Sarah Goldberg on Having Double the Fun as an Olivier Award Nominee in London's Clybourne Park

Few North Americans have made the swift impression on the London theater scene left by 25-year-old Sarah Goldberg, a Vancouver native who came to London six years ago to attend drama school and then happily stayed on. With credits including Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Apologia and last year’s Old Vic revival of Six Degrees of Separation, Goldberg has landed a 2011 Olivier Award nod for playing not one role but two in Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris’ scabrous comedy about American racial and social fissures. In the first act, set in a suburban Chicago home in 1959, Goldberg plays Betsy, the deaf, pregnant wife of a racist community activist. In the second, set in 2009, she shifts to tough-talking, fully hearing Lindsey, who buys the home and plans renovations that disturb her African-American neighbors. Broadway.com caught up with the young talent to talk awards, niche markets, and making a go of it in London as a non-Brit.

Congratulations on your Olivier nomination! You must be so pleased.
I had no idea any of this was going to happen, so it’s been thrilling. What happened was that I had watched [the Israel-Palestine TV drama] The Promise on TV the night before, and I was in a political discussion with a friend about Israel. We were both getting a bit emotional when I got a text saying, “Oh my god, congratulations,” and I thought, “Congratulations for what?” Then Dom [Dominic Cooke, the play’s director] called and he was so excited, and that made me twice as excited!

The entire trajectory of Clybourne Park has been astonishing, first selling out at the Royal Court and now at Wyndham’s Theatre, with four Olivier nominations in tow.
When we started at the Court, we really had no idea what to expect. Then we did the opening preview and the audience was completely raucous. That was sort of thrilling—it felt like we were at a sports event [laughs]. I had faith in the play from the start and my jaw dropped open the first time I read it. I did think, “You don’t want to get ahead of yourself,” so this has all been a surprise, but a very welcome one.

Bruce Norris’s script allows you to play a different character in each act. That must be any actor’s dream.
Absolutely! What’s nice, too, is that I see the two characters as completely different, from totally opposite worlds. Betsy in the first half is eight months pregnant and fully deaf from birth and married to quite a pedantic man who has a lot of control over everything she does. Lindsey is the complete opposite [in act two]: She’s someone in total charge, successful in her career, who earns a lot of money and is very independent. It’s interesting to see how extreme the opposites are, from playing someone who allows her husband to have all the status to another who is publicly rude to her husband and sort of uses him when she needs to—or detaches herself when it suits her to do that.

What’s lovely is the empathy and sweetness that you bring to Betsy without sentimentalizing her.
She’s really a beautiful character to play, because through it all she’s very optimistic and sees the best and wants everything to be nice even if she is trapped in the suburban life of an American housewife in the 1950s. I have to say, though, that when I read the script, I panicked, wondering how I would be believed essentially as deaf. The challenge, too, with Betsy is that you’re having to listen as the actor playing her while obviously making it seem as if you can’t hear.

Are you the only North American in the company?
There’s one other. Michael Goldsmith, who plays Kenneth [the son of the grieving couple we meet in Act One], is from Detroit. But I’ve found in most of the stuff I’ve done in London that either I’m the only one or there is only one other, which is thrilling; it makes me very popular. Everyone wants help with their accents, so you have instant friends! [Laughs.] I find, too, that I have a noticeably different sort of energy and frame of reference and style of approaching something because of where I grew up, and it’s nice in a rehearsal room to have that contrast.

Did you perceive while at drama school [LAMDA, the prestigious London college] that being an outsider in Britain would work to your advantage?
When I first left drama school, I definitely had a fear of being typecast, only to find that what I thought was going to be a hindrance has turned out to be a help. I don’t mind doing all-American parts if they are great plays and great parts. What’s important to me are the story and the play, not whether something is British or American. I am starting now to go up for RP [English “received pronunciation”] roles, but I think everyone feels a little more comfortable in their own accents.

Is New York on your radar?
I actually auditioned for Juilliard when I was 17 and luckily didn’t get in because I then took a year off and went backpacking with my best friend. It was during that time that I came to London and fell in love with it and became desperate to move here. New York is somewhere I would really love to work, but it hasn’t so far affected me the way London has. The first time I came to London, something in my heart jumped.

And you’ve carved out for yourself a breadth of work here.
To be honest, I don’t think I’d have had the career in New York that I have had here, at least so far. Being in a niche can actually be quite helpful—though if anyone had told me that six years ago, I’d have thought they were mad!