What a Farce! Jonathan Cake on His London Homecoming in A Flea in Her Ear

Jonathan Cake is marking a homecoming of sorts by spending a London winter co-starring with his old friend (and Cambridge University classmate) Tom Hollander in the Feydeau farce A Flea In Her Ear, directed by Richard Eyre at the Old Vic Theatre. American playgoers know the 43-year-old British-born actor from his stellar performances in The Philanthropist, Cymbeline, Medea and Parlour Song. (Married to actress Julianne Nicholson, he has called New York home for five years.) Broadway.com caught up with the handsome and charming Cake during a break in gallery-hopping with his mother at the Tate Modern. Before returning to look at French primitivists, the actor had plenty to say about French farce, New York vs. London and many other topics.

Welcome home—although I’m sure New York playgoers would hate to think they’re losing you to England.
I’m just giving them the slip for the moment [laughs]. My wife is American, and I have two little native New Yorkers who were both born there, so that really is where I am a de facto citizen. [Cake and Nicholson are the parents of a three-year-old son, Ignatius, and a 20-month-old daughter, Phoebe]. But this job came up last summer, on my birthday in fact, when I was on Cape Cod thinking, “What a lovely place to be, and how desperately unemployed I am!” It seemed irresistible, and I’ve known so many people in this show at different times. I’ve known Tom [Hollander] for 28 years!

Dating back to Cambridge?
Before that, to the National Youth Theatre when we were both rambunctious little skirt-chasers. At university, we were in Sam Mendes’ now rather legendary production of Cyrano de Bergerac as the loudest male actors around, vying for the title part. I shall never forget my first realization that Sam was going to be Sam, when he came to my room in Corpus Christi College and said, “OK, I’ve asked Tom to play Cyrano.” Of course my heart sank to my boots, and he said, “I want you to play de Guiche— the part Alec Guinness played in 1952 or something and he stole the show.” By the time Sam left, I was jumping around going, “I got de Guiche!” It was only later I realized that character has only about four scenes.

You have considerably more than that in A Flea in Her Ear.
Yes, and of course the funny thing is that when I was 15 at the National Youth Theatre, I looked exactly the same as I do now in my early 40s: I was ready-made to be a middle-aged leading actor, whereas Tom looked about three and a half at the time, with his cherubic, angelic presence.

I’d imagine that this play marks new theatrical terrain for you.
I had certainly never read nor seen this play before doing it, and I’ve never seen Noises Off. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen what could be described as a copper-bottomed farce. But the more I do [Flea], the more I understand that it’s driven by the basest human appetites—in this case, sex. The plot is driven by a woman who thinks her husband is being unfaithful so she decides to lure him into a trap, and he’s flattered enough to go along with it in pursuit of novelty. [Hollander’s character] Chandebise’s sexual alter ego, Tournel, my character, decides he’s the object of desire, and more and more chaos ensues from that. There’s an odd, strangulated hysteria that happens with an audience on good nights where you can feel waves of laughter building up that aren’t quite able to explode.

It’s a serious business, farce, isn’t it?
With a play like this, you have to feel that the characters are completely and utterly invested in the situation they’re in, even as the machinations of the plot become more and more outrageous. What’s at stake has to be so overwhelmingly important to people that they will pursue what they’re doing to the end. If something seems illogical for a moment, we’re sunk.

Did you feel as if you were acting outside your comfort zone?
Every time you do a play—and I think this is common with actors in general—you feel like you have no comfort zone whatsoever. That’s one of the extraordinary and wonderful things about the discipline of acting: You have no idea how anybody does it until you start rehearsing. That said, the reasons why one does a play often boil down to lines that just snare you and make you feel as if there is a world of possibility. Tournel says, “Do you think I’ll be made a fool of in front of myself?” There was something when I read that which made me howl with laughter. It touched a nerve with me, and possibly lots of actors, about how foolish you can be made to seem.

You’ve done a huge range of roles in New York in the past few years, on Broadway and off.
It has been really fabulous to have that variety, you’re absolutely right. I remember standing here at the Royal Court Theatre at the opening of my mate Jez Butterworth’s second play and someone who shall remain nameless said to me, “Of course you’ll never work here [at the Court]; you’re far too posh.” That sort of thinking isn’t part of anybody’s consideration in New York where, of course, I’m English but can play American and, indeed, have done so. All those cliches about New York are sort of true: There is a can-do attitude that is extremely receptive and exciting.

How did you and Julianne meet?
I went to New York in 2002 to do Medea, with Fiona Shaw, and out of that I got cast in an HBO pilot called Marriage, in which, hilariously, the person playing my wife was Julianne Nicholson. The show didn’t get picked up…

…but the wife did!
[Laughs] That’s always my sappy line.

And now you’re raising two American children.
Whenever my son, Ignatius, is over here, he sounds very American, of course, and when he’s in New York, they say, “I love his little English accent.” I think he speaks the international language of toddler, though I must say every time I hear a T lapse into a D—like “compuder”—I do slightly bridle, which is absurd [laughs]. It’s a bit like holding back the sea.

How do you juggle the two cities, New York and London, and the claims on you of each?
When I’m in New York, I get slightly anxious about what I’m missing here and think to myself in lighter moments about the possibility of unemployment on two continents [laughs]. I still have a home in Primrose Hill [north London], but I miss the New York theater and can’t wait to get back to it and my family.