What a Doll!

Jane Krakowski makes her West End debut in Guys And Dolls

10 April 2012

Jane Krakowski loves her job. Right now she's rehearsing for her London stage debut in Guys And Dolls, which means she gets a kiss every morning from fellow cast member Ewan McGregor.

'Only the cheek,' she says in mock regret, indicating with a finger how chaste the greeting is. In her last big job, the Broadway musical Nine, she got to have nightly phone sex with Antonio Banderas.

And, within minutes of meeting Jude Lawon the set of Alfie, she was stripped down to Agent Provocateur undies and grinding on top of him in a limo for the next 12 hours. 'And I'm getting paid for it, that's the real kicker,' she laughs. 'Because I'd do it all for free.'

She may not have been seen in the West End before, but the 36-year-old, New Jersey-born actress has had a long career in musical theatre, making her Broadway debut fresh out of high school with Starlight Express. The director was Trevor Nunn - not a bad start. She agrees, before adding wryly: 'But I had to be a train. On roller skates.'

Since then she's featured in shows such as Grand Hotel and Company, winning a Tony Award for her performance in Nine, where she was lowered from the ceiling on a bedsheet and, after doing her number with Banderas, wrapped herself back in the sheet to be hoisted off feet first - while still singing.

'It's actually easier to sing upside-down,' she says. 'That's one of the things you learn when asked to do something like that.' It was hardly an original idea - she was taught by people from Cirque du Soleil - but it had never been done on stage before, and subsequently both Beyoncé and Mariah Carey borrowed the idea for their live shows.

But none of this is why you know Krakowski. If her face seems familiar, it's because for five years she played the bossy, brassy, man-hungry secretary Elaine Vassal in Ally McBeal. 'More people saw Ally in one night than could possibly see every show of every stage production I've ever been in,' she shrugs. 'Although you can't actually think about it in those terms. As Elaine, I got quite bold, I'd do anything on camera.

But if I'd ever thought how many millions of homes it was going into, I don't know that I would have.'

Ally lives on in that endless halflife of repeats, but Krakowski was glad to leave the curly perm and the heavy make-up behind. She still finds it embarrassing when she's surfing channels and suddenly sees herself.

In a show that sold itself on style, Elaine's dress sense was deliberately tacky, to make it clear that she was in a different class to the glossy lawyers around her. 'That was great to help the character along, but it's unfortunate when people think it's really you,' she grimaces.

Perhaps the biggest surprise when meeting Krakowski in the flesh is just how slender she is. In a show where most of the female leads were notorious for being skeletally thin, she looked voluptuously curvy. In fact, she has a boyish figure and is model-slim.

'People often say I've lost weight, and I haven't really,' she laughs. 'I'm just working with normal-sized people now. Everybody was very small on Ally, and we did get tight clothes to make Elaine look more buxom. I'm not very endowed, actually. Although people have the illusion that I am.'

She's relieved that moving straight into Nine helped put Elaine firmly in her past. 'I didn't want to be a "Where are they now?" story.'

Later this year she will play Liza Minnelli in Simply Halston, a biopic of the fashion designer whose career is inextricably linked with the excesses of the Studio 54 disco in the Seventies. She once played opposite the real Liza in a film called Stepping Out, and has been invited to visit to see her collection of Halston frocks. 'I'm not going to do an impression because there are many men in the world who can do a much better Liza than me,' she says.

'But it'll be interesting to hear her stories, and I think it will make her feel more secure that this tale will be told with the kindness of someone who knows her.'

But before that, there's Guys And Dolls and Miss Adelaide - burlesque dancer and perpetual fiancée of Nathan Detroit (Douglas Hodge), who runs a floating crap game in late-Thirties New York. We meet after a rehearsal, and she says that at this stage the lines between herself and her character are getting blurred. Watching him dance from the wings today, she realised that right now she's a little in love with Hodge.

'He's just so adorable. He's not a natural dancer, but he dances his heart out in the show. I just sit there beaming offstage, cheering him on. You really can't get this anywhere else but theatre - you get such a camaraderie with your cast. TV and movies are more isolating. You come in and do your bit, and only meet the people you talk to in the film. In theatre you all need each other to make it happen, and though it's hard work, it's worth it.'

Her previous musicals were more modern. 'They're post-Sondheim - with cynicism and irony, all these things that were introduced to musicals later on.' The characters in Guys And Dolls are far more straightforward, and in rehearsals they've learned to enjoy that. 'It's going to be different from any other production you've seen because of the people involved and because it's 2005. But you still leave happy and humming. And that's good.'

The production does have contemporary twists, especially in her burlesque numbers set in the Hot Box club. She can't go into details but, she reveals: 'All the guys in the company have to be in the club audience, so we get to do the numbers for the boys and show off our wares.' She laughs again. 'It's fun.'

Guys And Dolls, previewing now, first night Wed 1 Jun, Piccadilly Theatre, Denman Street, W1 (0870 060 1023).

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