She Loves Me's Scarlett Strallen on Singing 'Ice-Cream' with a British Accent, Meeting Barbara Cook & More

No sooner had the gossamer-voiced Scarlett Strallen got herself a base in New York before the English star of such shows as Mary Poppins, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder and the West End's most recent A Chorus Line found herself back in her home country, this time to play the lovelorn Amalia in the Menier Chocolate Factory's enchanting revival of She Loves Me. Co-starring Mark Umbers and Katherine Kingsley, the production bears no relation to the much-lauded take on the same honey of a show that was seen on Broadway last season—as the ever-winning performer made clear in a wide-ranging interview one recent afternoon.

Welcome home but hadn't you thought you were settled for the moment in New York? 
I was but I'm also a gypsy traveler: I go where I need to be, which I guess makes me very lucky. When the offer came to do [Amalia] at the Chocolate Factory, I knew it probably wouldn't come around again, and it's a part that I totally feel is in my range and allows me really to dive into the comedy, which I love to do. I knew it wouldn't be the beautiful, sparkly, magical Roundabout production in terms of its grandeur at Studio 54, and the costumes, but that's also what I love about the Chocolate Factory. You actually feel like you're in that shop and can buy those bottles of perfume.

Had the part of Amalia been on your "must-do" list? 
I think it was my very first singing teacher at college who gave me "Dear Friend" and "Will He Like Me?" These are such beautiful, lyrical legato songs—and then you've got "Ice Cream"! So, I was sitting there watching the recent Broadway production thinking, "God, that's a part I would love to have had a crack at, but it's probably now going to happen, so I'll just focus on getting my flat in New York"—and then this came up!

Are you surprised to be performing the piece in English, not American, accents?
I just assumed we would do [the show] American because that's the way I had always heard it and sung it. I had sung "Ice Cream" before at various events, and it was so ingrained in me in an American accent. But Matthew [White, the director] being very clever pointed out that the show is set in Hungary and we're still in Europe, at least for the time being, so there was absolutely no reason why we should be using American accents when actually it gives us even more of a sense of the class definition between all the characters to do it English, which I think works brilliantly. But, honestly, it was a bit of a shock to all of us. 

Speaking of Amalia's defining number "Ice Cream," how do you prepare each performance to ascend the scales as required by that song?
What's so amazing, and it's the same with "Glitter and Be Gay" [from Candide, in which Strallen also appeared at the Menier], is that the drama is so strong and the writing so brilliant that if you've done the preparation, you can just let it happen. The beauty of it, too, is that it's proper singing. It's not a sort of screamy thing, so you have a chance to think about how you are singing, and I made the choice—as I'm sure Laura Benanti did in New Yor—to really honor this score and sing it properly, like Barbara Cook used to do, and to celebrate that vocally.

Have you ever met Barbara Cook?
I met her briefly at various celebrations—there was one here at the Coliseum and another in New York during Mary Poppins, so probably around 2008 or so, when Kelli O'Hara and Rebecca Luker and I all sang for her and it was a great, great honor. There was the possibility on this at one point that she might have been around to coach me on a couple of numbers though that, sadly, didn't happen. 

Did it make a difference on this that you had worked with Matt [the director] before, on Candide?
Yes, for sure. Matt is so brilliant at knowing exactly what this space requires and helping us to be brave in terms of not needing to force anything. The [Menier] is so small that it is like being in someone's living room, almost, and that takes courage as an artist to not push anything and just to let it happen. 

What has it been like working alongside a real-life couple, Katherine Kingsley and Dominic Tighe, as Ilona and Kodaly?
And their doggie, who's been with them as well [laughs]! Seriously, they are such an amazing item! All sorts of challenges can come up when you are with another actor or another artist having to do with competition, but they manage that all so brilliantly and are so supportive of one another. I remember at one point watching Dom watching Katherine doing her [show-stopping number] "A Trip to the Library," and his face was so beaming. It's incredibly moving when you see a couple functioning in that way for one another. 

Was it a challenge on opening night to find the show's 92-year-old lyricist, Sheldon Harnick, right there on the aisle in the second row?
  I make a point never ever to look out at the audience, but I did see [Harnick] and he was wiping away tears, which was incredibly moving. He just loved it and was so kind.

Did he say anything specific to you afterward?
He said what he had said on stage [during the curtain call] which is that it was the best production he had seen. That's all you ever want to hear from the writer—that you have made their work make sense.

On the non-musical front, were you surprised to find yourself playing Lady Macduff in the Kenneth Branagh Macbeth that came to the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan in 2014? 
That came from a wonderful casting director, Anne McNulty, whom I knew at the Donmar from when I did Passion there and we had gone for tea to talk about other things and she remembered that conversation seven or eight years later and brought me in [for Macbeth]. What was great about it was that feeling I do think you get in America of being unlimited in what you can do as an artist, in that you do what is required and what's necessary in order to grow. That's partly why I've been spending so much time in America because people think in terms of career crossovers quite a lot. 

And are you disappointed that this production can't transfer to New York, since She Loves Me has just been seen there?
I think we sort of knew that going in. But I'm actually going straight back to New York after this anyway to do a Cole Porter musical at Encores! called The New Yorkers [March 22-26], directed by John Rando, who directed me last summer in The Pirates of Penzance [at Barrington Stage Company], and I had the best time working with him. I'm very excited!