How's everything going?
Both (in unison): Great!
Both enjoying yourselves?
Both (in unison): Very much!
I know you'd both say that anyway, even if you weren't...
Roger Allam: Well, it's hard work, and it certainly took me a while to enjoy it, because the first half, particularly for Albin, is incredibly frenetic. You run on stage, jump around, sing, dance, and then go off-stage and jump into other costumes.
Philip Quast: I've got one dresser, to help me change my shirt, and I see about four descend on you!
Roger: It's like a flock of seagulls! What's lovely, on Saturday night, for instance, we had a riotous audience who loved it all the way through, they stood up and were cheering and clapping. That's incredibly enjoyable, to feel that you're sending an audience out like that. It's a standing ovation most nights.
A show like this must depend quite a lot on the audience, because there's interaction with them throughout.
Roger: Yes, it depends on the demographic. It really does. It's one of those shows where you can get a table of four people that can affect the whole audience, or turn them off - I don't think that's happened, but it could, like any comedy really.
Philip: It can turn a comedy into a tragedy!
Roger: You could just get silence - that's happened to me and you just feel embarrassed. The audience at the end is cheering and standing up so they've obviously had a good time, they're just not very loud. They might not be into the verbal comedy side of it, the side-gags.
You mentioned the costume changes - is it difficult putting your make-up on on-stage while singing, as you have to in A Little More Mascara?
Roger: Well, when you start doing it, it's impossible, you can't do it. But it's like all these things, you just practise and practise it until it's OK. I don't put much make-up, really. I'm already wearing really quite a lot at the top of the show! It's just adding a bit of eyeshadow, blusher and putting the eyelashes on.
Philip: Yeah, but that's pretty amazing. I watch you sit there putting false eyelashes on. I wouldn't be able to stop my hand shaking.
Roger: They sometimes go a little bit awry - never right over there on my cheek.
Philip, you're back in the show having opened it at the Menier. Has it changed since then?
Philip: Not a great deal, I don't think. No. Not in terms of staging. The feel is different. Roger and I, the age feels absolutely right with the two of us, we have the same sort of family life, and it has the right tiredness, shall we say! It's interesting. The orchestra's not as present as it was. Certainly now it's a bit wider - not that I'm a dancer, but I can sort of have a bit of a jump about - it was a small space for a big person, but I can have a leap around now, and it gives me a bit of space to fall over.
And Roger, how are all your dresses? Was it a different process getting them fitted than a normal costuming?
Roger: It was different in that there's so many of them. I don't appear in the same costume twice throughout the whole show, so that I guess is what was different. And generally, of course, I don't get fitted for dresses.
You have done before, though, haven't you?
Roger: I have done before, yes! Once, in Privates On Parade at the Donmar. But there's far more costumes with this.
Which is your favourite frock?
Roger: I don't know, I don't think I've really got one! The funny thing is when you put on all that stuff, somewhere in your head you look like someone fantastic, you look like a singing star, a real, proper, beautiful woman or diva or whatever. And then you catch sight of yourself in the mirror!
Philip: [laughs uproariously]
Roger: And...yes. It's not quite what's in one's head.
Had you seen the production before you came into it?
Roger: I saw it at the Menier.
Do you think that's affected the way you interpret the role?
Roger: Well, luckily it was a long time ago I saw it, and I only saw it once, so I have very, very good memories of it but not so much detail. On the other hand, I did see Graham [Graham Norton] when we were rehearsing to remind myself what the show was like. Constantly in rehearsal, someone will say, "Oh, Doug [Douglas Hodge] did that there, but Graham's doing this." So there are various alternatives already, various styles that one can try, as it were. I think you have to make that an advantage - two very good but very different people have done it before. You don't feel haunted by it.
