Marisha Wallace talks reinventing Guys and Dolls showgirl Miss Adelaide

And now comes the role that may cement her as one of our great, adopted musical theatre stars – va-va-voom showgirl Miss Adelaide in the new production of Guys And Dolls, which sees Marisha and her co-stars performing among the audience.

‘Our biggest challenge is going to be to see how the audience works with us because they’re the other cast member,’ she says. ‘I’ve never seen a major production that’s had a black Adelaide. So when this opportunity came around, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have the chance to change the type [of person] this role is usually done by.”’

‘For where Adelaide is often played as a ditzy blonde, Marisha is making her more nuanced. ‘She’s not dumb – she can’t be dumb and successful so I took that and the cartoon away. I’m so in love with her because she’s funny and sexy, but she’s flawed.’

The frustrations with her hopeless, 14-year-long fiancée Nathan Detroit at the show’s core, may be funny, they’re also painfully real, says Marisha. ‘I’ve been in so many relationships with bad guys where they’re not doing the best thing but there’s something about them; you think, “Why do I like them so much?” She’s so relatable because we’ve all been there, making those mistakes.’

Marisha has really fought for her success. After auditioning for music school, she discovered she had a cyst on her vocal cords. ‘The doctor said, “If we don’t do surgery right now, you may 
never sing again and if we do, it’s still possible you might not.”’ Thankfully, after three months of silence and rehab, during which she communicated with a whiteboard round her neck, she regained her voice, which is stronger than ever before. And during the pandemic, when, forced off stage, she recorded a hit cover of the song Tomorrow, and an LP of the same name.

‘That album was so important to me because whatever I was going through in that lockdown, I put [into it]. My ex tried to commit suicide, and I recorded Purple Rain around that time and thought, “Oh my God, it’s actually about mental health, and having a loved one who’s going through 
it and you’re trying to help them.”’

Marisha has also just released a single with Moby. Working with the dance producer was ‘so weird’, she says, because ‘I’m like a 2000s teenager, so I used to see him all the time when I was younger. When I went to his studio, all his awards were just in a big old box on the wall, but they’re not organised or anything, so there’s like a VMA award hanging out. I thought, “What is my life right now?”’

Next, she’d love to star in a movie. ‘It’s time for a curvy, plus-sized [heroine] not someone that’s just a best friend, or the funny sidekick,’ she says. ‘That is the next step in the barriers I want to break down, because still in TV and film, if you’re a bigger girl, you don’t get those lead roles where you’re taken seriously.’

It feels like Marisha’s moment has arrived. ‘It’s a testament to never giving up. I felt I was only ever going to be the sassy black girl who sings the soul in the back. To get opportunities to change that is an incredible thing.’