Interview: Janie Dee on directing and starring in Sondheim’s PUTTING IT TOGETHER at Playground Theatre
Stephen Sondheim’s Putting It Together is coming to London’s Playground Theatre next weekend. WEBF’s Tom Ambrose sat down with Janie Dee, who is both starring in and directing the new production, to talk about what audiences can expect.
Tom: For anyone who doesn’t know, what is Putting It Together? How did it start its life as a revue and how did your production come about?
Janie: The first time I saw it, it spoke to me so thoroughly. I had the most wonderful evening. I will never forget it; I was just bathed in tears at the end, it was just so gorgeous. Then I met Julia McKenzie and we did a revue together and I realised she is an incredibly clever woman, a genius really. She said she just had this feeling that after she did Side by Side by Sondheim that she could put something else together that would be a bit more meaty and that’s why it spoke to me all those years ago.
It really is about how you have a relationship with someone and how over the years, it changes, and how human beings can be as rich and as famous as they like but if they don’t have their friends, it’s hard. Julia put that together with Stephen and it had never played London, then I did it with Alex Parker eight years ago but, for many reasons, we couldn’t go to the West End. So when I was asked to direct it for Celebrate Voice, I thought ‘I’ll have a go!’. I didn’t realise it would be so well attended in Salisbury and have such a great reaction. When the Playground phoned and said come and do it here, I thought yes, I’ll have another go.
You are directing, while also starring in the show. Is that something that you have done before?
When I went to Edinburgh with my Beautiful World cabaret, I had been running something called the London Climate Change Festival for about five years and I wanted to do something really fun, a surprising piece on nature. Out of necessity really, because I was employing so many people to do it with me, I had to direct it myself. Because of that experience, I felt I could do this and I’ve directed in drama schools but nothing in front of paying audiences. It’s a big departure to put it in a London venue and own up to being director of it.
There’s been a lot of Sondheim revues even in the past 12 months, with Old Friends, Sondheim on Sondheim and even Marry Me a Little but would you say they all take on their own life forms and personalities?
That’s absolutely right, you have said it beautifully. Each one is different, even though it is still a Sondheim revue. Old Friends, which I loved being part of, it was so joyous and was simply a celebration of music, of him and of each other. There wasn’t really a narrative thread apart from the word ‘love’, whereas Putting It Together is about the struggle of being human but in a particularly conformist relationship. That’s what is interesting about having Kate Butch as part of the company as they are observing the standard and we get to see how they reflect on what we - the married couple and the other couple that are not yet a couple - are like. It’s about watching the more mature versus the young and the desire to be young, especially in the older man; he is missing his youth and feeling younger than he is.
For a lot of modern theatregoers, Putting It Together is the YouTube recording of Julie Andrews performing ‘Getting Married Today’. She took on all aspects in that number, is that the case for you in this production too?
No, we do it differently. I do sing it but I go back in time, if you like, in our version. So, suddenly, I have this ex-boyfriend who in the moment was going to be my husband. But in our version, we do have the roles of the husband, the priest… even Jesus Christ appears in ours. It’s different.
How is it performing Stephen Sondheim’s works on stage? Tell me how it feels up on stage in those moments.
The joy of it is that the music is usually really beautiful. I’ve always felt that every note is the right note for that moment in your heart. It’s difficult to learn because he won’t compromise and he will choose the note that is right, even if it’s an odd note, so you have to listen and learn. And it can be interpreted in the way that you feel. Having worked with him a few times, I noted he was interested in the detail, the psychology of the character and it’s interesting for us as actors to come at it. If you are rich and happy with a fabulous flat, is there more that you can want? In Putting It Together, we discover the human condition is to always want more.
We most recently saw you on stage with Ramin Karimloo and Hadley Fraser in the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels concert at the London Palladium. How was that experience?
I absolutely worship those boys, I think they’re brilliant and all the girls too. It was lovely to work with those people with that material. When I was doing Mack and Mabel years ago, I got a call from the stage door saying Geoffrey Rush is here to see you … he came and had a drink with me, was a lovely man and all of us went out and had a lovely night. The next day, he sent me some presents and one of them was a CD of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with a note saying ‘you must do this’. I didn’t do it but that was the moment and I was so thrilled to do it eventually.
With this concert, we had one week to do it. We were standing in the wings and Hadley said ‘why do we do it to ourselves?’ but we knew we would be alright. We do these things in time not meant to be that short but, to be honest, if the fear isn’t there, it’s often not as good.
