It’s the size of a Hackney bedsit but the ambience is cosily expensive. Sonia Friedman’s tiny office above the Duke of York’s Theatre in St Martin’s Lane has warm, pinkish lighting and elegant armchairs with thick, deep cushions. The dark wallpaper is obscured by framed posters of hit West End shows. Sprawled across the sofa there’s a touch of pure kitsch: a six-year-old poodle, snuffling and dozing, whose fluffy white forelegs are sheathed in the armlets of a scarlet tank top. His name is Teddy and he looks like the victim of a stag-night prank contentedly sleeping off his hangover.
Opposite me sits Sonia Friedman — pretty, blonde, in her mid-40s — who occupies a formidable position as one of the West End’s leading producers. We have no specific subject to discuss but Harold Pinter crops up almost immediately.
‘I’ve been obsessed with his work ever since I started to study plays,’ she says.
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