Guys and Dolls West End Star Richard Kind on the 'Loud Smiles' of British Audiences

Richard Kind’s stage credits range from The Producers and The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife to a 2013 Tony nomination for the Clifford Odets play The Big Knife, and now the ever-busy actor is making his London stage debut at the Phoenix Theatre as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, opposite two-time Olivier Award winner Samantha Spiro as Miss Adelaide. Broadway.com caught the effervescent Kind for a lively late-morning chat.

Welcome to London and Guys and Dolls. How did this come about?
It was all very last minute! I knew Gordon Greenberg [the director] and had heard the production was very good, so I had to make a quick decision and it was a no-brainer except for the kids [Kind has three children]. I miss my kids terribly.

Well, you’ll be back in New York before long and in the meantime, you’ll have played the West End.
Exactly right, which for an American must be like a Londoner dreaming of playing Broadway: it’s another thing you can check off your bucket list. I am not here to further my career—let’s face it, theater doesn’t do that, sorry though I am to say that to Broadway.com. But people talk about the glory of the West End and they’re right. I am beholden to these people.

Was Guys and Dolls part of your growing up?
My mother used to sing “A Bushel and a Peck” to me as a lullaby and now I see it done eight times a week performed by six scantily clad women, which is not the time to start thinking of your mother! Oh, and I used to use “I’ll Know” as my audition song when I was young. I’d seen the movie, of course, which as an idiot child I thought was great, but who knew? Now, I go, “What was I thinking?”

You must have been in Guys and Dolls before.
I have! I did Jerry Zaks’ production in a summer theater production in Ogunquit, Maine opposite Liz Larsen. That was great but this is very different.

Were you keen to return to show?
Actually, I hate doing roles twice. I did think, ‘Haven’t I mined everything I want to do with this part?’ But then I thought to myself, ‘It’s Guys and Dolls and it’s the West End.’ How could I say no?

How demanding are you finding the part this time around?
It isn’t, really, and what’s great is that it’s a lot of fun without being that demanding. I mean, Sam Levene [the original Nathan] couldn’t sing, so Frank Loesser didn’t give him any songs! In the first 20 minutes [of the show], you’re laying the pipe, as they say in TV—that’s to say, setting the groundwork for the entire show: Adelaide, how Sky meets Sarah—it’s all done very compactly in 20 minutes.

How does it feel to act opposite a double Olivier-winning Adelaide?
Here’s where we get to the meat of the thing. No matter how good you are or could ever be as Nathan, Samantha Spiro is going to steal the show—she is that good. Sure, it helps that Adelaide has got four maybe five songs, one of which is a show-stopping soliloquy [“Adelaide’s Lament”], but she’s great, too. She really is.

As the lone American among the principal performers, are you ever tempted to give them accent advice?
No way! Believe me, when I tell you how talented these people are—I mean, their accents are perfect, so there’s not a thing I would tell any of these people. If they want, they can listen to me, but they certainly don’t need to do that.

Do you miss Broadway audiences?
This is how I see it. The British aren’t as effusive during the show and you want to keep going, “C’mon, laugh!” because they’re not big laughers, but let’s put it this way. They are the loudest smiles I have ever come across; their smiles are deafening. They also listen very well, with the result that they’re with you every step of the way.

You do a lot of TV and film and then get to dip back into theater—sounds like the perfect career.
You know, when you put it like that, I guess it is! What I like is that I can walk the streets without any problem. In New York, people may stop me and say, “I liked you in Curb Your Enthusiasm or whatever.” And of course people loved Inside Out [Kind played Bing Bong] but in that, I was heard and not seen. In London, no one knows me at all, so that’s good, too.

Do you keep a bucket list of stage roles you’d like to do?
Well, I’ve done Henry Carr in Travesties once already and was asked to do it again at the Alley Theatre last spring: that is a Hamlet kind of role. But you know the part I really want to do if I can just put a word in Tony Kushner’s ear?

Let me guess: Roy Cohn in Angels in America, which is actually being revived at the National Theatre next year.
You are KIDDING me! Well, let’s just say if they want a different type of actor from Al Pacino or whomever, I really do hope they’ll think of me. That’s a part I’d leave my children for—though it will probably go to Henry Goodman.

In fact, Henry Goodman has already played Roy Cohn at the National in London the first time around.
Really? Oh my God! Then maybe I have a chance.