By Samantha Craggs, CBC News
Posted: Aug 14, 2012 8:40
It wasn’t always easy for Sharron Matthews growing up in Hamilton. But instead of running from it, she’s turned it into a cabaret act.
In Sharron Matthews Superstar: Gold, the comedian and songstress tells sometimes painful stories of bullying and teasing, adding the music and humour that has made her one of the top acts at the prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe this month.
Performing to sold-out crowds, Matthews tells stories that may be specific to her experiences growing up on the Mountain. But the feeling is universal, she said.
From speaking to audience members, she’s learned that “almost everyone, even the prettiest girl and prettiest boy, has had a bullying problem at some point.”
Matthews is a stand out this month in a festival with hundreds of acts. Most shows draw only a handful of spectators. Matthews, thanks to positive reviews and word of mouth, has been playing to standing-room-only crowds.
While some of the stories are funny, others are painful. In one performance on YouTube, she describes someone posing on the phone as the boy she liked to say he was interested in her.
When she got to school on Monday, she learned the person on the phone was an imposter playing a joke on her. She ends the story by launching into a modified version of “Creep” by Radiohead.
Her father died when she was two. That led in part to a need for attention that set her up for teasing, she said.
Out of the past
“When people see you are in desperate need for approval and to be included, kids see that as a red flag sometimes and exploit that,” she said in an interview from Scotland via Skype.
“There were a lot of people who would take my vulnerability for granted.”
But the insecurity is behind her now. As an adult, Matthews has an enviable resume. She stars in the Global TV series Canada Sings. She has appeared in films such as Mean Girls, Cinderella Man, Take the Lead and Hairspray.
On stage, she has played Madame Thenardier in a North American tour of Les Miserables, and performed in Beauty and the Beast, Joseph and the Amazing Technocolor Dreamcoat and the Wizard of Oz.
This fall, Matthews will take her show to South Africa and London, England.
Her success brings joy to Bill Cook, her drama teacher at Hill Park Secondary School. Cook, a Stoney Creek resident who retired in 1995, remembers when she first walked into his classroom.
“She walked in for the first show and said ‘I’m going to be the lead,’” Cook said.
She was first cast in the school production of Guys and Dolls. She went on to play the Wicked Witch in The Wiz and Miss Hannigan in Annie, among other performances. “She was up there among the cheerleaders and she couldn’t have cared less,” Cook said. “She just had a way of wrapping you around her little finger when she was onstage.”
These days, Matthews is proud of her Hamilton roots. At every performance, she is introduced as Sharron Matthews from Hamilton. “I couldn’t be prouder,” she said.
Her advice to Hamiltonians?
“Keep having art in your high schools,” she said.
And “I hope Hamilton is encouraging of their young people when it comes to doing things that seem a little different.”