can’t we all be equal when it comes to the industry?
“And you sort of go, well, my talent is my talent. Your thing is your thing. So it actually took the pressure off and reset the game.”
She describes the Israel-set The Band’s Visit as “a really special time and a really special piece” — although it only had a three-month run at the Donmar Theatre in London.
Emma added: “Sometimes it’s better to be involved in a nugget of heaven, rather than everyone going, ‘oh, yeah, I saw it’, whereas this time people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe I missed it’.”
The Band’s Visit is about an Egyptian orchestra who are meant to be performing in Petach Tikvah, but accidentally end up in the desert town of Bet Hatikvah.
“The musical wasn’t about religion at all,” Emma said. “We can learn a lot from that. It’s two groups coming together to share in their mutual respect for music and art.”
It’s quite apt that The Purists is set in Queens, New York, as the ‘city that never sleeps’ has featured heavily in Emma’s life recently.
She is a regular visitor to New York and dreams of appearing on Broadway.
She made her debut on stage in the Big Apple in June with a concert at 54 Below to publicise her debut album, My Love Letter To New York.
“I did this album really because I wanted something out there in the world, and I wanted to make my mark,” she said. “And the fact that some people have listened to it and liked it is sort of just a bonus.”
She added: “There is the dream, the history and the being a part of that Broadway legacy that I find really exciting.
“That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of new work being created in London at the moment, because there is so. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do and always wanted to try. So why not?”
Emma joked that people expect her to speak Spanish because of her mother’s heritage but “when it comes to learning languages, it’s not my forte at all. Regardless of how hard I try, I probably haven’t tried hard enough, let’s be honest”.
She said her parents met while both were studying in Birmingham.
Her mother’s family had come to Britain in the 1970s when Lisette was around 10.
Emma laughed that the whole “Argentine contingent was pretty gassed” when she landed the role of Eva Peron in an international touring production of Evita in 2018.
She was hand-picked by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to play the role in the production, directed by the legendary Hal Prince.
But after playing Éponine in Les Mis, Eva Peron and Heather Chandler, are there any roles she covets?
“There’s always roles I want to play,” she replied. “I’ve been in a couple of original London casts, but not necessarily an original piece. So I would love the opportunity for something to be written for me.”
Emma says she owes a lot of her success to her “amazing” singing teacher Kirsty Mackenzie.
“She used to come to my house every Thursday at 5pm,” Emma recalled. “Our lessons were 45 minutes, and she used to stay for an hour and a half.
“My parents always thought, ‘oh, maybe she has something’, but they weren’t going to push it, and I was the one pushing it.
“And my mum and my singing teacher apparently used to have secret phone calls where my mum would be like, ‘is she actually any good?’ And my singing teacher would be like, ‘she’s good, she’s good’.
“Without my singing teacher’s belief in me, there maybe would have been a lot more pushback from my parents initially. Obviously, they’re very proud now.”
Kilntheatre.com and emmakingston.com