A Conversation with Beth Leavel

Tony Award winner Beth Leavel is currently lighting up the stage night after night in Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends. As she prepares for her upcoming solo show Beth Leavel Sings Sondheim at 54 Below, we sat down to talk about discovery, collaboration, and what it means to breathe Sondheim’s “shared oxygen” eight times a week. Our conversation begins below:

We’re speaking in mid-May, and your journey with Old Friends is well underway now. Is this a show that feels especially fresh and surprising night after night?

Yes, and I think that’s part of the magic of Stephen Sondheim’s work. It’s complex. There’s always something to explore in his lyrics and his emotions—and then, particularly with this show, you have completely different audiences eight times a week, all experiencing the show in their own singular ways.

Last night was like a rock concert. I actually found something completely new in “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Will I keep using it? I don’t know. Sometimes the audience tells you what they want, need, desire. I mean, you have to stay within the confines of the direction and the blocking, but I love to mix it up as much as I can with, particularly with Sondheim’s work: still staying truthful to what he wrote, but letting the audience and our relationship be unique for every show.

And anyone who has seen Old Friends will know just how much every cast member is doing over the course of each show, taking on both principal and more ensemble-esque roles. Could you talk about what that collaborative experience is like?

I have never done a show like this in my life, and this is my fifteenth Broadway show. There are sixteen cast members on stage every single night: every single one of us is a principal performer, and every single one of us is in the ensemble. We are one great connected group of storytellers. Each of us has our moment to stand out front and tell our part of this story, and then we step back and share in other people’s stories. And that is so unique, compared with what I’ve done before. To be able to learn the second alto line in Sunday in the Park and Into the Woods… that was really good for my brain.

To stand on stage at the end of Act I, when all of us are singing “Sunday…” During rehearsal, we would just kind of stop and stare at each other. It felt like this shared vibration of his music and the harmonies and the history and the import of how special that moment is in Broadway. And I see the audience at that moment every night. You can hear a pin drop. Some people are crying, because there’s Bernadette being Dot. I know that that show in particular changed a lot of people’s lives. It really did. To witness that moment every night, along with so many other moments throughout the show, is worth the price of admission.

Are there particular roles in Old Friends that you never thought you’d actually get to perform on stage? Perhaps parts that never seemed right for you, or productions you thought had passed you by?

Yeah, there are so many moments like that. “The Ladies Who Lunch” is one of them. I’ve never even auditioned for Company. So to be able to do Joanne’s song is great. And of course, I’m not doing Company—I’m doing Old Friends—so you can lift the song out of its context a little. You can celebrate this material in a different way when you don’t have to be completely truthful to the arc of a character within a musical.

Another thing is that I get to sing “Being Alive.” That song is absolutely brilliant. You know, I’m getting ready for “Beth Leavel Sings Sondheim” at 54 Below. I’ll be doing a mashup of “Children Will Listen” and “Being Alive,” and it’s just so beautiful.

I’ve missed being in his world so much. Doing all of these other shows, there have been times when I just missed the opportunity to do a Sondheim show. And now I’m full swing in the Sondheim swimming pool, and just having the best time. I feel like I’m a student again.

Speaking of your upcoming shows at 54 Below, how do you begin to piece together a program like this when you love so much of this repertoire? If you were advising a young performer preparing for their first solo show, what would your advice be, particularly for a Sondheim-focused program?

It’s intimidating. I have a brilliant musical director, Phil Reno, and he keeps me from going, “And then let’s do…” too much. He knows the math of putting together a cabaret show: the third song should be funny. This is too long. This is not long enough. The first time I did this show, we had many, many meetings, and I presented the songs I really wanted to sing either emotionally or just because I love them. But then there were some surprise songs that I wanted to sing, too. And then, of course, I think Stephen’s songs are so relatable in a personal way. That’s what “Children Will Listen” and “Being Alive” are all about for me. The audience doesn’t even have to know this, but it’s personal: about my children, about my sons.

And then my husband, Adam Heller, and I, we did Gypsy at The Muny, which is a huge theater in St. Louis. He was my Herbie. And I, kicking and screaming, made him get up and sing, “You’ll Never Get Away from Me.” He also has a really terrific story: when he was young, he and his family invested in Sweeney Todd. So of course I make him tell that story…

Beth Leavel in Old Friends

But the 54 Below show is always evolving, and I don’t do it until the end of July. So who knows what new things I might really want to sing because of my relationship with Old Friends? There are so many songs that I really, really look forward to sharing with the audience. It’s just me and my trio, and it’s such an intimate setting. And there’ll be a lot of storytelling about mistakes I’ve made, lyrics I’ve screwed up—you know, fun stuff like that.

I’d love to know where your own journey with Sondheim’s work began.

I was not raised in New York. I was raised down South, so I was very, very late in the Sondheim game. It was when I was in college, and we were doing shows like No, No, Nanette and some Kander and Ebb. And then Sweeney Todd came out and someone bought me the album. I remember listening to it over and over, and I just had never heard music and lyrics like that before. So that was my introduction to him.

And then once you start, you don’t stop. Sunday in the Park came out, and then Into the Woods came out. I was fortunate enough to be able to play the Witch in Into the Woods, and Charlotte in A Little Night Music. And that’s when you really, really can’t go back.

And how did your journey with Old Friends specifically begin? Had you seen the gala night in London?

I had heard that Bernadette and Lea were doing a show in London, and there had been some footage online. And then my agent calls—I think it was last September or something—and says, “You have an audition for Cameron Mackintosh.” I’m like, “What?” And he said, “They want you to learn these songs.” So I did. I went in, they offered me the job, and since then it’s been nothing but Sondheim 24/7.

Finally, at the risk of doing a Merrily and ending at the beginning, I’d love to hear about those first days of rehearsals.

Because the Americans didn’t know the show, we had a week on our own to sit with Alfonso and Annbritt, our musical director, and figure out what parts we were singing. We essentially had a great deal of homework. We tried to learn the choreography, so that when the whole cast joined, we wouldn’t be holding them back.

So a week later, in come all the Brits, and it is like a huge party. In that first week, we’d been leaving gaps: this is when Bonnie does this, or here’s where Joanna or Jeremy does this. We felt like we already had a relationship with them. We just couldn’t wait to actually be in the same room, breathing the same Sondheim oxygen with them. And boy, it’s been great. I’ve been with wonderful casts before, but we are such a family. We’re stuck with each other for the rest of our lives.

For more information about Beth Leavel Sings Sondheim at 54 Below, and to purchase tickets, simply click here.