My parents were in Vaudeville, in musical. And I would tour with them and had a couple of wonderfully lucky breaks in England.

Who would have thought that a story about a professor of phonetics would result in it being probably one of the great shows ever for musical theatre? It's a seemingly odd subject.

My mother and stepfather were in Vaudeville. And my stepfather was an alcoholic. It was a lot of roller coaster times. But it's all I knew. I think they did the best they could under the circumstances, with me and all the family.

I had toured around England endlessly throughout my teens, but when I came to the U.S. to perform on Broadway, that was a huge step.

I was raised never to carp about things and never to moan, because in vaudeville, which is my background, you just got on with it through all kinds of adversities.

When you are traveling in vaudeville, you experience so many different kinds of audiences, depending on what time of the week it is, how long the pubs have been open, and things like that.