Sonia Friedman

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Music, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Music Commentary

4.3 • 14.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2017

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the theatre producer, Sonia Friedman.

Acclaimed as the most influential producer in British theatre today, she has produced over 160 new shows. They include Funny Girl with Sheridan Smith, Jerusalem starring Mark Rylance, Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet, the record-breaking Book of Mormon and the musicals Legally Blonde, and Dreamgirls. Her productions both here and on Broadway have won numerous awards, including a record-breaking 14 Olivier Awards in 2014, and nine this year for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Brought up in a creative, if unconventional, household, she left school at 16. After a stage management course at Central School of Speech and Drama, she cut her teeth at the National Theatre, worked with Harold Pinter, Richard Eyre and Tom Stoppard and then co-founded Out of Joint, a leading touring theatre company, with Max Stafford-Clark. She was named Producer of the Year for the third year in a row at The Stage Awards, and this year she also claimed number one spot in The Stage 100, a chart of the most influential people in British theatre, overtaking Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh.

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:02.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:04.0	Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4.
0:09.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio broadcast.
0:13.0	For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk- Radio 4.
0:30.0	My castaway this week is the theatre producer, Sonja Friedman.
0:44.0	Her combined attributes of artistic flair and commercial nows have taken her to the very top.
0:50.0	She currently has eight shows running in the West End and will shortly have a total of four on Broadway.
0:56.0	Her success is then indisputable but her range is truly fascinating, with a sense of creative vigor that seems irresistible to audiences and performers alike.
1:06.0	From the social significance of Jerusalem with Mark Reilens to the sheer Vordavillion Pazazz of Sheridan Smith's funny girl.
1:13.0	What striking in our box set TV-centered culture is her consistent ability to get stars on stage and buns on theatre seats.
1:22.0	The story of how she got to the top has all the makings of a drippings react drama itself, with a plot that includes an eminent violinist father who abandoned the family as she was born,
1:32.0	a brilliant concert pianist mother struggling to bring up her four kids alone, and an unhappy adolescence marked by bullying and truanting.
1:40.0	She says of her life now, it's literally an electricity when you are standing in the back of the theatre.
1:46.0	You just feel it, it's addictive, and the more you do and the more difficulty you face, the more you determine to try it again.
1:53.0	And the great thing about doing the job I do is that ideas will never run out.
1:59.0	Welcome, Song of Friedman. When and where do the ideas come and how do you capture them when they do come?
2:06.0	Usually it's about how I'm feeling and about what I feel I need to see and hear at any point in my life.
2:17.0	It could be that I'm desperate for some, I don't know, political answers. It could be that I actually just want a good laugh.
2:25.0	It could be that I need nourishment in terms of music.
2:30.0	And so everything's instinctive. I never have a plan, I never try and second guess what anybody else wants, I only do what I feel I need.
2:42.0	And I can absolutely say that every decision I make comes from a place of passion and love.
	...

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