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What's great about musicals is their energy and go-for-brokeness - stopping the story to sing and dance. How can you not love that?

Well, the musicals give emphasis to love, longing, melancholy, sadness. All of that is always there.

I grew up on musicals, and I know they are quite the thing now, but I'm actually a little indignant, because I started taking singing lessons years ago - I put the time in!

In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.

Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music.

I mean, I've done musicals, but it's not my best thing.

It's always interesting - how do you actually convey thought through song? We're used to the convention on stage. In film, we used to be used to it, and now sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You need to be fresh and really look at the material.

I think musicals can be more than what people imagine. That'll be the case with 'Matilda.' It's such a clever thing to stage. Parents would have read this when they were young and will want to share it with their children because they have such a fondness for the source.

I've been reading scripts where they've been doing a lot of singing now, but within the dark, realistic story line. I would love, love, love, love to do that. But not a musical on Broadway, I don't have that kind of energy or stamina.

But I think musicals are going to have to deal with important subjects.