A Conversation with Jeremy Secomb
We speak to Jeremy Secomb about Sweeney Todd, Old Friends, and spilling blood on Stephen Sondheim
It’s so good to meet you. Now that some time has passed since Old Friends, what stands out to you in particular about that production?
It was an incredible thing to be a part of, having been part of the original gala and then being asked to be involved in the actual run of the show. To work with the calibre of people that were on stage, to be a part of that, was a huge thing in my career. It really was an incredible thing to work with people like Bernadette [Peters] and Lea [Salonga], and British legends as well. To be on stage with those people and to be part of a cast bringing such an amazing tribute to Steve was an incredible highlight. It really was. To this day, even thinking about it is ridiculous. When I was given the “Make me confused / Mock me with praise” lines in “Being Alive,” I was like, “Out of all the people here, you want me to do that?!” Like, I’m really, really happy to do that—this is amazing! It’s an incredible arrangement. And that arrangement of “Being Alive,” it’s really hard, because it goes into eight-part harmony.
Yes! That glorious canon it goes into: “Somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody…”
Yeah. And it just seems to be constantly more somebodies. It’s beautiful to sing, and with the voices that we had on stage, it’s just an incredible thing to be standing there, singing that out, with those people. It was an absolute joy. It really was. And then to be standing on stage right next to Bernadette singing Sunday. As a young musical theater guy growing up in Australia, if you had said to me that I’d be on stage one day doing that… That’s just inconceivable for someone from a small country town in Australia.
I must say, it was pretty special to see Bernadette step into place as Dot, as the Sunday painting comes together. I never thought I’d have an opportunity to see that in real life.
100%. And what’s amazing about that is that every single show that we did, as soon as the music for that number started and people realized we were going to do that song, you could feel the electricity in the room. You could hear a pin drop. She was there at the beginning.
You, of course, fronted the Sweeney portion of the show. For a lot of Old Friends audience members, that might very well have been their first introduction to Sondheim. I believe that was the case for you too, wasn’t it?
It was, yeah. And then the production of Sweeney that I did, when I got to meet and work with Steve, was an incredible thing that when you look back on it should never have happened. And then to be paired up with Lea was just fantastic. Lea did such an incredible job with the Mrs. Lovett character she put together. We got on really well, and I think we worked really well on stage together too, so it was really lovely that we had that 15-20 minutes of the show where it became a little Sweeney Todd production within this amazing thing that was put together on stage.
Did it feel strange at first to be Sweeney in a larger space? Did you have to physically adjust your body language or what you were doing vocally for the different context?
Yeah. And also, in the pie shop, we had three instruments. And then all of a sudden I’ve got a band, and there are things there that I’d never heard before, other than on a recording. In rehearsals, Cameron [Mackintosh] and Matthew [Bourne] and Julia [McKenzie] were very specific about what they wanted, which was different to the production of Sweeney that I did.