Rebecca Lock (and Kate Monster) in Avenue Q

Rebecca Lock is leading a double life these days at the Noel Coward Theatre, where the actress has followed Julie Atherton into the dual roles of the kindergarten teaching assistant, Kate Monster, and the "bad girl," Lucy T. Slut, in Avenue Q, the Tony-winning musical that was an Olivier nominee for Best Musical last year. The part is the latest high-profile assignment for Lock, the third of five children brought up in the cathedral town of Ely in Cambridgeshire, where her father was in the Royal Air Force. At age 20, there she was on stage, without a head mike, in New York’s cavernous City Center playing Guinevere in Pendragon for the National Youth Music Theatre: “Julie Andrews was opening down the road in Victor/Victoria, which was amazing; she’s my hero, and I worship her.” On the West End, she left drama school early to do Martin Guerre, which went on to win its own Olivier for Best Musical, and was in the penultimate cast of Cats, “doing lots of squeaking in my lycra, which is great.” More recently, she covered and played the title role in Mary Poppins at the Prince Edward Theatre, onetime home to Martin Guerre. Broadway.com caught up with Lock prior to the four-performance marathon that is unique to London show schedules—back- to-back evening performances Friday followed by two shows on Saturday. Amazingly, Lock sounded raring to go The fatigue, she said, laughing, doesn't set in till Sunday.

You’re only the second person to play these two roles on the West End. People clearly tend to stick with Avenue Q once they are in it.
I originally went up for the job last February when they were coming up for the cast change, but everybody decided to stay, so I actually started December 3 and have nearly six months left to go. I usually stay in a job for a year or so.

This one, I would assume, doesn’t quickly get stale, not least because of all the puppeteering you’re required to do in the course of an evening.
Oh, I’m very overdeveloped, but we’re very lucky that we get a massage every week to try and get the tension out of the muscles and everything. I’d been to puppet school, so of course I jumped at the chance to do this. It’s one of the best jobs you could possibly imagine for a girl to get; they’re two such amazing characters, Lucy and Kate, and they’re at the absolute ends of the scale. I try to make them as different as possible—a Kate who’s very sweet and light and then a really quite dirty Lucy who’s very husky, who sounds a bit like me today [laughs].

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Did you see the production in New York?
I didn’t see it over there, though I’d heard a lot about it and borrowed my friend’s CD and was just overawed by it. I thought, “This is just amazing.”

And it clearly registers with British audiences, since the show is now into its third year.
I think we get so bombarded with American telly all the time that we can connect with the American material: we know Diff’rent Strokes and Gary Coleman and the whole joke there, and it also deals with everyday issues. It works on such a grand scale anyway that it’s quite global in its humor. Everyone can identify with one of the characters, if not a couple. We’ve all been there.

The two roles make different vocal demands; how would you describe your natural voice?
It depends what I’m singing, I guess. When I was doing Mary Poppins, I used a lovely, lilty soprano. In Avenue Q I get to sing There’s A Fine Fine Line and then yell my mouth off and rip it up as Lucy, which is great. I like to keep my options open vocally, I think, rather than pinning myself down.

Rebecca Lock (and Lucy T. Slut) in Avenue Q

Did you know you’d end up a singing actress?
I’ve always sung. I was with the National Youth Music Theatre and toured all over the world with them, and during my A-levels, I did theater studies. I auditioned for the Guildford School of Acting [in Surrey] and [London’s] Central [School of Speech and Drama] and ended up deciding to go to Central because I wanted to be an actor first and foremost. I wanted to do straight plays and telly because I think everyone faces that thing of, “Because you sing, maybe you’re not such a good actress.” So I went there and we had singing lessons, and then there was the whole Martin Guerre situation where I was coming toward the end of my second year and the third year was all about getting a role and doing a show and getting an agent. And here I was with this ridiculous opportunity that not many people get to do an original Boublil and Schonberg show and I had to leap on that, really, and take a chance. I went in as first cover to Juliette Caton and started doing four shows a week and then became her alternate, and I did the recording. It was an amazing opportunity to do an amazing part, and I thought I might as well go and do it.

I gather from Glenn Carter that you were in the very original workshop of Mamma Mia!
We played Sophie and Sky. It’s nice having him nearby in Jersey Boys—we do lunch sometimes. I didn’t do Mamma Mia! in the actual production in the end because they wanted these very young 18-year-old things, which was a shame because it’s such a great show. But give me 10 years, and I might do Donna.

That’s one show that is clearly not vanishing any time soon.
I think it’s here to stay. It was just amazing fun to be singing those ABBA songs and what was interesting was that it stayed pretty much the same from when it was at the workshop stage to the actual show, from what I could tell. I then worked with Glenn again in a piece called Moon Landing at Derby Playhouse, where he played my husband [Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut]. That was a new musical, quite script-heavy—a bit like Avenue Q.

And here you are on a Friday getting ready to do four shows almost back-to-back—a routine that makes the weekend rigors of Broadway seem like a picnic by comparison.
We finish the Friday matinee and have about half an hour to shove a sandwich into our mouths and start again It’s really tough. On Sunday, I wake up in the morning and my fingers are not very happy about moving. Sunday really is a day of rest.