Sarah Lancashire on Co-Starring with a Beautiful Pig in London's Betty Blue Eyes

Sarah Lancashire has made a major name for herself in British TV, which is one of the reasons why her galvanic starring performance in the new Cameron Mackintosh/Richard Eyre musical Betty Blue Eyes comes as such a surprise. Lancashire has been on the West End before, most recently as Jane Krakowski’s replacement Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, but it’s as Betty’s Joyce Chilvers that she all but walks off with the show, playing a singing-and-dancing wife of daunting ambition amid austerity Britain of 1947. (The title refers to a pig being raised for a party to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.) The musical, now playing at the Novello Theatre, is based on the much-loved 1984 film A Private Function, with Lancashire inheriting Maggie Smith’s screen role. Dame Maggie, though, never got to sell the sizzle with a first-act showstopper called “Nobody,” with which Lancashire brings down the house—and which seemed a perfect place to begin an animated afternoon chat.

What a performance! Here you are playing the socially aspirant wife of a mild-mannered Yorkshire chiropodist [Reece Shearsmith] and then you get this glam fantasy number, “Nobody,” in which Joyce shows us the “somebody” she would like to be.
I know, and what I love is hearing the audience react! Joyce is dressed simply, adhering closely to the look of the period, and suddenly the top dress comes off very, very quickly and you see the “reveal”: beautiful black sequins rolled up under what I’ve been wearing. Occasionally, we get a round of applause, and then there’s the bit where Joyce gets up on the table and does it all again. That’s about Cameron [Mackintosh, the producer] wanting more [laughs].

The entire show is such unusual musical fare, not least the emphasis in the marketing on the pig, Betty, of the title.
I did think, “How can you turn A Private Function into a musical?” But to be honest, I was so charmed by the piece that I just said to myself, well, it will either find an audience or it won’t, but I’ve never worked for Cameron and he has a pretty good track record [laughs]. I was thrilled to be offered it and also very surprised because musicals are not my territory.

What about playing opposite an animatronic porker? W. C. Fields would have had something to say about that.
Especially because when I went in to meet [Betty] in Cameron’s office, I thought to myself, “You are definitely playing second fiddle to this pig.” She is so beautiful.

Does Betty have an understudy?
She does, in a crate somewhere.

The show seems almost radical in its resuscitation of various traditions—an entr’acte, for instance, and a finale ultimo like you would have in Camelot or South Pacific.
In some ways, this feels like a very brave piece, at a time when, sadly, it seems like jukebox musicals are “it.” This feels as if we’ve gone back to basics, to the sort of stuff I would hear as a child on Saturday morning at 10 AM when there was always a Hollywood musical on TV and the family would get up and I’d sit there in my nightie watching Ann Miller. I love that world!

Betty takes place against the backdrop of a previous Royal Wedding [between the Queen and Prince Philip] and opened just when Britain was celebrating its latest Royal Wedding [between the Queen’s grandson and Kate Middleton].
Yes, and of course we were performing the night of the Royal Wedding [April 29]. We knew that particular performance was going to resonate with the audience, and we gave it our all!

Is it because your director, Richard Eyre, has directed Macbeth that Betty Blue Eyes has such a good time folding Shakespeare’s murderous play into its giddy high spirits?
It could be. I mean, I don’t know whether Alan [Bennett] and Malcolm [Mowbray, the film’s director] were attempting Macbeth when they did the movie, but the resonances are definitely there. What we’ve done is add the odd line from “the Scottish play,” and it sits so comfortably; I do feel as if I am paying a small homage to Lady M.

And all the while reinventing Joyce without parroting Maggie Smith, which isn’t easy.
It isn’t. I remember being at drama school [London’s Guildhall] when the film first came out and being so taken by it that I went and bought a copy of the screenplay. But I am Northern myself, and there is a certain rhythm of Northern speech that is very comical: that combination of the choice of language and the speech rhythm, which in itself is very funny. There is also a working-class aspiration which is very common to areas in the north; my grandmother on my father’s side was Joyce [laughs]!

What’s extraordinary for so British a piece is that your book writers, Ron Cowen and Daniel Lipman, are American.
And that they’ve got it so completely—that really did surprise me because I don’t know how well British humor translates. But I’ve had an opportunity to talk to Ron and Dan, and they really do share the sense of humor.

It seems surprising watching your ease in this that you haven’t done more musicals.
I know; I only did five or six weeks in Guys and Dolls, and when I was 26 or so, I was in Blood Brothers for a year on the West End, playing Linda, with Kiki Dee. That was a lovely experience, but I was living in Manchester then and had two children, aged two and four-and-a-half months, so the West End wasn’t down the road and the sacrifice was just too great. I was spending too much time away from home. Now that I'm in my late 40s, I’m trying to make up for a little bit of lost musicals time.

Presumably those kids are grown now.
Oh, they’re men: big, grown, hairy men [laughs]! I do have an eight-year-old, but I live in London now.

Talk of geography prompts the question: Do you think Betty Blue Eyes would play in America?
Absolutely, 100% absolutely. Why? Because every American I know who’s been in to see it thinks it’s glorious.