Jeremy Secomb is One of Sondheim’s Old Friends

Australian-born actor Jeremy Secomb’s life changed in 2015 when he played the title role in Stephen Sondheim‘s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in a small production produced by Tooting Arts Club in London in 2015. Two years later the production moved to New York where it played at off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre.

Roles in Les Misérables as Javert and later Bishop of Digne and Sister Act as Curtis Jackson followed. But the show that is giving Secomb the opportunity of his lifetime was and is Old Friends.

The show started out as a one-night gala celebrating Sondheim less than a year after his death. So popular was that show that it was slightly reworked and later ran for three-and-a-half months on the West End.

Now Old Friends is playing at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles before beginning previews on Broadway on March 25th at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The official opening is on April 8th. Starring in the show are Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga.

Last week, just before I saw Old Friends, I spoke with Secomb about his Sondheim journey and how unlikely he thought all of this was. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview, please go to our YouTube channel.

Q: How does it feel to know that your Broadway debut is just a matter of weeks away? 

I’m absolutely over the moon about it, actually. [As] a little boy from a small country town in Australia, never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought that would be in the cards.

Why not? Why not dream big?

Obviously I’ve dreamed big because here I am. But yeah, I came from a very sort of working-class family. My father was a policeman in a small country town in Australia. I didn’t even know musicals were a thing. I didn’t know that you could make a living out of them. I didn’t even know that you’d get paid to do it. So I was 22 before I saw my first professional musical. So, you know, I came into this industry later than most people.

What was that moment that made you think, yes, I can do this and I want to do this? 

It was a production of Joseph [and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat], which was the Palladium production. It was in Australia. I happened to be in Sydney. I was working in a bank. I had a night to myself in Sydney and I thought I might just go and see a musical. I just bought a ticket and I remember sitting down watching the show and having that realization of hang on a second, I could do this.

How how much did your experience in Sweeney Todd and any other Sweeney Todd‘s influence your own appreciation of what Sondheim does? 

Sweeney Todd wasn’t my initial introduction into Sondheim’s material. But once I had seen and became aware of the show, it was certainly one of those things where I thought, my Lord, I’d love to play a role like that. 

My parents had a very eclectic taste in music, so they had an album that had some Sondheim on it. I remember my father saying to me that he preferred to listen to other composers music because you could have it on in the background. You didn’t have to engage in it.

He said with Stephen Sondheim’s work, you have to sit down and engage with the lyrics and the story. It was something that I remember very vividly as a child. 

I did a very small production in a pie shop that turned into something that none of us thought it would. Ended up doing it in New York and meeting Steve and working closely with Steve. Then to be asked by Cameron [Mackintosh] to be involved in the gala and to sing with Michael [Ball], who was doing the Sweeney track. I just wanted to be a part of it, too, to pay my own tribute towards Steve. So for this to now continue and and me making my Broadway debut, doing this track, is inconceivable to me. Really is. 

What do you remember most about your interactions with Steve and and what, if any, advice he gave you about this gargantuan musical that has become legendary? 

One of the things that I will always remember about Steve is he wasn’t the easiest man to talk to. He was quite a guarded character. But when he spoke about his show he became very animated about it. He said to me that everything I’ve written, every word, every syllable, every note, every change of note, is there for a reason. 

Is Old Friends following the format of the gala or there are there changes in what this show is? 

There’s a few changes from the gala, but it’s pretty much the same. The show is what we did in London. There are a couple of little surprises in there that I won’t divulge. But 98% of the show is is similar to what we did in London.

How important is it that this show offers a fresh perspective on these songs, which we have all taken in so fondly over the years?

What’s amazing about doing a show like Old Friends is that Cameron and Matthew [Bourne] have been very open with us that we’re not doing the show. You know, each version of the song that we’re doing is a revue of that particular song. So when Lea and I got together to work on the Sweeney stuff, Cameron kept sort of saying to me, we’re not doing the show. So that’s not the judge that you’re singing that duet with [in “Pretty Women.”] You know, we’ve got a guy coming in to do it. So all in all the versions of the songs that we’re doing come from a different angle than the show would usually come at it from. So it’s brilliant.

It’s interesting that Cameron gives you that direction because Sondheim wrote so specifically for character within the construct of his shows. How do you split that difference when these are so intricately constructed to reveal character so that you’re not necessarily being the character, but you’re performing the songs believably so that we know what the character is?

We are bringing character to all of them. It’s not just stand at a microphone and sing these songs. We are performing and telling the story of each of these songs, but we’re not telling them in the story of the show. So we have to create a little microcosm of…Okay, we’re going to do a few numbers from Into the Woods now. But you as the audience, we’re not giving you the whole story. So we need to create our own little story with the characters that we have to give you the taste of that particular show.

Since you brought up Into the Woods, if there is a Sondheim expert with a Broadway career in this show, it’s Bernadette Peters. Did she share any of her experiences with him with you and the cast? 

In the run in London we heard a few stories about Steve from Bernadette. But I think that it’s also a very personal thing for her as well, because he was such an amazing friend to Bernadette. I suppose it’s a little raw for us still. But there are some cracking stories that she comes out with, you know, just one-liners that Steve had said to her over the years. We’ve also been very lucky to have Mandy Patinkin come and see this show when we were in London. After the show he had some brilliant things to say about Steve and stories to tell as well.

To have people like Bernadette in our show, she’s sort of like the matriarch, really, of what we’re presenting. I don’t know whether she’d like to be referred to as that, but, she is the muse.

You did an interview in 2015 with my Entertainment World about Javert and Les Mis. You were asked whether or not Javert was a villain and you said, “He’s stubborn, but he’s not a villain.”

And I stand by that.

So my question to you is, is Sweeney Todd a villain? Is he a victim? Is he a victim of circumstances? Is he a broken man or is he a little bit of all of that?

He’s a little bit of all of that. But to be honest with you, I think he’s a victim of circumstance above all of it. You know, I truly believe that the man just wanted to live his life. He had a wife and a child and all the rest of it. And he was a barber. And all of a sudden, someone in power decided that they wanted his wife. Back in those days, the person with the power had the power. I mean, you know, let’s look at the world today. But it is one of those things where he didn’t do anything wrong. He was sent away. He lost his family, his life and all the rest of it. All he wanted to do was get back to London and find his wife and his family and get on with his life. But when he came back he found things that changed him.

I have several friends who have already seen the show in Los Angeles, and every single one of them said they started crying 20 minutes into the show and that they found themselves deeply emotional through it. Even more so after it was over. I’ve seen you post about how emotional it is. What is it about Old Friends that evokes so much emotion for both the artists on stage and the audience in the theater? 

For me, personally, because I loved Steve and loved his work, it’s a very personal tribute for me to be involved in this show. I think that anyone that comes to the show with any level of that sort of love for Steve and his work is going to be touched by what happens on stage in Old Friends.

There are certainly personal things for me. One of them being that I get to be on stage with Bernadette. We finished act one with a song that, I don’t know whether I should say what it is, but it’s just the most incredible thing. Every single time we got to it in London, I could feel the audience grasp and hold their breath as soon as it started. Because anyone that has love for musical theater will just revel in the fact that it’s happening in front of them. I think that’s what happens throughout the show.

It is so classy and it holds Steve in such high regard. The performances are extraordinary, it looks extraordinary and it sounds extraordinary. I just think that it’s a proper, classy tribute to an incredible man and a genius of musical theater.

To watch the full interview with Jeremy Secomb, please go HERE.

Main Photo: Jeremy Secomb and the company of Old Friends. (Photo ©MatthewMurphy/Courtesy Center Theatre Group)