A Star in the East - singing to 3,000 Abba-fans in Kuala Lumpur on Christmas Day

Or how Mirja Parviainen became Miria Parvin and found stardom on the West End musical stage

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By Pirkko Kotirinta
     
      Mirja Parviainen, 26, who performs these days under the theatrical sobriquet of Miria Parvin, could be the subject for one of those "Golden Age of Hollywood" movies about the agony and ecstasy of show business.
      You know the sort of thing: struggling ingénue actress waiting tables and starving in a garret overcomes hurdles and gets big break in the final reel.
     
For Parviainen has in all quiet risen to become the most successful Finnish artist ever in the fiercely competitive world of big-budget stage musicals.
      She has played one of the female leads in an Andrew Lloyd Webber blockbuster in London’s West End, and is currently touring with one of the travelling productions of the hugely successful musical hit Mamma Mia!, in the role of Sophie Sheridan, the girl in search of a biological father to give her away at her wedding.
      This is really not bad going for a girl who only a few years ago was suffering from panic attacks.
     
The plotline pitch to the Hollywood producer moguls might go something like this:
      Once upon a time...
      ...there is this talented and pretty Finnish girl called Mirja, who starts playing the violin when she is barely bigger than the instrument itself.
      When she is four years old, the family spend a year living in the United States for a year, and she picks up English by osmosis - as if it were a conscious investment for the future.
      In a home movie from the time, the girl declares she wants to become a Broadway star.
     
Back in Finland, she sings in the children’s chorus with the National Opera, briefly dances at the Raatikko Dance School, and dreams of becoming an opera soloist.
      At the school for young actors run by the Tikkurila Theatre in Vantaa, she plays the role of Snow White in a 1996 production.
      A newspaper article is written about the show, and Mirja Parviainen, 14, explains to the big national daily Helsingin Sanomat that Snow White is a tough ask: it is not easy to play the oh-so-nice heroine, when an adolescent is by nature more likely to be moody and grumpy than sweet!
     
After taking her matriculation exams at upper secondary school in Vantaa, Parviainen treads water for a year, thinking about what she wants to do with her life while working in a video rentals outlet.
      Finally she plucks up the courage to apply to drama school, to the Theatre Academy in Helsinki.
      She gets through the first round of qualification and auditions, but then has an anxiety attack meltdown at the crucial moment and shuts her self in the loo in floods of tears, and in the end she doesn’t go through with the admission tests.
     
At this low point, enter a very determined big sister from stage left.
      Together they put together a homespun application and teaser video to be sent to three British drama schools.
      “It was easier to perform when there was just my sister and myself in the room at the time”, Mirja Parviainen recalls.
      The video clips include songs from My Fair Lady, dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and “some monologue or soliloquy thing we downloaded from the Net”.
      Two of the British schools show an interest and invite her over to see more.
     
Parviainen travels to London and succeeds in psyching herself up enough that she wins a scholarship to the Guildford School of Acting, a highly-regarded establishment that has turned out a slew of famous names over the years.
      “I just let it rip, because I thought to myself that anyway I was never going to have to face these people again, whatever happened!”
      The first year proves to be very tough indeed, and picking up the British accent requires additional effort.
      Mirja’s parents back in Finland periodically find themselves on the receiving end of tearful phone calls from their daughter.
     
At the same time, however, the young woman’s acting skills are coming on apace, and the constant round of performing pulls the rug from undeneath her earlier shyness and the panic attacks.
      Days at the school regularly run to 10 exhausting hours or more. “As well as the acting and singing there was all manner of physical exercise - jazz, ballet, step, tai chi, riding, fencing...”
      In her second year she switches more towards singing, where Mirja’s pretty mezzosoprano voice stands her in good stead.
      “My confidence began to grow and I started to get back that kind of bubbly excitement and enjoyment I had from performing in public when I was only knee-high.”
     
Parviainen graduates from the GSA with honours and immediately manages to secure a good agent for herself in the shape of Janice Tildsley, of Janice Tildsley Associates.
      Tildsley announces straight off the bat that instead of concentrating on classical singing, Mirja ought to take the pop route.
      The agent begins to hunt around for opportunities for her new client, starting right from the top with leading roles.
      By this time the cumbersome Parviainen has been shortened to a more manageable Parvin, and the J in Mirja has been switched for an I - the Brits would only pronounce Mirja wrong, anyhow.
     
What follows is a hectic round of running to auditions, and Mirja/Miria learns that the competition is fierce and furious.
      “I tell you, Pop Idol is nothing by comparison. These people rip you to shreds in a heartbeat. About 99 per cent of the feedback is negative, and there is no way you can prepare yourself for what is coming.”
      All the same, it doesn’t take very long before Parviainen - or rather Parvin - picks up a juicy plum in the form of the role of Pearl [the Observation Car] in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller-skate rock musical Starlight Express.
      She parlays this already rare breakthrough into a double-whammy by winning the part of Ariel in another musical, Footloose.
     
Footloose tours the provinces for six months and then winds up at the Playhouse Theatre in London.
      “At that point a lot of people asked me if anyone from Finland had been performing in a London West End musical before now. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has.”
      After Footloose, Parvin finds herself unemployed, or as the profession prefers to call it, “resting between roles”.
      The seemingly endless round of auditions kicks into gear again, but a lot of promising parts go to other mouths at the last minute.
      Parvin gets a job with one of London’s apparently bottomless supply of Italian restaurants.
      “If anything had gone to my head from being on the West End stage, then working tables brought me back down to earth real quick.”
     
Ah, yes. Something else. In her new role as a waitress, Parvin discovers that the restaurant is skimming off the tips given to the table staff, and she goes ballistic.
      Rather than just getting angry, however, she takes steps to get even.
      She craftily arranges for a documentary crew from a TV channel to come and do an exposé on the scam. Justice wins out in the end. Hurrah!
     
Fortunately for Mirja, she doesn’t have to shovel pasta for very long.
      Another prominent role comes along, this time as Sarah in a revival of Our House, which had been the winner of the Olivier Award in 2003 for “Best New Musical”.
      The script for Our House, based on the music of 80s pop group Madness, was by Tim Firth, and direction was in the hands of Matthew Warchus.
      The latter was also the director for the Lord of the Rings musical that gained a certain amount of publicity here in Finland, as the music was provided in part by Finnish world music outfit Värttinä.
      For all the critical plaudits, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre revival of Our House is taken off rather earlier than expected.
     
By this time, however, Miria Parvin’s status has been cemented through three big singing parts, and the next thing to swim into the net is a veritable musical leviathan: the young lead in the international touring production of Mamma Mia!, already a global success story bordering on an industry.
      The engagement for Mamma Mia! was firmed up a couple of months ago, and the première with the latest cast took place in the Malmö Arena at the beginning of December.
     
Parvin’s performance had the Swedish critics - who had after all probably seen more versions of “the Abba musical” than you can shake a stick at - reaching for their superlatives.
      This naturally felt good, since the singer says she has tried to find a personal touch to her own rendition of the part of Sophie.
      The Sophie Sheridan in the hugely successful movie version of Mamma Mia! comes across to Mirja as “a bit of a wuss”, and she did not wish simply to ape the treatment in the West End version of the show, even though the touring team emphatically recommended using it as an example.
     
“I must admit it was a bit of a shock coming into Mamma Mia! from the more laid-back and creative atmosphere of Our House at the Birmingham Rep”, says Parviainen.
      “Everything is a lot tighter and more regimented. Kind of like being at work in a musical version of McDonalds.”
      The gruelling touring schedule requires discipline, among other things in order that the soloists’ voices stay in shape.
      Morning routines include popping a small arsenal of vitamins and cod liver oil, and Parvainen is also a firm believer in the Finnish nasal lavage device used to keep the mucus membranes and sinuses well flushed and moistened.
      After every performance it is important to get the necessary rest and shuteye, and she is often to be found with her head buried under a blanket, inhaling steam to keep things ticking over voice-wise.
     
Mamma Mia! is a massive moneyspinner and a musical on the industrial scale, but even if it were not, it is great to be able to go out and sing the Abba songs she enjoyed as a child, enthuses Parviainen.
      She has her own dedicated make-up artist for the show, and personal dressers - sometimes several of them - since in places the costume changes come thick and fast and there is no time to lose.
      At the time of writing, Mirja Parviainen is in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, where the show runs from December 17th through to January 4th.
      Her Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day will all be "worked in", with a total of five shows - two matinees and three evening performances - crammed in while people back home are stuffing themselves on ham and opening presents.
      Four extra performances were added to the original schedule, owing to the colossal demand for tickets.
     
The next stops on the tour - Vienna, Milan, Geneva, Trieste, Florence, Aalborg, Copenhagen, Odense - will keep the entourage fully occupied until June.
      The nearest the tour comes to Finland will be those dates in Denmark in May and June 2009, but Mamma Mia! has already been here once, in 2007 (see linked article).
     
Stardom won through hard work naturally tastes pretty sweet on the tongue, and after a year in harness Parviainen is dreaming she might be able to buy an apartment in London on the proceeds.
      For all that, Mirja sometimes misses work in the chorus - the vibe that comes when one can merge with other voices to produce a big sound is unbeatable.
      She says she got a firm grounding in singing from her times in the choir at Vaskivuori Upper Secondary School in Vantaa, and in the National Opera Chorus.
      The members of the choir at Vaskivuori have kept well abreast of the success of one of their former members.
      A party from the school recently went to London to see Miria Parvin as Ariel in Footloose, which the school’s drama club had also put on earlier with some success.
      Vaskivuori is one of Finland’s specialised multi-curricular schools, with a General Curriculum and one each for dance and music.
     
“When the curtains open, and there are three thousand people sitting out there beyond the footlights, and I open up with “I Have a Dream”, the feeling is just out of this world”, says Parviainen.
      One dream has been realised, and others are taking shape in her mind: maybe Mamma Mia! In the West End after the tour is done - or that childhood fantasy of a starring role on Broadway, perhaps? A movie part?
      I Have a Dream!
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 21.12.2008

More on this subject:
 BACKGROUND: Mamma Mia, what a hit!

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Get out the curling tongs and blow-dryers - Abba are back in town! (18.5.2007)

Links:
  A brief bio of Miria Parvin on the Birmingham Repertory Company site
  Janice Tildsley Associates
  Miria Parvin Official Site
  Mamma Mia! The Musical
  One very positive review of the Kuala Lumpur show (The Star, Malaysia)

PIRKKO KOTIRINTA / Helsingin Sanomat
pirkko.kotirinta@hs.fi