A Conversation with Grace O'Keefe and Jordana Belaiche

"It's a cabaret character comedy séance where we summon the spirit of Stephen Sondheim to save musical theatre and, therefore, the world."

Grace O'Keefe and Jordana Belaiche are bringing their cabaret comedy séance Summoning Sondheim to London and Edinburgh this August. Ahead of these shows, it was great talk to both Grace and Jordana about the show, and about Sondheim more generally. Grace is co-creator of five-star Fringe sell-out Bad Teacher, and Jordana’s West End credits include Little Cosette in Les Misérables and Jane in Mary Poppins. If you perused our oral history of the Sondheim auction a few weeks ago, you’ll remember that Grace was the successful bidder for the very last lot of the day, 13 decks of tarot cards. This conversation took place before that auction had happened, but I’m excited to find out whether those cards will be incorporated into this show… Details and tickets for all upcoming Summoning Sondheim shows are available by clicking here. Our conversation begins below:

It’s so nice to meet you. I’d love to start by asking about The Queens of Cups in general, and about how the two of you met.

Grace O’Keefe: The Queens of Cups is my production company, with Erin Holland. We were founded in 2020, and we took a show called Bad Teacher to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022 and 2023, which went really well. We sold out every show, which was cool, and got a lot of good feedback. But my focus and my love in life has always been musical theatre. I’m a musical theatre girlie at heart. I met Jordana through MMD [Mercury Musical Developments], which does a thing called Writers Barn.

Jordan Belaiche: It’s a writers’ retreat for female and non-binary writers.

GO'K: And we were actually both last-minute additions. We just immediately hit it off by getting in a cold river in Kent together.

JB: A couple of months later, we did quite a chaotic cabaret at The Space theatre, which included an invocation of the god Pan. It was a very messy evening, and it became a sleepover…

GO'K: …where I showed off my letter from Stephen Sondheim. I’ve got three: one in England, and the other two back in the US. And Jordana said, “Grace, you know, we could summon him with this.” And then three months later, I was talking to some other musical theatre people about it, and they were like, “Well, when you do that, I definitely want to come and see it.” And I was like, “Oh, people will want to come to that.” And from there, the show was born.

And for those who haven’t yet seen Summoning Sondheim, or heard about it, how would you describe the show?

GO'K: Summoning Sondheim is a cabaret character comedy séance where we summon the spirit of Stephen Sondheim to save musical theatre and, therefore, the world. Whether you’re interested in Sondheim, magic, comedy, or all of the above, there are a lot of things going on at once which meld beautifully together. And theatre is magic, of course.

JB: Honestly, it’s a really entertaining hour. It’s a really fun night out. And whether any of those things interest you, we hope that you’ll be smiling and tapping along to some tunes—and hopefully giggling, and maybe having a bit of a cry too.

And Grace, tell me more about these letters from Sondheim…

GO'K: This final letter was actually because I just wrote him a postcard—so casual! It was during my dissertation in 2020, and I was studying under Katie Mitchell and adapting her method of directing for musical theatre. It was pandemic times, and I ended up doing the last scene of Anyone Can Whistle, “With So Little To Be Sure Of.” But that last letter says, “Thank you for the lovely letter, and good luck on your dissertation. And tell Ms. Mitchell I’m an admirer of her work,” which was a great thing to be able to pass on to Katie.

The first letter I had from Sondheim was after writing to him in 2010. I was in the 10th grade, and I had just seen A Little Night Music on Broadway. I saw the final performance of that run, and he came out at the end—and I lost my entire shit. I immediately wrote him this letter. It must have been two pages long. And I have terrible handwriting too, but I was like, “I’ve got to show him that I care.” Then in 2015, I actually didn’t write him. My mom impersonated me and asked him for an internship. That’s the best letter, though. “Dear Grace O’Keefe. Thank you for the lovely note, but I simply don’t take interns.”

You do wonder how many thousands of interns he could have had over the years… And Jordana, did you catch the Sondheim bug similarly early?

JB: No! I started in commercial musical theatre as a child, which feels like a very different world to the world of Sondheim. But while I was at senior school, because the school that I went to were quite strict about me going to auditions, that stopped around then. But I was part of Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s youth company, and at that time, they were doing some musical theatre explorations. One of the first Sondheim songs I got to know was “Comedy Tonight.” And I was very precocious and pretentious, and had a mind to study classics, which went out the window. But at that point, I was studying Latin and Greek, and I was like, “Oh my god. Who is this genius writing musical theatre about classical Greek and Roman traditions?!” So, that was my introduction to Sondheim.

One of the things that’s been really fascinating about this process of talking to Grace is how differently Sondheim is appreciated in UK arts more broadly, in that he has this reputation for being more of an intellectual, and there also seems to be a passion from the intelligentsia itself to show that you’re so knowledgeable and so cultured. And at the same time, there’s a niche group of musical theatre kids who are really passionate about him—so it can feel like a weird mix. And although in the past he might not have had quite the same cultural resonance here as he does in the States, when you cast people like Bonnie [Langford] in Old Friends, everybody’s watching. But anyone who’s in the performing arts, and especially if you’re in musical theatre, you will end up being drawn to Sondheim, because he writes these enormous, emotionally intense roles. And even his roles for older people are scrummy-yummy for a teenage actor. Like, let me embody this woman who has been married to this man for 30-odd years and is resentful of everything he does!

GO'K: And both of us studied ancient Greek and Latin, so that was a gateway for me too. When I was 16, I did Forum in high school, and then did a paper about the evolution of comedy from Aristophanes to Sondheim. But bringing in the magic side of things, it’s funny, because there are all these invocations to the gods. Only in his comedies, though. It’s in a very specific way that he invokes the Greeks and Romans, but it works quite well with witchcraft, especially Hellenistic pantheons.

And it sounds like this show is very much concept-first, rather than being led by specific numbers that you might want to perform in and of themselves.

GO'K: Yeah, it’s definitely concept-first. Summoning Sondheim, right? The concept is the title!

JB: And I’d say that, more than with our other projects, this show is definitely audience-focused. It’s very much about weighing up expectations of audiences and what Sondheim they know, and also what they want to see, and then pairing and matching it up with what we are doing.

GO'K: And the feedback we’ve been getting from Sondheim fans is that they love the attention to detail. We’ve been doing research throughout this process, but also, the past 20 years of my life I feel like I’ve been researching Sondheim without even trying. Into the Woods is a big one for us. It has a lot of magic in it, so we do lean into that one particularly. I think the only show that we don’t reference at all is Pacific Overtures.

JB: We’re trying to cover as much as we can in the hour, while also focusing on our original material.

GO'K: Because the thing is, there are a lot of people who aren’t necessarily there because of Sondheim, but are interested in the séance and the magic. And the beauty is that we can get them interested in Sondheim during the show, but the magic is equally important. And the eventual thesis of the show is that creativity, theatre, is magic. And Sondheim, as a teacher, he taught us how to do this magic—and now it’s our time to to do it ourselves.

Talking of feedback, what sort of a response have you had so far from people who aren’t Sondheim fans, but have come along for some of those other reasons?

GO'K: One of the things that I’ve heard from those people is that the end really resonated. The end is when we come to that realization that it’s our time now, and we can write our own stories. My friend was calling Sondheim “song-time” until about a year ago. But she came away from it saying, “Wow, I know so much about him.” And she really related to it too: it’s also about being a writer whose voice hasn’t necessarily been elevated in the past. And so many people can relate to that idea of not being listened to, or not feeling encouraged to write or create yourself, and instead only being able to look back at the greats.

JB: And we’re very conscious that we’d like to have as broad an audience for this as possible, so the feedback we’ve been getting from people who didn’t know Sondheim has actually been really positive. There are lots of different elements. There’s original music by Grace, so if you’re just a general fan of new musical theatre, you’ll enjoy yourself. There’s also character comedy, and these magic elements, so there’s a lot in the show that isn’t necessarily Sondheim-focused. And that’s something that we’re really keen and passionate about: that anyone can come to the show, regardless of their level of Sondheim knowledge, and not only have a good time but maybe come away with more knowledge.

GO'K: And the amazing thing about Sondheim is that he wasn’t just a genius. He was a good person who cared about inspiring people, about teaching and passing on his legacy. And that’s the other lynchpin of the whole show. Sondheim was asked multiple times if he had any regrets in life, and it’s always that he didn’t have children, which is so gutting to hear. It’s this idea of children and art—and what is art if not a child?

You can see Summoning Sondheim in London on August 3-5, and then it runs at the Edinburgh Fringe between August 13-25. Full details and ticketing information is available by clicking here.