Popular Star Dianne Pilkington on Flying from London's Wicked to The 39 Steps

From one long-running theatrical institution to another: that’s been the career trajectory of Dianne Pilkington, 34, the musical star who in March departed the West End company of Wicked, in which she had been playing Glinda, to make her straight play debut in The 39 Steps, at the Criterion Theatre. The freewheeling adaptation of Hitchcock’s film (by way of John Buchan’s novel) finds Pilkington cast in three separate roles (a Hitchcock blonde, a spy, a downtrodden Scotswoman), plus a tiny bit at as a policewoman. The delightful performer took time early one recent evening to chat to Broadway.com about joining long-running shows, the wondrous support of her fans, and being—or at least singing—“Popular,” as she walks to work.

You’ve just begun performances in The 39 Steps. How is it going so far?
We’re definitely starting to settle in, and things are getting snappy, which is quite nice. This is a completely different departure for me: obviously, I’ve never done a play before and have only done musicals so it’s different and yet in a way the same because I’m still exercising my voice. I’m doing three different accents in three different pitches, and I’m not miked. I was pretty hoarse after the first two shows.

And you’re playing one of London’s more intimate playhouses [the cozy Criterion], not a big West End barn [the Apollo Victoria, home to Wicked].
This is 590 seats, so I can see everybody, even with my short sight. What’s been good is that because all four of us [in the cast of 39 Steps] have changed this time, we had [director] Maria Aitken here for two-and-a-half weeks of the rehearsal period, and Patrick [Barlow, the writer] was here for the beginning and end of rehearsals, as well. We’ve all had the benefit of the original creative team.

I hope you got a holiday between Wicked and this.
I got a Sunday [laughs]. I finished Wicked on the 27th of March and started rehearsing The 39 Steps on the 29th. Ideally, yes, it would have been lovely to have a couple weeks off, but I really can’t complain when something fits so nicely. The difference is that for Glinda, it took about six auditions before I got the part; here, it took two.

Has your Wicked fan base swarmed the Criterion yet?
They were here on Monday night, about 30 of them, and they’ve just been so supportive. They really do support everybody who’s in the show, and when you move on, they follow. What’s interesting is that they all seem to know each other and meet up and then as a group they move on to watch another show. There are some lovely girls who run a fan site for me who I occasionally stay in touch with.

You must have a theory by now about why Wicked has become the phenomenon it has.
I’ve thought about it quite a lot. The show tells the story, basically, of what it’s like to be different and not fit in and that ideal situation that then arises where the person bullying you says, “I was hideously wrong; let’s be best friends.” I think a lot of that speaks to people if they feel they don’t fit in with the normal crowd and the “it” crowd, so audiences get very attached to whoever plays those roles if they are played in a way people can identify with.

Still, not everyone stays in a role for almost three years!
Two years and eight months, but it doesn’t feel that long. Kerry [Ellis] was with me for two years and we were friends before we even got there, so that kind of flew by, and Alexia [Khadime] and I became friends, as well. Doing Wicked was like going and seeing your friends all the time, as well, and also, the show is just a joy to do.

But you must have had moments near the end of the run where you were slightly punch drunk on repetition.
There were a few times where I thought, I know this too well; that doesn’t sound right any more. It’s like if you say your name over and over again 50 times and it starts to sound ridiculous.

It’s interesting that both The 39 Steps and Wicked raise issues pertaining to tone and how much the actor can get away with.
I think especially with something like Glinda, it’s impossible not to go to that place where you’ve gone too far. It’s a human nature thing: it’s very difficult if you get a laugh on something not to do that. That’s what the resident directors are there for, to say, “C’mon, you’ve got to bring it back.” With The 39 Steps, you’ve got to play it completely for real except that you are allowed to leave the action to comment, not so much as a wink to the audience but as an acknowledgement that something is not quite happening the way you meant it to happen—like when the telephone doesn’t ring, and you go, “Hello, there’s the telephone.” And then it rings. [Laughs].

Was acting always a given for you?
I’d had singing and music lessons from when I was about 14, but I’d always been stupidly academic. I was about 19 when I decided to do theater, and it came as a huge shock. Also, I come from a working-class mining town in the north of England [Wigan] where my mum was a teacher and my dad was in advertising and worked in Manchester. So it was all a much slower pace from the big city of London.

Not to mention from the apparatus that inevitably surrounds you when you do a mega-musical like Wicked.
Oh, yes. There are things that come with doing a huge show that you start to take for granted in the sense that I’ve gone from having somebody right by my side every five seconds, doing something with my wig or my costume, to being completely self-sufficient on this one.

No more car at the stage door to take you home?
No, but that’s cool. I’ve started walking to work, from north London; it’s been great! [Pilkington lives in Muswell Hill with her boyfriend, band member Jean-Claude Pelletier, whom she met while touring in Cats: “While I was limping around as Grizabella, he was leaping around as a proper kitten cat.”]

That’s a seriously long walk! Do you hum “Popular” as you go?
So far it’s been [Scottish band] The Proclaimers and that awful song about “I’ve walked 500 miles,” or something like that, because I probably have walked about 500 miles. But it’s definitely time for a change! I’m going to try “Popular” tomorrow.