08-05-2025
‘It should be illegal how much fun I'm having': Lea Salonga on playing Mrs. Lovett and more in ‘Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends'
'It boggles my mind that this is actually happening,' admits Lea Salonga about the recognition she has been receiving for her performance in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends. Hours before joining Gold Derby to discuss the Broadway revue, the actress earned a nomination from the Drama League for Distinguished Performance in addition to her previously announced special recognition for Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre. She will celebrate the honors with her son, whose 19th birthday overlaps with the ceremony, and looks forward to toasting with the cast and crew. 'I think we're gonna be screaming quite a bit once I get to work. I think we're all going to be delirious with joy,' exclaims the actress (watch our full interview above).
This is now Salonga's third production of Old Friends, having previously appeared in the West End and Los Angeles engagements of the show. The Tony winner notes how the current audiences process the revue differently. 'I think it's pretty safe to say New York audiences know Steve Sondheim's work better than any other audience does,' admits the star. The question the creatives and company had to answer was therefore, 'What do we do when it's an audience full of people that know the story probably better than we do?' She shares an anecdote from fellow cast mate Jeremy Secomb that held an answer: when he performed Sweeney Todd for Sondheim, the composer 'was laughing at all his own jokes,' and that spirit informs how the ensemble approaches the material. Salonga says, 'You will not be spoon-fed anything, but we will serve everything in the way that we should be serving everything.' The actress adds, 'It's been incredible performing this material. … There is just so much love.'
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The Sweeney Todd section of the revue is a bravura one for Salonga, as she plays Mrs. Lovett opposite Secomb's demon barber, performing 'The Worst Pies in London' and 'A Little Priest' in a medley of five songs from the musical. 'It should be illegal how much fun I'm having,' confesses the actress, who says she loves that she gets to 'disappear into a role far more than I do at any point during the show.' Unlike other numbers, the Sweeney ones find her transformed fully into character with 'wigs, makeup, blacked-out teeth, a costume, an accent.' She credits producer Cameron Mackintosh with the opportunity to play Lovett on Broadway – a role she has portrayed in productions in Manila and Singapore — and for seeing her 'in a way that other producers have not yet been able to. … He saw me as a 17-year-old in the Philippines, so much to cast me in Miss Saigon, and sees me on another level to be able to do this show… He took a risk also casting me as Eponine in Les Misérables.'
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One of Salonga's earliest numbers in Old Friends is 'Loving You,' a gorgeous ballad from Sondheim's late career musical Passion. In the context of the original musical, the song is performed by Fosca, an unwell cousin of an Italian colonel who falls into deep infatuation with Giorgio, an Italian military captain on assignment to a remote outpost. For her rendition, Salonga went to a more immediate source to conjure the number's intense emotions: her son, Nick. Before the West End run, Julia McKenzie, the show's artistic consultant who Salonga credits as 'one of the directors,' told the performer to 'just think of the person that you love the most in the world,' and she 'instantly' knew to whom she would now sing the piece. She says the 'beauty' of this revue is that it has 'given brand new meaning and given new life' to these numbers.
Old Friends has given rise to many moments of unexpected resonance for Salonga. The Here Lies Love star closes out a six-song section from Into the Woods with the musical's final number, 'Children Will Listen,' and in the final moments, she is joined on stage by Bernadette Peters. 'It's crazy, it's really crazy,' thinks the actress, continuing, 'I'm standing face to face with the original Witch from the Broadway production of Into the Woods, somebody pinch me, please, I'm about to die.' The moment of connection has taken on additional meaning, too, as she will be playing the Witch in a production of the musical in the Philippines after Old Friends concludes and now feels like sharing the song with Peters is a moment in which her scene partner passes the torch and sends 'love and well wishes' to her for when she takes on the role herself. 'It feels deeply meaningful every time we share that moment in the show,' she adds.
Near the end of Old Friends, Salonga delivers a rousing performance of 'Everything's Coming Up Roses,' the iconic Act 1 finale from Gypsy. The song has been done on Broadway by legendary actresses in the original production and numerous revivals, including Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Peters, Patti LuPone, and now Audra McDonald. A legend herself, Salonga did not try to 'live up' to all the versions that have come before, which would have been 'unrealistic.' Instead, she leaned fully into the reason producer Mackintosh asked her to do the song, explaining, 'He knows of my own history as a performer that started performing from a very young age, which means that I have a mother who managed my career and who shepherded me through so much of this crazy, crazy, sometimes predatory, fickle business. So I sing it as an homage to her, so I am pulling from real life, therefore I don't really need to pull emotionally from performances that have been done before.' The result is a deeply impassioned interpretation that serves as a part of the incredibly emotional climax of the revue.
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Seeing Salonga perform these extended excerpts from Sweeney Todd and this number from Gypsy have New York audience clamoring for the actress to star in a full production of a Sondheim musical on Broadway. 'Mama Rose is definitely something that I'm seeing on the horizon,' admits the Tony winner, who says fellow performer Joanna Gleason nudged her to tackle the role sooner than later. 'I'm definitely putting that on my list of Sondheim ladies that I'd like to be able to one day play while I'm still physically strong enough to do it, because that's a mammoth role and requires so much physical, vocal, mental, emotional energy,' explains the actress. Even though she's portrayed Mrs. Lovett elsewhere, she would love to revisit that character, because performing Sondheim is 'like doing roles in the Shakespeare canon,' as every new production offers a chance to explore 'how much more deeply this character goes.'
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