Ramin Karimloo and Anna O’Byrne team up to bring musical theatre hits to their legion of Sydney fans
West End and Broadway musical theatre star Ramin Karimloo and acclaimed Australian performer Anna O’Byrne will share the concert stage in Sydney next week.
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WEST End and Broadway musical theatre star Ramin Karimloo and acclaimed Australian performer Anna O’Byrne will share the concert stage in Sydney next week.
But just when you think someone like Karimloo must be over-archingly confident, the handsome 39-year-old Iranian-Canadian lets slip that he was too shy to say hello to O’Byrne when he spotted her on a flight from London to Korea.
Both Karimloo and O’Byrne were travelling to Seoul last month to co-star in special 70th birthday concerts for composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. The two performers had met in passing many years earlier, but had not seen each other since then.
Karimloo says he has always been “nervous” about approaching people. So O’Byrne bridged the gap instead.
“She was so warm and genuine,” Karimloo says.
He and O’Byrne went on to share the limelight at Webber’s birthday celebrations and are now friends. They will meet up again today or tomorrow to prepare for one-only concerts on the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney in which they’ll present a mixture of musical theatre numbers. Karimloo loves bluegrass and country and has his own band, so he also plans to sing some of his own compositions.
O’Byrne garnered acclaim for her role as Eliza Doolittle in Opera Australia’s My Fair Lady last year, so she might choose to sing something from that.
“I’m excited to just hang with her let alone sing with her again,” Karimloo says.
Karimloo’s wife Amanda and their two sons often travel with him when he performs, but this time they’ve stayed at home in Essex, UK, and he misses them.
Karimloo met Amanda almost 20 years ago when she auditioned him for cruise ship entertainment work.
“My whole marriage, there’s two places she talks about — Sydney and Cape Town. She loves Sydney. She said, ‘the ship used to dock right by the Bridge’,” Karimloo says.
Sure enough, when he was wandering around Circular Quay this week, a cruise ship was berthed at the Overseas Passenger Terminal. He immediately texted a snap of it to Amanda.
Travel is in Karimloo’s DNA. Born in Tehran where his father was in the Shah’s Imperial Guard, Karimloo was just a few months old when revolution broke out and the family fled the country in fear for their lives.
The family eventually settled in Peterborough, Ontario. Captivated by musical theatre from a young age, Karimloo established a stellar career in roles such as Jean Valjean from Les Miserables and the title role in The Phantom of the Opera.
Along the way, singer Sierra Boggess became one of his closest friends.
Broadway singer Sierra Boggess and the mantra that guides her life
As Boggess told the Telegraph before she toured to Sydney last year, her mantra for living is: “You are enough. You are so enough. It’s unbelievable how enough you are”.
“Yeah,” Karimloo says.
“She says to me: ‘Ramin? Not you. Be more’.”
Ramin Karimloo with Special Guest Anna O’Byrne, State Theatre, 49 Market St, Sydney; June 23, $66-$131, ticketmaster.com.au