It was such a thrill to speak to Oliver Award-winning actress Joanna Riding about Sondheim. We discussed the secrets that her characters carry, her time as Sally Durant Plummer in Follies, the challenge and thrill of performing “Getting Married Today” in Old Friends, her route into Sondheim, and her dream Sondheim roles. Our conversation begins below:
I’d love to start with Old Friends. Six months on, how do you reflect on that time?
I miss it. There was a great camaraderie on that show. Many of us were already “old friends,” but there were new faces for me too. I’d never met Bernadette Peters, and held her up on that pedestal—and Lea too. There was no grandiosity, no airs and graces, and we just got on with it. I felt very privileged to be part of it. Sometimes a certain magic happens in a rehearsal room that then somehow manages to translate onto the stage. To all intents and purposes, it was a concert of Sondheim songs—but for so many people I’ve spoken to, and certainly for us in the company, it became so much more than the sum of its parts. And maybe it was something to do with the way that Cameron [Mackintosh] programmed it. Cameron knows Sondheim so well, and I think he got it so right: the way it flowed, the way that one piece meandered into another, and the balance of it all. It really was very, very special.
But I have to tell you, when they first told me what I was going to sing, I fell on the floor. I’m a menopausal woman in her fifties, and when they told me I was going to be learning Amy’s song [from Company, “Getting Married Today”], it was like, “Come on, stop joking around! What do I really have to sing?”
It’s so funny that you say that, because I was sitting at Old Friends wondering how and when certain numbers were assigned to specific people—and how much choice you might have had in being assigned a number like “Getting Married Today…”
I think Cameron knew that I would be up for it, once the initial shock of that being the song had passed! I think I’d presumed I might sing a number from one of the Sondheim shows I’d done. But so many of us, we tend to err towards our comfort zones, don’t we? It’s always important to be reminded that the way you grow, the way you stretch yourself, challenge yourself, is by going for those things that frighten the hell out of you. And that song did frighten the hell out of me. The very same day that it became clear that that’s what I would be doing, I started to learn it. And I started to even investigate various memory techniques with which to learn it, because I knew that I couldn’t hit rehearsals not already knowing it. Rehearsals are for working out how to put it across, not how to remember it. The technical side of remembering it had to be done and dusted, so that’s what I did. And apart from a couple of tiny reversals of lyrics, I never actually forgot it. Every single time, I came off stage going, “I did it!”
And people often say that patter songs become easier the faster they are—up to a point… Was that your experience with “Getting Married Today?”
We did play around with various speeds. I’d heard versions of it that were so super-fast that you don’t get the words, and for me, not getting Sondheim’s words is the number one crime. And there’s so much humor in there, so it was crucial that I had to get everything across. To start with, the faster I went, the more I lost—and of course, articulation and clarity is key. But I didn’t sing a note until a couple of weeks before I started rehearsals. I learnt it as a monologue. In fact, I learn all songs—but particularly Sondheim’s, because they lend themselves to it so well—as monologues. I don’t sing them at first. Obviously, the music is equally important, because I’m a great believer in Sondheim choosing a crotchet over a quaver for a reason. But first and foremost, to me, he’s a wordsmith. Songs are about communicating something. So I just learnt it as a fast monologue, getting all of the jokes and the inflections in, and finding her character within that speaking voice. Then I transfer that into the music he wanted with it. And sometimes that dictates an inflection or a rhythm, so you have to adjust—because you must obey Sondheim! But yes, initially I said, “There’s no way I can do it at that speed. There’s no way!” And I remember sitting in my singing teacher’s room having a call with the team before we started rehearsals, going, “Do you really want it at that speed? We don’t think we can do it at the speed.” And then gradually, of course, inevitably what happens is you start to sit in it, get more comfortable, your muscle memory gets better, your muscularity gets better. And in fact, I think what I ended up doing on stage was probably the speed that Sondheim actually wanted in the first place.
You’ve played so many characters that have a particularly rich performance history, often with iconic interpretations that audience members might have internalized to some degree. When you approach those roles, does that ever weigh on you? How does that shape how you make those roles your own?
With any famous role, you have the history of it, and I think you’ve got to put that to the back of your head. For example, with Sally in Follies specifically, ordinarily I would avoid seeing someone in that role so close to doing it. I had no idea when I went to see the wonderful Imelda Staunton in that show that I would be playing the same role the following year. I was just along the bank side at the Sam Wanamaker doing Romantics Anonymous when I saw it. In fact, I couldn’t get a ticket until a friend called and said, “I can’t go. Do you want my ticket?” So of course I had Imelda’s performance in my head—and how do you get rid of that?! Well, you have room to in Sondheim, because his characters are so fleshed out. They’re so multifaceted. They’re so complex. There is room for so many different interpretations and portrayals. And what was brilliant in the rehearsal room on Follies is that every single person said, “Jo, whatever you want to try, go for it.” I mean, there I am with the glorious Janie Dee, already Olivier-nominated for her Phyllis, and I’m saying, “You’ll want to recreate your performance, Janie. What do you want from this scene?” And she said, “Forget this business of what do you want. You discover your Sally, and my Phyllis will respond to your Sally.” And everyone was like that in the rehearsal room, so it was great to have that as well and not feel the pressure of people wanting to recreate their performances with that particular person. So it was even more difficult and more complex with not only a performance that was so fresh in people’s minds—Imelda’s performance—but with the cast that performed it with her as well. It’s testament to Sondheim’s characters, and a wonderful cast and director like that, that I had the freedom to find my own character.
The key is going back to the book, going back to the lyrics, but also going back to you. I always find, as an actor, a little piece of me finds its way into the character. And bizarrely, when I’m performing, a little exchange takes place, and I find myself reacting and responding to things that aren’t necessarily me—they’re more the character. But it seems that I have to have that exchange in order to get a little piece of me into the character.
My characters always carry a secret that no one else knows. And holding that secret, I always find it means there’s just something else going on. For example, when I came back to doing Carousel at Regent’s Park, Tim Sheader and I talked about the full circularity of that, having played Julie and then coming back to play Nettie. And that played into my secret on stage, which I can out now! My secret was that Nettie was Julie’s mother, but she had to give her away and she could never tell her. And the reason there is that special relationship is because Julie never knows, but Nettie protects her and watches her. And so “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the end had such greater poignance for me, singing that as Julie’s mother, but Julie not knowing. So I carry these secrets with me—and usually, thinking about that secret is my way into a character.
And Sally… What a complex character. What a damaged character. And that’s what I love about Sondheim’s characters is that they’re all so flawed—which makes them so much more human, don’t you think? And so much more accessible. There’s an ambiguity to them. There’s a contradiction to them. And I don’t know why he writes so particularly well for women. His mother seems to have been this extraordinary character, and I wonder about his relationship with her and how that played into the way he wrote for women, especially older women. She was full of contradictions, too.
You mentioned Julie Jordan there, and she was such an important early role for you. How much was musical theatre part of your childhood?
I didn’t grow up a musical theatre fan, and I ended up going to Bristol Old Vic Theatre School because I wanted to act. I’d already done a bit of singing, and I’d already done a little bit of dancing—although I did get thrown out of ballet class aged six. I couldn’t compete with my very talented sisters, so I was advised to focus on my tap. But I arrived at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School wanting to act, and really not knowing much about musical theatre at all. Every year, as most drama schools do, they’d put out a musical and a play, and that final year was a very strong year. They had people like Mark Strong, who actually was playing Bobby in their Company. It was extraordinary. It was my introduction to Sondheim, and that was it. I was just blown away. I thought, “That’s an actor’s musical.” And when I left Bristol, because I sang, the musical theatre work came—and then very, very quickly, I got lucky. Within three years of leaving drama school, I ended up playing Julie at the National Theatre. And then Carousel practically won me the role of Anne in A Little Night Music, so that was my first Sondheim. Lovely Patricia Hodge was playing the Countess, and as Anne Egerman I would sit at her feet nightly on the Olivier stage, watching her sing “Every Day a Little Death.” What a song! And for me, that’s the role that got away. Well, I wouldn’t mind playing the Witch either… But in Night Music, the Countess has the best lines. It’s such an acerbic wit. Now, I have played it, and I played it with Janie Dee. Alex Parker MD’d and directed some concert productions that we did. One of them was at the Palace, and it was just a one-nighter there. Janie, as you can imagine, was just superb as Desiree. So I got a one-nighter! And thanks to Janie, during the pandemic, we managed to reenact it at Holland Park. But I’ve never done a full-fledged production of A Little Night Music as the Countess—so, if anyone’s reading this, I want the Countess!
It’s safe to say that the Countess and the Witch would be at the top of your dream Sondheim role list, then?
Well, I have to be realistic about my age. But Joanne in Company too. When I was doing Old Friends, we were all understudying each other. Lovely Clare Burt was unwell, and I went on for her and did “The Ladies Who Lunch.” I just loved it, and I thought, “Ooh, yes…” I’d never thought about playing Joanne before, and a few legends have played that role. But again, I found my own key into it. I could never copy a performance. I find it relatively easy, not necessarily to rid myself of the image and sound of someone else doing it, but still to find my own interpretation. And I think, again, we come back to the way Sondheim writes. There’s just so much to get your teeth into. So perhaps a less well-written character, a more two-dimensional character, would be harder—but he just writes so well. I could quite gladly do nothing but Sondheim for the rest of my career.