Phtotography: Gavin Bond
Luke Evans still remembers the moment he fell in love with musical theatre. He was eight years old and perched on a family friend's knee, in his parents' terraced house in the Rhymney Valley, in South Wales. His parents were Jehovah's Witnesses and among their religious friends were two sisters, who were living in a caravan in the family's garden. The pair loved musicals and earlier that year, one of them had travelled to London to see Phantom of the Opera. She returned with the soundtrack recording, a lavishly packaged double album with production shots of Michael Crawford and the rest of the cast. Evans sat on his honorary aunt's knee and listened to the music, while she pointed to the photographs and told him the show's story. When Crawford sang 'The Music of the Night', Evans had a kind of epiphany.
Luke Evans