TALKING POINT with Janie Dee

In collaboration with London’s most prestigious cabaret venue, writer and broadcaster EDWARD SECKERSON is delighted to continue his occasional strand of exclusive conversation events featuring some of the biggest names from the world of music and theatre. His objective, as ever, will be to explore their careers and chat informally about their journey, their process, and their aspirations. It’s the perfect setting for fans to share an intimate audience with their favourite performers and gain insight into their motivations and methods.

Janie Dee is one of the UK’s most versatile performers. The winner of multiple awards – including two Oliviers, an Evening Standard Award, a Critics Circle Award, an Obie Award, the Theatre World Best Newcomer Award in New York, and the UK Theatre Best Performance Award for her performance in Hello, Dolly! (Curve Leicester).

The actress, singer and musical star’s career encompasses everything from revivals of classic plays, modern dramas and comedies, and leading roles in musicals, to Shakespeare with Sir Peter Hall, The Royal Shakespeare Company, and Shakespeare’s Globe, as well as performing her own witty and sophisticated cabarets at leading venues, including Crazy Coqs and The Pheasantry. She has had acclaimed artistic partnerships with Stephen Sondheim, Alan Ayckbourn, who wrote Comic Potential for her, winning her Best Actress awards in London and New York, Harold Pinter, who after her performances in Betrayal and Old Times, cast her as Suki in the film of Celebration opposite Colin Firth.

Janie was most recently in A Role To Die For (The Barn, Cirencester), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in Concert (London Palladium), Laughing Boy (Jermyn St Theatre, Theatre Royal Bath), Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (Gielgud Theatre) and The Motive and The Cue directed by Sam Mendes at the National Theatre, where she also played Phyllis Rogers Stone in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, for which she was nominated for the Olivier Award and WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actress in a Musical, and the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical Performance. Other Sondheim credits include the London premiere of Putting It Together (St James Theatre), Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music (Palace Theatre, London, Buxton Opera House, Holland Park Opera) and Fosca in Passion (The Cantiere Festival in Montepulciano, Italy) directed by opera director Keith Warner and hailed by the New York Times as one of the greatest productions of 2019.

Other theatre highlights include: An Hour and a Half Late opposite Griff Rhys Jones (Theatre Royal Bath); playing Joy Gresham opposite Charles Dance as C.S. Lewis in William Nicholson’s Shadowlands (Wyndham’s Theatre); Blithe Spirit starring legendary stage, film and television star, Dame Angela Lansbury (Gielgud Theatre); playing Mabel opposite David Soul in Mack and Mabel (Criterion Theatre). Janie has played Cleopatra (Barbican and Hollywood Bowl); toured China and Russia as Titania/Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and played the Countess of Roussillion in All’s Well that Ends Well, all for Shakespeare’s Globe.

On television Janie can be seen as Hannah in You & Me (ITVX), and opposite Samantha Morton and Rupert Graves in The Burning Girls on Paramount+. She also appeared in Chimerica and Crashing (both C4) and on film in Official Secrets, opposite Keira Knightley and Matt Smith.

Janie founded The London Climate Change Festival in 2019 to inspire, inform and bring hope. She created and produced a series of Beautiful World Cabarets (Edinburgh Fringe, Crazy Coqs, Newbury Spring Festival, Wales Millennium Centre) which transferred to Charing Cross Theatre in July 2025, A Song for Nature (London Coliseum, Sky Arts); The Wayne Sleep 75th Birthday Celebration (Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House); The Angela Lansbury Farewell Dinner and Cabaret (Café de Paris, London); On Reflection with the Follies Company for Underbelly on the Southbank; Concert for Peace (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane); and her Beautiful World Cabarets at the Edinburgh Fringe, The Pheasantry, The Crazy Coqs and beyond.