There’s more to Cruella De Vil than pure evil, says teenage performer

Poppy Crawford in rehearsals for The One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Picture by Mike Eddowes.

You might well have bought an ice-cream from 18-year-old Poppy Crawford when she’s been working front of house at Chichester Festival Theatre.

But this Christmas, she’s going to be where she really wants to be: on the CFT stage.

This festive season, Poppy is playing Cruella De Vil, the nastiest, cruellest villainess, in Chichester Festival Youth Theatre’s Christmas staging of Dodie Smith’s The Hundred And One Dalmatians in a new adaptation by Bryony Lavery (December 20-January 3).

She’s hoping it might prove a stepping stone to drama school. Once the production has run its course, she will be setting out on the auditions trail on the back of it.

It should prove great experience for her career ahead.

“I did The Snow Queen with Chichester Festival Youth Theatre in 2009. I was on the waiting list for a good year and a half before that. Someone dropped out of the year group I was in, and I got the chance.”

She’d auditioned as an extra for the professional production of The Music Man on the main-house stage. Unfortunately she didn’t get the part. She was too tall. But the experience fired her up.

“That was what really sparked it for me, and ever since I have been involved with the theatre. I work front of house, and I just love it here. I just love being here!