Hannah Waddingham

Let's start with "Send In the Clowns." How difficult is it to sing that particular song at this late date in its ongoing renown?
Well, I'd always avoided it as an audition song. When it came time for me to do it, I wrote the entire song out for myself and very purposefully didn't look at anyone else doing it. For each line, I wrote another line about what that meant to me. I thought, I don't want this to be the song that everybody knows. I want it to be a musically accompanied stream of consciousness so that if I were speaking it, it really wouldn't be about the song at all but about Desiree at that point—since everything indicates that she's a very smart, well-traveled, cheeky woman. So, what she's actually saying is, "What? A joke? Here we are again. How pathetic are we?" That's why I acknowledge every comma, every word. Every single one of those lines has a very strong meaning for me. ...

Roger Allam in La Cage aux Folles

So, last night was press night. How did you feel it went?
It's unavoidable especially with a comedy that having you lot in and also anxious producers and friends has an effect on the performance; it makes us nervous. Having said that, it went well. We had you by the end.

It must be interesting, in a sense, to hit the ground running with a show that has already been through two casts already—in the case of some roles, three.
That's often the case when you do something like this. In fact, I was working right up to rehearsals so I hadn't had a lot of time to think about it. I had a couple of makeup and wig sessions with Richard Mawbey and looked through various incarnations of what Zaza might be and the role sort of revealed itself....

Matthew Warchus

You've achieved a double Tony nomination in a single category for directing, not seen on Broadway since 1973.
That's ironic, since that's the year The Norman Conquests was written.

The success in New York of this Old Vic production of Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy must be especially pleasing.
It is, not least because I was the person pushing to get it to New York. I was the person who got Sonia [producer Sonia Friedman] in and said to her, ‘Surely there might be a way of doing this on Broadway; give me two weeks to make some phone calls and see if anyone bites.' I am often told when I bring things to New York that they probably won't work—that they're very French or very British or very dated. I'm always being warned. I was warned on Boeing-Boeing, Art and God of Carnage, as well....

Jasper Britton in The Last Cigarette

What a Jasper Britton season we've been having on the London stage over the last year or so—you seem scarcely to pause for breath.
I know. It's great, but the trouble is, it probably means I won't be employed for another five years or something. A lot of the jobs I really don't enjoy and a lot are very poorly paid, as well, so jobs like Fram and Oedipus tend to subsidize the others. I mean, at Hampstead, it's ridiculous. Increasingly, I think I don't get enough out of it anymore to take home that little amount of money, I'm afraid. So I'm looking to branch out, really.

Are you saying The Last Cigarette is your thespian swan song?
[Laughs]. I've been saying various things are going to be my swan song for a while and then something else comes along and I think, ‘That might be good.’...

Imelda Staunton

Here it is the start of another eight-show week, and on your one night off, you were singing to beat the band at the Almeida.
Yes, well, no rest for the wicked, as they say. It's interesting: I feel as if I have been singing my entire life, but every time I step in front of a microphone, people say to me, "What, you sing?"

You know there are those of us who are chafing at the bit for you to play Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd.
That would be wonderful, but it's not as if there haven't been plenty of Sweeneys of late. Do they really need another one—with or without me? I did think at some point I should play Momma Rose in Gypsy and then I was in New York toward the end of last year and I went to see Patti [LuPone] do it and I thought, “Crikey, that woman is phenomenal!” I don't know that I could ever give it what she does....