THE solo career of sixties pop icon Dusty Springfield’s is to be celebrated with a newplay entitled Call Me Dusty.

The showwhich premiered at Weston-super-Mare on Wednesday will appear at theatres across Gwent in the coming weeks. It stars Welsh actress Jessica Sandry and is written by Derek Webb and presented byWales’ Ignition Theatre Company this autumn.

“Jess was in a play of mine a year or so back,” Derek tells me, “ She happened to mention she’d played Doris Day in a one woman show and I think that’s what put the thought inmymind that this year is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Dusty’s solo career.”

One of the finest soul singers of her era, Dusty Springfield is for millions the definitive pop diva. Her lifestyle is the stuff of legend – and great drama. I ask Derek if the play which features Dusty’s music is meant to be a warts and all portrayal.

“It is but it’s also meant to be optimistic,” he says, “She was an absolutely fascinating character the more you delve into her. Obviously I knowand like her music but I didn’t knowthat much about her until I started researching it. I went through nine biographies and found out that she was these two people. MaryO Brien the convent school girl who wants to go to Hollywood who invented Dusty Springfield the diva character we all knowwith the mascara and beehive.

“It was all a mask really. It’s a funny thing because Jess who’s an actress is playing someone whose acting a part in the show.”

The play covers the time fromwhen she first decided to reinvent herself as Dusty Springfield to a period in the early 1970s when she had seen the meteoric rise in her career begin to falter and decided tomove to the US.

Dusty herself in fact tried several times to reinvent herself, and achieved a reawakening in her fortunes and discovered a brand new fan base in the late 1980s when the Pet Shop Boys asked her to sing on the No 1 hit What Have I Done to Deserve This?. Dusty Springfield died of breast cancer in 1999 just short of her 60th birthday.

“Dusty’s story is quite extraordinary. The rise to fame is very quick, but with that came the drugs, the drink and all the inevitable stuff so she had a hell of a lot of drama, but she was also a shy introverted person but you wouldn’t knowthat to watch Dusty Springfield.”

Derek went to great lengths to research Dusty’s persona for the play.

“Its fascinating doing the research. There are contradictory stories in biographies you get it fromone side and then you get it from another. As a writer you’ve got to work your way through that.”

Fans will also get to hear music which also requires Jessica to mime to Dusty’s records in places in keeping with a very real-life scenario.

“Dusty’s debut hit, I Only Want To Be With You was featured on the first edition of BBC’s Top of the Pops and of course at the time everything was mimed so we make a point of that in the play and the music is used as links between the scenes. I’ve selected Dusty Springfield music which has relevance to that point in the plot and hopefully enhances it.”

Jessica Sandry, who plays Dusty, is in the newseries of Stella with Ruth Jones on SkyTVand her numerous stage appearances have included portraying another singing legend, Doris Day, in the acclaimed showBeing Doris Day which toured nationally.

Playing her manager Vic Billings and other characters is James Scannell whose stage credits include Romeo&Juliet, Hamlet,A Christmas Carol, and Of Mice and Men. And playing Dusty’s secretary Pat Rhodes and other characters is Jayne Stillman, whose credits include Miss Ronberry in The Corn is Green and Emilia in Othello.

Call Me Dusty will feature at several South Wales venues during September and October including The Met, Abertillery on September 26, Monmouth Savoy on September 27, The Congress Theatre, Cwmbran on October 4, The Melville Theatre, Abergavenny on October 11 and The Riverfront, Newport on October 24.

Visit callmedusty.org.uk for further information and video clips.