A Conversation with Molly Lynch
on Here We Are, her lifelong love of Sondheim, and The Sound of Music
It is the biggest pleasure to welcome Molly Lynch to The Sondheim Hub. To date, Molly is the only person to have appeared on stage in Here We Are as both Fritz and Marianne; she covered both roles at the National Theatre earlier this year. In this conversation, Molly speaks with us about stepping into Sondheim’s final musical, her lifelong love of his work, and starring as Maria in The Sound of Music.
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It’s so great to meet you. We’re speaking a few months after Here We Are at the National. Do you remember when you first heard about the show, and that it was coming to the UK?
I was so excited about the show coming out. I remember hearing about it in New York, and then listening to the cast recording. I’m such a Sondheim fangirl, and I remember thinking, I can’t believe he wrote about this. It was like a message from beyond the grave. I thought “The Soldier’s Dream” was so beautiful, and I was particularly obsessed with Fritz’s music in The Roads.
I remember thinking, God, I’d never get in the room, because every single person is going to want to do that. First, you’ve got a really brilliant, unique musical, and then it’s at the National Theatre, which is another prestigious thing—so I was like, I’m not going to get seen for this. Luckily I have the best agent in the world, Georgie, who sent me an email with an audition. I was so chuffed. I went in to do the Fritz material first, and then went in and did the Marianne material a couple of weeks later.
Even just getting to audition, getting to sing the audition material in a room with Nigel Lilley, I was like, my inner nerd is satisfied. I’m very, very happy. And then when they called me back in for Marianne, I remember wondering whether I was right for it at all. It was vocally really nice for me to sing, but I just thought, God, I think my skills need to be another 10, 15 years down the line. At that stage, I knew it was Jane Krakowski doing the role, so of course I was thinking, I can’t cover Jane Krakowski! She’s one of my heroes. She’s just an icon: the choices she’s made in her career, the work she’s done, how beautiful she is, how funny she is… She’s a hero. Auditioning for that role, knowing that it would be potentially covering her, was daunting. But I was so chuffed to do it and to be a part of that process, just purely as a Sondheim fan.
When tickets first went on sale, I remember seeing that there were three performances where Jane Krakowski was not scheduled to appear. Was having those guaranteed Marianne shows helpful as you prepared for both roles?
I think so, yes. I was really lucky that I knew I was going to get on for her, because it would have been hard to do all that learning and know I might never, ever do it. I still would have done it in a heartbeat, of course. The rehearsal process itself was so fab. And the parts are so complicated. Watching those stars in rehearsals, I felt so comforted seeing them find it difficult, because I was like, God, I’m finding it so difficult at home. In Here We Are, there’s lots of dialogue spoken in time, literally written into the score, and the counting is just nuts. But the way Sondheim writes, there’s always a reason for everything—so you just need to be with the right people, like Nigel and Joe, who know what that reason is, and can break it all down for you.
In the end, I went on as Fritz before I went on as Marianne, and nearly all of us went on as covers. But it was still great to know for sure that I had those dates as Marianne, especially because my family are all in Ireland. I was able to be like, “Book your flights!” I’ve covered a lot, and they often can’t make it to a show by the time I know I’m going on, so that was really great.
I’d love to ask you about those hours between getting a call saying, “You’re on tonight,” and curtain up. For Here We Are, what did that process look like?
That’s such a good question, because I remember wondering the exact same thing. I remember as a student being like, “No, but practically, what do you have to do? What is involved?”
For Here We Are, the rehearsal process was so intense, and the material was so difficult, that a lot of it was on us to simply just be on top of our stuff. As covers, we would spend a lot of time rehearsing The Roads ourselves. There are four of them in the show, where they’re traveling from one restaurant to another, and they’re just so complicated. They’re the same, but different. So we would have sessions where we’d be like, “Let’s just run Road 1 and 2.” “Okay, now let’s run Road 3 and 4.” “Oh, can we go back to Road 2 again?” We were always doing that. And I’d have to be like, “Guys, can we do that one again so I can do it as the other character?”
It was like a sport, really. Lots of drilling. Lots of line running. Whenever there was some downtime, we would do line runs as covers. And because everyone covered two parts, we were so often talking to ourselves during those runs. It was the most nuts thing ever. Steve [Serlin], who had to be both Raffi and Paul, would kill us every time, having those conversations with himself. I have some great videos.
But on the day itself, here’s what I did. I had one script, with my characters highlighted in different colors. I also had what we call cheat sheets: a track, a list of all the movements they make. We also had videos of the previews to watch. So, as soon as I knew I was going on, it was: watch the video, go through everything. The main thing that catches you off guard is the prop movements, and where you physically exit and reenter the stage. At one point, Fritz goes into the closet, and I remember I got in there, and I was literally like, “What happens now?”
It’s all those practical things, really. They’re so intricate: just by putting on Rory [Kinnear]’s jacket at a certain point, you have to make sure the other one is left in the right place. Amira [Matthews], who was covering Tracie Bennett and Martha Plimpton, covered Tracie’s track in Act II, which had very few lines, but had the most complicated movement of all. She had about a million prop cues.
I really can’t talk highly enough about my fellow covers, because it’s the hardest, craziest job. And on this particular show, it was covering on steroids. In a weird way, it’s easier when you have more lines, or when you have more anchor points. The main thing you worry about as a cover going on is that you’re going to mess someone else up. You’re not really worried about, “Am I going to be good or terrible?” You’re more like, “What if I trip up Jane Krakowski? What if I don’t give her her line?!”
Fritz and Marianne are musically so distinct from one another. Did they scratch different itches for you vocally?
Absolutely. I mean, how lucky am I? You’re totally right. Sondheim is the best at writing female roles, and here are two such contrasting ones. Vocally, I can’t even tell you which one I prefer, but they totally scratch different itches. I just feel so lucky I got to sing them both. Chumisa [Dornford-May], who played Fritz, just has the most ridiculous voice. I was able to model both of the parts on such brilliant people, and then I was also still given the freedom to make them my own.
With Sondheim, you’re not super conscious of, oh, what do we need to show off here? It’s not about taking your vocal line somewhere in order to display some kind of virtuosity or whatever. You still get those big moments, but it’s less about them and so much more about the text. You find that you have no choice but to disengage from any vanity you might have around the vocals. You have to get the words out, and you have to hit the notes, and the rhythm is so, so important. I find that really freeing, because he does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. It’s less about, “What quality of voice can I hit that E in?” Instead, his music kind of tells you, stop being obsessed with yourself. Just get it out. So, I love singing his work for that reason as well.
At the very beginning of your career, you were part of the English National Opera production of Sweeney Todd. Was doing more Sondheim professionally always a specific goal of yours?
That was the dream. The dream would be to do Sondheim forever. I’m just obsessed. I was so lucky that my very first job was Sweeney Todd at ENO. But that makes it sound like I just walked into it. I had so many rejections. When I started auditioning, I was still in drama school, and I got close to a lot of things and got massive nos that broke my heart. Actually, the first job I got was Fiddler on the Roof, with Bryn Terfel and with David Charles Abell conducting. Because I’d gotten that, they called me in for Sweeney Todd, which was actually happening before it. I really think it was a case of right place, right time… And maybe part of me hopes they saw the little Sondheim nerd in me, too.
I come from a music background. I did a music degree in Ireland before I moved here. I love opera, and I think I was always in between those two worlds—so it makes sense, I guess, that I sat in those rooms probably better than I would have done in a lot of commercial musical theatre settings. But again, I was just dying to work, so I would have done any show at all, anything just to learn. But I feel so lucky that my first job was in that room. I look up to Lonny Price so much.
The Last Five Years is such an important show for you, and Cathy is such a gift of a character. In preparing for this conversation, I couldn’t help but ponder the idea that we see flashes of Cathy in both Fritz and Marianne. Does that chime with your experience?
Totally. I think that makes complete sense. I love the way Sondheim writes all characters, but especially female characters: that self-deprecation, or the knowingness that I think a lot of the time in musical theatre isn’t given to women, which is that self-consciousness and cynicism. And I think Jason Robert Brown did that so brilliantly with Cathy in The Last Five Years, which is what I just loved playing. She is so self-aware. She catches herself being annoying, or catches herself being a pain in the arse, which is so brilliant.
Actually, you know what? You’re so right. Marianne and Fritz together equals Cathy. Because in Here We Are, Marianne starts from this position of everything’s beautiful, everything’s wonderful, whereas Fritz is like, no, it all sucks, it’s terrible, you’re not seeing what’s happening, it’s all your fault. But with both of them, you can see that beautifully complex approach to writing women in musical theatre, which I absolutely adore.
You’re about to play Maria in The Sound of Music at the Leicester Curve. Tell me a little about transitioning from Here We Are to a classic show like this, especially when you’re leading a company and playing such an iconic role. Does it feel like a totally different headspace?
Totally. There are so many downsides to this career, but the feeling of getting to do something completely different from the last job is an amazing privilege. It always helps when you have a certain reverence for the material, too. I watched that film so much when I was younger. And all these things are linked, of course: Hammerstein teaching Sondheim, Sondheim being such an influence on Jason Robert Brown… I see them all feeding into each other, and feeding into how I interpret them all.
Nikolai Foster is just one of the most incredible directors. He gives an actor so much confidence and freedom. The really cool thing about doing these big shows like My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music is that they’ve become a certain thing in all our heads, because we grew up with them. So then the process is actually about taking out the script, looking at the lines, looking at the music, and going, “Okay, what was this show when it was brand new—when it was a Here We Are? What were they thinking?” That’s something Nikolai really encourages. You still end up in a place of so much joy, and there’s so much to take then from Mary Martin and Julie Andrews. But it’s also being given that freedom or integrity as an artist to think, okay, where do you find this character? How does she become one with you? It’s about figuring out who I am as myself within those parts—and that’s something that’s very hard to articulate.
Finally, I’d love to know when you first caught the Sondheim bug. What was it that really switched you on to his work?
I’m such a nerd for this. Basically, my relationship with musical theatre was just me sitting in my front room in Ireland on YouTube. I only started going to stage school when I was 15 or 16. The first thing I found on YouTube that I would watch obsessively, which I think is a lot of people’s experience, is Kristin Chenoweth doing “Popular,” and Kristin Chenoweth doing “Glitter and Be Gay.” But then, when I found Bernadette Peters singing “Being Alive,” I was gone. I was like, “This is it!” And then it was the Sondheim 80th birthday concert at the Royal Albert Hall, with Daniel Evans, Julian Ovenden, Jenna Russell, Maria Friedman… all these amazing actors. I used to watch that on YouTube all the time, just sitting in my front room, being like, “Oh my god, I want to be these people.”
My silliest Sondheim story is that, on my first job at Sweeney Todd, he was there on press night and I was too scared to go say hi. He was behind a red velvet rope. I saw him from afar and looked at him, but I couldn’t go and shake his hand, because I was too scared. Because imagine if I said something stupid, and because he was so quick, he made a quick joke about it, but then I lived with it forever, thinking I’d annoyed Sondheim!
But I do remember he was in the fourth row when he saw the show. I had one solo line in Sweeney Todd. And I sang it directly to him.
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