Maria Friedman, 61, is a singer, actor and director who has a natural musicality (her parents were classical musicians) and knows how to get inside a song and make it her own – and ours – with emotional precision. An eight-time Olivier nominee (she has won the prize three times), she is known for her interpretations of Stephen Sondheim’s songbook, and is about to celebrate him and the composers Marvin Hamlisch and Michel Legrand in Legacy, a show at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London. Friedman is married to the actor Adrian Der Gregorian and has two sons.
Tell me about the first time you met Stephen Sondheim…
I was in my early 20s and in a gala as a replacement for a singer who had flu. I had two days to learn Broadway Baby [from Sondheim’s Follies]. The lyrics fitted me like a glove: it was about a girl with aspirations who wanted to land a great job and not work in cafes or live in a bedsit with no money. Everyone considered Broadway Baby Elaine Stritch’s song [she was also on the bill that night]. The music started and a spotlight went on to the middle of the stage. I took a deep breath and was about to start my song when, from the top of the gods, someone shouted: “Get off, we want Elaine!” I had tears in my eyes but dug really deep into those lyrics. It’s what I have done ever since. Sondheim’s work is extraordinary: when you trust it and live in it, it keeps you safe. The place went berserk. Sondheim was in the audience; at the party afterwards he asked: “Who was that girl?”
What was he like as a character?
He came to see me later in Ghetto at the National, and it was after that I got cast as Dot in Sunday in the Park With George. Sondheim was the most curious person I’ve ever met. His intelligence was dazzling, but what I loved most was his capacity to laugh and to care and to listen.
So was the nuanced bittersweet quality of his music in evidence in the man himself?
Life is bittersweet and his music reflects that. He wrote about people’s complexities and relished them. There was never any judgment about people being fractured. He was a kind, loyal man, but God, he could be very … direct.
I gather he was godfather to one of your boys?
He was godfather to my son Toby and mentor to my younger son, Alfie.
How do you interpret a song –?
It’s gradual. You have a smell, a feeling about your connection. You feel it coming closer and closer until it becomes part of your marrow and suddenly it belongs to you. Sondheim’s genius was that he left space for every actor to bring their own life into play – he was open to new interpretations and would roar with laughter when you came up with something he had not thought of.
Tell me about your show at the Chocolate Factory, which will celebrate not only Sondheim but the American composer Marvin Hamlisch and French composer Michel Legrand …
I worked with them both, and travelled the world with them. I sang at Marvin Hamlisch’s memorial along with Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli. Michel Legrand came to see me in one of my shows and actually played the piano, which was unbelievable. I sang at his memorial too.
So this is in memory of absent friends?
It’s about legacy, celebrating three people I miss. Sondheim had this idea that everything had to stay fresh. And so during the pandemic I got a lot of recently graduated young people to send me tapes and auditioned them, and they’re taking part. This was not out of sympathy but because they are amazing.
Your father, Leonard Friedman, a violinist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, left the family when you were five. How did that influence your life?
Look at the men I’ve mentioned: three Jewish older men … we don’t need a psychiatrist to tell us about that [laughs]. I realised something about my dad recently. I hardly knew him but he got me up to the Isle of Mull for one of his festivals. He promised me the world – cellos and violins and everything – but I ended opening my show with small pipes and a banjo, for f’s sake. He was doing a concert down the road. Then, bit by bit, all the musicians came in and began making music, and that was the show that ended up at the Donmar because Caro Newling, who is Sam Mendes’s producing partner, was on a walking trip with her mother and came to see my little cabaret. I got my first Olivier award for that show. And that was because of my dad.
Your sister is the leading West End producer Sonia Friedman. What do your other siblings do?
My brother is a solo violinist and was leader of the Royal Ballet… he’s amazing. Sarah is a computer scientist and way, way cleverer than all of us. And wonderful Benjy was the director/producer of Bake Off and is now a documentary-maker.
When you look back on your life, which has played the bigger part – luck or hard work?
Not knowing the rules meant we walked into situations that somebody with more education and a conventional upbringing might not have walked into. The lack of formality in our family meant we were either going to drown or just scrabble to stay afloat. I’ve spent months of my life under water with a little snorkel, just managing. But in terms of luck, I feel blessed that music has been part of my life. I’ve worked hard at it but I love what I do so it doesn’t feel like work.
Getting cancer in 2005 was obviously bad luck. How has that changed your perception of your life?
A lot of people say cancer has made them bolder but it made me more afraid. I gave up the industry – nobody believed I would – and did concerts and jobs that were not going to take me away from putting my children to bed. I was 45. There are big consequences if you step out of the industry, but I didn’t have a choice. It was the right decision, yet part of me got lost. It’s good now because I’m coming back.
How old are your sons, and does being a mother get easier as time goes by?
Toby is 27 and has a degree in inclusive performance. He works with an autistic child at Chickenshed [theatre company]. My other son, Alfie, is 19 and a brilliant actor and has just got a great part in Peter Kosminsky’s new TV series The Undeclared War with Mark Rylance and Simon Pegg. As for being a mother … it does not get easier as time goes by!
What Sondheim song would you choose to get you through the hardest times?
Move On from Sunday in the Park With George – “Stop worrying where you are going … The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not. You have to move on.” It’s about taking one little step forward. Life changes and things pass. You can’t stand still.
What’s the happiest song you sing?
The Way You Look Tonight [by Jerome Kern]. It’s about capturing the moment when you know you’ll love somebody for ever and will grow old with them if you’re lucky. I used to sing that to my little grandma and know she was transported to when she was young dancing with her handsome husband. She was 96 and she was beautiful. I love that song.
Legacy is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, 3-20 March