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Leonard, the literary lion conducting private writing classes in Theresa Rebeck's new Seminar, is a man without a country — primarily because she never ascribed him one — but the role is played with a lofty imperialism only an English actor could muster by Alan Rickman, replete with a full arsenal of Rebeck zingers.

The actor whose Broadway appearances are rare and the character who has no specific nationality should not have connected, but — ah! — there's a backstory. Under the radar is a longstanding friendship going on between actor and author. "I've known him a while," says Rebeck. "He's a deeply generous human being. I could go on and on about what a great person he is. He has been very kind to me over the years. He reads my plays and talks to me about them or writes me really very cryptic and beautiful emails that are provoking your thoughts about things. We had been in discussion about this play in a very mysterious way. And I did ask him, at one point when he was here, 'Would you just read it to me?' I thought it would truly be a wonderful thing to hear him do it. And I was right."

Welcome back to Broadway. It has been almost a decade.
Alan Rickman: I guess it has. But I was in New York last winter at BAM, performing there with Lindsay Duncan in John Gabriel Borkman, and I was directing at BAM the spring before that.

That was Strindberg's Creditors. Did you enjoy doing that?
AR: I loved doing that. It was very special, to watch it move from the Donmar to, really, one of the most thrilling theatre spaces in the world — at BAM [at the Harvey Theatre in Brooklyn]. It was a joy for the actors [Owen Teale, Tom Burke and Anna Chancellor]. And it was a pleasure to say to Lindsay Duncan [for Borkman], "Yeah, but wait until we get to BAM." She'd never walked out on a stage like that before.

New Yorkers could get the impression that you and Lindsay are the English Tracy and Hepburn. She co-starred with you both times you were on Broadway — in 1987's Les Liaisons Dangereuses and 2002's Tony Award-winning Private Lives — and the two of you got Tony-nominated both times so you obviously play beautifully together. Do you work with her a lot?
AR: Well, no. With her, it was a ten-year gap before we did Borkman, so I wouldn't call it a lot, but it was great to kinda close that gap. She's busily working away back in England, and I'm over here.

	Rickman in John Gabriel Borkman.
	photo by Ros Kavanagh

You don't seem to do a lot of contemporary roles.
AR: Well, I've played quite a lot of them on film, but, in terms of being on a big Broadway stage, it has only been twice: One was 18th century, and the other was the 1930s. But it's relaxing to just put on ordinary clothes.

One of those was a drama, the other a comedy. How would you characterize this play?
AR: Seminar is similar in a way. Give me any straight play — it should have a lot of laughs in it. I remember the laughs in Hamlet when I did that. There were plenty in that, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses is, of course, incredibly funny. That house was rocking with laughter, even though, as you say, it was ultimately a drama. We, of course, walk out into this play, not knowing it's funny. It's dead serious to us, but Theresa's writing is terribly witty. Fingers crossed. All I know is the play makes me laugh, but it's tough, too — tough and funny and sexy. Those are three great words.

Have there been people in your life who mentored you that you consider teachers? I'm thinking about Sir Nigel Hawthorne and Sir Ralph Richardson. You were their dressers, weren't you?
AR: I was, yeah, when I was in drama school. Well, I think anyone who's honest — and why wouldn't you be? — would say there are marker posts in your life which are absolutely to do with great teachers. I don't know how great a teacher Leonard is, but he's definitely passionate. I've had some absolutely crucial teachers at several points in my life.

This play is so word-led. Does that make you appreciate your character more, get you deeper into his psyche, because he is a man who loves words?
AR: I love words. I love language. I think one of the great things that theatre can do is celebrate language, and Theresa doesn't write a lazy line. You have to play right the way through a thought all the time, and some of them are very long — so it's not that kind of snap-happy [dialogue]. Although it's very crisp and very funny, you still gotta get hold of the whole thought all the time, and that means being really aware of the power of language.