She outraged Mary Whitehouse, worked with Tina Turner, Elton John and Freddie Mercury, and is up for an Olivier for choreographing a smash hit production of Guys & Dolls. Will she ever slow down? Not likely …
Not long ago, trying to book Arlene Phillips in for a check-up, a nurse was trying to find a date she could make. “I said: ‘I’m sorry – I’m working.’ He said: ‘Well, it says here you’re 80. What are you doing working?’” She told him she had never given it much thought. “I wake up, I go to work, I love it.”
Not only is Phillips working – steadily, some might say relentlessly – she’s also producing some of her best, most creative work in her ninth decade. Alongside her associate James Cousins, she has just been nominated for an Olivier award for her choreography in the hit musical Guys & Dolls. “I am looking to make sure that everything I do will be as inventive, unusual or as different as can be,” she says, “so I never have to repeat myself.”
