Lloyd Webber Soaps up for Hollyoaks???

And speaking of Andrew Lloyd Webber on screen (See Today’s Other Goss), we also hear that he’ll soon be making his soap opera debut on Channel 4’s Hollyoaks, where fact and fiction are becoming ever more confused for Summer Strallen (See The Goss, 20 Nov 2007). In the TV serial, the actress – who earlier this month was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical in our Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Awards for her role as stage starlet Janet Van de Graaff in the short-lived Broadway transfer of The Drowsy Chaperone (click here to vote!) – is so desperate to become a star that she starts stalking Lloyd Webber.

In January, the Lord will appear as himself in three Hollyoaks episodes, during which Strallen’s character, Summer Shaw, battles to gain his attention. Strallen has commented: “Viewers have to tune in to find out if she does enough to impress him.” There’s a good chance that the answer is yes, given that in real life, we hear that Strallen is being lined to take over as the next Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music at the London Palladium, where Connie Fisher finishes her contract on 23 February 2008.

Strallen - who is Bonnie Langford's niece and Mary Poppins star Scarlet Strallen’s sister - was also Whatsonstage.com Award-nominated (and Olivier-nominated) for the 2006 revival of Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend at the Open Air Theatre. Her other West End musical credits include Guys and Dolls, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Cats and Scrooge. The description of her Hollyoaks character reads: “a confident, talented young lady, Summer will stop at nothing in her relentless pursuit of stardom”.

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