I’m from an age when musicals meant the Golden Age of Technicolor movies and Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland. My elder sister was into Tommy Steele and all the dancing and the Busby Berkeley stuff, but I was more sporty, more stunt girl-ish. I was a curious kid, but I don’t think I ever bought a cast recording. For me it was about swimming and joining the Brownies and doing tap, ballet and jazz – all the hobbies that were offered in the little town church hall.

I went to stage school and got into TV young. And by the time I reached the West End as Ilona in She Loves Me [for which she won the first of her two Oliviers], I must have been 32 or something, and I had been following the repertory system, which doesn’t exist anymore. But that’s how you learned your trade as you would do everything, and that was a joy to me – so I think it’s fair to say that I was ready at the time for the West End. And by that I mean commercial money because I was used to no billing and no money! 

I love the people from that show to this day. The work itself was just joyous: the choreography was stunning, the direction was brilliant. And I remember things like [the designers] flying over three times from America to give me a fitting: the collars, the lace, shoes that at the time were like £300 which for me was the equivalent to a wage. I was, like, ‘The shoes cost how much?’ 

When I took over as Madame Thénardier in Les Mis [in 2006], that was interesting because you learn how these big machines work and, bless, you don’t ask too many questions. That’s how it is. Hairspray was great [for which she won her second Olivier in 2008 as Velma] because that was the show’s first outing in London. But throughout, it’s never been about the voice with me, it’s about the acting. I’m not so much a singer as a ‘putter-across’-er. Just tell stories, as Stephen Sondheim would say, and that’s how I think of it. 

I remember keeping an eye on Broadway and New York theatre and we would chat about it at drama school – ‘Broadway, Broadway’ – but we didn’t know what it was. I figured it was like the West End, though I’ve discovered since that it’s smaller actually.

I’m back in New York at the moment in Stephen Sondheim’s last musical, Here We Are [written with David Ives] at The Shed in Hudson Yards. I got the availability check a long time ago but they wouldn’t talk about it: I was told it was just a project. It seemed that Joe [Mantello, the director] had seen me in Follies, so it was in their minds then to do this, but I didn’t know at the time. So there I was one night in London at 11pm looking at my fireplace and the phone rang and it was Joe and he started talking, and I thought, ‘Hang on, sorry, love, I didn’t hear you. Are you saying I got the thing? No one’s told me. Are you actually offering me Sondheim’s last show on a Saturday night?’ Honestly, I cried for about two weeks – and couldn’t tell anybody. Here I was, having done my first musical, a Sondheim, with Merrily We Roll Along [the European premiere in Manchester in 1984], finding myself in his last one. For somebody from where I grew up [in Lancashire], it was like ‘who’d-a thunk it?’ My life had come full circle. 

When I first started doing Sondheim, I remember being pleased that I had some knowledge already of music – Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Chopin. That awareness of the classics stood me in good stead with musicals without me knowing. When I played Mary in Merrily, I remember sight-reading ‘Now You Know’ and feeling bad for going, ‘I can hear it in the music: the discordance, the chromatics, the jazz element – they all came together for me.’ When I later did his show Saturday Night, he came over to England and it was a masterclass, literally. He loved actors because they interpret him, and it doesn’t matter if the voice cracks. I used to give myself a hard time during one show or another for not hitting the note, but then you learn to say, ‘This is what it is.’

I don’t tend to think in terms of roles I want to do, and as you get older there aren’t many left. My peer group wants the quirky composers and the sung-throughs and the Dear Evan Hansens, but I’m not that and no one’s thrown those shows at me anyway. I like the old Broadway stuff and the MGM musicals of the sort that no one can afford to do anymore. And when I did JB Biggley at Southwark Playhouse in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, I discovered a whole new career playing men: I’m more of a Sweeney, I guess, than a Mrs Lovett, and I’ll always have a go. People get quite reverential about the work but I just think I have nothing to lose, really – you have to go with the flow.   

My must-have recording

APPLAUSE – ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST (1970)

DECCA
I love old-style musicals like Mame and this one, which is based on All About Eve and stars Lauren Bacall. I remember singing the title number and the lyric, ‘What is it that we’re living for’: it’s such a celebration of the theatre. This song makes me think: ‘What are we doing it for if not the audience?’ I want them to have a nice time, and that’s who I work for; I don’t do it for me.

Featured in the December '23/January '24 issue of Musicals Magazine