Interview: Cabaret Legends Steve Ross and KT Sullivan Talk LOVE, NOEL at Irish Repertory Theatre

As part of their Performance on Screen series, Irish Repertory Theatre is presenting Love, Noël: The Letters and Songs of Noël Coward, directed by Charlotte Moore, and starring cabaret legends Steve Ross and KT Sullivan. Love, Noël brings to life Coward's songs, stories, and personal letters, with Ross transforming into Coward himself, and Sullivan into the many women that made up Coward's life, including Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Elaine Stritch, Virginia Woolf, and more. This incarnation of Love, Noël - Ross and Sullivan performed the show live for Irish Rep in 2019 - is a unique and enterprising production, putting an entertaining, resourceful, and safe spin on performance in the era of COVID-19. It was performed by Ross and Sullivan together and filmed in person at The Players in New York City, while being directed virtually by Moore.

Ahead of its online premiere tonight at 7pm ET, I spoke with Ross and Sullivan about what to expect from Love, Noël, what it was like performing specifically for virtual viewing and more!

CLICK HERE for tickets.

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Can you give us a teaser of what Love, Noël is and what to expect?

Steve: The preeminent Noël Coward scholar in the world, I dare say, is a very enterprising and industrious gentleman named Barry Day, and he's written many books on Coward, and continues to do so, so he really knows his onions. A few years ago he assembled and published quite a respected and well-reviewed big tome of all of the letters [of Coward's] that he could get, because, of course, in those days everyone wrote, and Coward knew everyone. So, it's quite a cache of letters from famous people to him and his responses to them. And then, he had the notion to put together an entertainment where some of the letters would be read. So, he asked us, it was in the spring of 2019, to do this in Florida, so we had a very rough idea of it down there. But we saw the value of it, and it had been done about ten years ago with two actors and pianist, but I'm very glad for economy's sake that they decided to conflate the pianist and the actor playing Coward, so he offered me the job of playing the music and also portraying Noël Coward. It's not something I do, I've certainly sung his songs forever, but I've never portrayed him. It's very liberating. And KT with her virtuosic abilities played all the other ladies.

KT: I'm having the time of my life. I knew Elaine Stritch, but I've always loved and admired Marlene Dietrich and I get to play her too. Coward himself played the piano, so this is true to form that Steve as Coward would be at the piano. At The Players with Charlotte's direction, we opened up more and he was able to get out from behind the piano. But live, last year on the set, Steve was always at the piano. Now, because of The Players, Charlotte's imagined all kind of ways we can open up.

Steve: So, what we can offer is a glimpse into the words that he and these ladies and gents wrote, and you get a sense of them. You get a great sense of the playfulness, being British, the sense of irony... he was an actor so that was a bit exaggerated, but I really liked that. Barry's assembled it very candidly, because you get a sense of Coward's patriotism, you get a sense of his great fun all the time, his sense of exasperation, his love of Paris.

KT: As he says in the last monologue, it's the people, really. He really just loved his friends. He gave them very good advice, and could laugh at them, and get infuriated with them, but those things were all covered in letters, and today we just have these emails... hopefully someone is saving them when people are terribly witty. Probably not as witty as Noël Coward, but it's great that we have these letters.

What does it feel like for you both to revisit this material now?

KT: It's interesting, we were scheduled to have an extension of our run at the Irish Rep, which I was looking forward to, because I had the time of my life last year doing this with Steve, but I must say, it felt different, and I felt I got more deeply into the material, because when you're filming, our wonderful videographer, Brian Petchers, he did almost everything from three angles. So, we'd do it again, and again, and again, and found different ways of doing it. When you're doing a live show, you do it one way and you don't do it again another way.

Steve: I very much loved that, the three times thing. Because then you had to come up with something a little different, and I really enjoyed that part.

KT: Because of the pandemic, we were our own makeup and hair people. On the set, which was a huge set, The Players is a huge four story building, it's a mansion. But in that huge space it was just a sound man who was masked, Brian Petchers, who was masked, Steve, myself, and Ciarán O'Reilly [co-founder of Irish Rep] who sat with the script. Our director looked at us through Zoom, we saw her face through a screen, and [Assistant Director] Jeff Davolt, we saw through a screen. So, only five of us in that big space because of this pandemic. It was Ciarán who asked me if we felt safe, just being together, the two of us. Steve was tested [for COVID-19], and I was tested recently, we're both negative, we took a chance. The production they [Irish Rep] did before this was five actors doing 'The Weir' in five different locations...Steve and I are performing the first streaming [play] from Irish Rep where we actually are two people in a room together.

Talk to me about what that process was like!

KT: You mentioned, Steve, how when we first got together to rehearse a little bit, it would feel odd not to have laughter and applause. And then I didn't miss it!

Steve: Not at all! There's always the component of, 'Is the audience awake?' [laughs]. There's always a little component of, 'Gee, I better be on my mark.' But when we were just free to be ourselves, as if you were in your room, I found it very liberating.

KT: Also, in the back of your mind when you're onstage is, 'Oh, that didn't land as well as it could.'

Steve: But now we had the chance to make it land really well!

KT: We just did it the way we felt it, and it felt right!

Steve: It absolutely felt right. It was wonderful.

What do you hope that people take away from Love, Noël?

Steve: One hopes that if you don't know Noël Coward, an appreciation for him, a Coward 101 as it were, because we hit a lot of the big songs. So, they get a taste of the music and they get a taste of the time and a taste of him. They say his life and times, these were his times, these were these ladies that he worked with, which KT portrayed so brilliantly. So, I think they will take a snapshot of the times, and of the man, away, which may persuade them to look further into this 20th century genius.

KT: The age of most audiences, whether it's the opera or the theater or cabaret, is of a certain age of people. Hopefully, we will get some people where it really is a history lesson of a time, and what people went through then. I was thinking, it's sort of a comparison of what we're going through now. In many ways, the blitz in London, which people were so strong to get through, they were being bombed, and in a sense, we are being bombed now by a virus. And we'll have war stories of the 21st century, about what we're going through now, and people can compare it to what Coward went through in the 20th century.

Steve: I can't imagine a better experience of this nature than the one we had.

To sum it up, how are you both feeling about the online premiere of Love, Noël?

KT: What I'm feeling is terribly lucky, because I know so many Broadway actors who worked all the time and [now] don't have work. Steve and I have many cabaret friends who are used to doing their acts, working on their acts with their pianists, and they can't right now. So, I'm so lucky that they called me. They [Irish Rep] chose three out of their [previously planned] season for their streaming season, and we were chosen, I feel very lucky to be chosen! As Ira and George wrote, 'nice work if you can get it.' To flex our muscles as artists during a time when a lot of artists aren't being able to.

Steve: All we can say is that we're fortunate, and eager, and hope people like it.

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Check out a preview of Love, Noël below!

For tickets, CLICK HERE.

For more information visit: https://irishrep.org/show/2018-2019-season/love-noel/

Photo Credit: Irish Rep