Theater Talk No Man's Land & Waiting for Godot

coming up on theater talk you're directing two of our the world's greatest actors how do you handle these guys theater talk is made possible in part by the CUNY TV foundation [Music] from New York City this is theater talk I'm Susan Haskins and I'm Michael Riedel of the New York Post so Michael I have seen two marvelous plays on Broadway last week to contemporary classics Harold Pinter's no man's land one of my favorite favorite of the contemporary works and the absolute classic Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot in terrific productions directed by fine fine director Sean Mathias welcome back to have you been on the show before Sean no I have never been on the show no first-time debut at the theater talk digital virgin and he's got these minor character actors you may have heard of in this play the he's over seen Patrick Stewart welcome back to theater talk you were brilliant in Macbeth a few years ago and Ian McKellen who we've not seen I haven't seen I think since dance of death that Shawn did several years ago with him yes 2001 right well gentlemen welcome to theater talk thank you um let me ask you Shawn why this pairing why no man's land and why witty print oh is there a link in your mind somewhere that we should be aware of it's a tremendous amount of serendipity in a way because both plays I tried to do over a number of years and failed for whatever reasons they've never come together and after 20 years of trying to do god we finally did it Ian and Patrick and I did it in London we did it on a wonderful tour of the UK and they brought it into London Patrick left it and subsequently we went on to do it you know did it with Roger Reese and we did it again in London we did in Australia you travel the world with it we went to South Africa we played in a Township we paid in a Township without the set in Khayelitsha in South Africa which was an incredible night playing to ten year old children from a Township with God it was a fantastic experience anyway Patrick then asked me to do no-man's land with him and I said well that's ok I wanted to do for about 20 years and I've tried to do that twice before and failed and he wanted to do it with but I had asked the Indian was a little unsure about he wasn't convinced by the play so we did a reading of it the three of us with a couple of other actors and I think we were all fairly seduced into it and oddly and quite simply my partner had said to me you know if if Patrick's very keen to do no man's land and but Ian's quite keen to do God who again because we haven't done it in America why don't they both give in to one another and do both plays nice and here you are well that just sounds like a piece of opportunism but it was opportunism that had made so much sense because of the connections between Beckett and Pinter and the way you can cross cast the plays absolutely and then we all decided well that's a that you know these chaps they don't like to sort of let the grass grow so a challenge like that a thrilling I possibly of doing repertoire seemed too good to be true and so we're here let me ask you guys when you approach no-man's land can I let me ask you Patrick why were you so enthusiastic about this play and what were your reservations about it again I experienced the play for the first time in the theatre in performance with John Gielgud and R Alfred what are the legendary evenings in the theatre yes and I went back twice more that week and we'd have gone a fourth time if I could have afforded and one of those occasions I said to myself one day one day I will be in this play I didn't even at that time think what I might play probably not one of the two leading roles no way the thuggish guy who comes in yeah yeah there was a time I was a natural Briggs [Laughter] nevertheless and it's been there on my to-do list for 35 years and then when I came to share a dressing room with my friend here for 22 weeks increasingly I saw not only in as I got to know him better and better but also onstage that here indeed was the the made-to-measure Spooner for no man's land and then so I simply fell into the other role naturally any and you have but you had some reservations about the place well I've never had a wish list but if I had an on wishlist I think no man's done would have been on it as a wonderfully entertaining play and like Patrick I saw the original production but was so impressed by particularly geared Goods performance that constantly in rehearsals have been saying Shawn it's that Gielgud that have just done I seemed to be able to remember exactly his intonation was so much at the part I thought well if the parts been played perfectly why do I have to come and trample over the territory and III thought of the original production it was an event about acting because people might think this about this production of ours I don't know but that was the central that you were going to see the great at nights and Pinter came in as an added bonus but I'm am I so pleased that we had that reading which which we laughed that was a turning point for me the really an uncontrollable laughter I'm able to speak the next line because it was so funny then I thought well I didn't I myself that person where Richardson and Gielgud funny in the original direction or was at that yet sense of menace that's they were very they were very very eccentric as they were as people you know they had turned down for peterhall who directed it the first English production of Waiting for Godot and I think regretted that mistake so much when he came about 20 years later said well here's another interesting play you might like to do together they must have yes yes immediately which is a link between what we're doing you said that no man's land raised more questions for the audience than they were prepared to answer and that this was one of your reservations about it has Patrick helped you to answer all those questions have you have you started an interpretation where you can III think the play is crystal clear that I have no problems with understanding the plot as it were the story which we needn't go into but that's a virtue of this production that it's it is perfectly clear I think what's going on there two men I have a drink in a pub in northern London and become friends as one of them takes the other one home and I begin to see what's going on in this menage tois that'd that that he disastrously lives in and I try and rescue him from it at the same time as inveigle my way into it that seems to me what's going on but the effect on the audience and and on us in rehearsal is something much more mysterious than that and it comes out of the elegance of the language and the and Pinter's wit a lot of this play I think may have been written when he was no really yeah I don't it's so convincing that the drunken mind meandering that would make no yeah I know the alcoholism is is a few fuels so much of these characters and Pinter was a big drinker back George I had a slight worry that perhaps for America it might be too English a play you couldn't say that a wedding forgot her which is absolutely Universal but was this too much about English class and the references to cricket and so on hilariously funny for Brits would they be picked up and relished by a Broadway audience I was a fool because that working yes they they understand that it's humorous and this is largely the way this dialogue is being handled by in without perhaps knowing the exact detail of it but that's the brilliance of this writing in both plays that often it's simply about rhythm of language which can trigger a reaction from the audience give us a sense now Sean you're directing two of two of our the world's greatest actors how do you handle these guys well we're all quite close now you know it's great the fact that we did God out together you get to know one another and there's an intimacy between us and it's like in any situation when you're very close you have to sort of suss out what the mood is and when you can a little harder to get a little more I mean we concentrate on the plays you know I all I want them to be is the very very very very very best they can be in these plays and they're both completely wonderful actors and mining the text with them and they're their absolute interest in not stopping and going further looking for more on getting more makes my job that much easier if they were like resistance said well that's enough and I won't take any more notes the world the end of story but I don't think I'd be with them if they were like that they're both absolutely hungry to be better it's thrilling you've talked about the rhythm and I was so impressed in both plays with how you play off of each other's rhythm so beautifully how much do you work on that and how do you work there's a there's a lot about the characters that suggested to the three of us that DeeDee and gogo in a former life because the past is often referenced in the play and they've known each other for 50 years they're not lovers but there they are colleagues and friends and so familiar with each other we thought the possibility that they'd worked together in a very close relationship was perhaps the case and and as we're theater people we thought perhaps they had they too had been theater people and they had been a double act couple on stage like Laurel and Hardy and many others and this is not a new idea with the play and well we know that Beckett loved very great silent film and insisted they were bowler hat she's reference back to the act like that but the point about about stand-up comics is that they're their absolute it's it's a marriage of words they know exactly their own rhythms and they can jazz together and that's what these two characters do sometimes intentionally in sometimes because they simply can't help it I think the the balance that you're talking about is probably to do with the fact that you've got to absolutely wonderful actors who've worked together so so finally and so closely I mean when I read the play of many many many years ago I couldn't discern the differences on the page between the two characters it's a very hard play to fathom when you first read it especially to a younger mind and I probably would have been disastrous if I had directed it when I first wanted to when I was barely 30 I think you know it's with time that that as my own life has grown and I've aged as it were that I've learned how to be able to direct it I think there's another thing if I'm a teacher about the rhythm of both these plays because they have music in the language I think that's helped by our backgrounds which are shared and are common and that is many years of working with blank verse where again an instinct for the rhythm and a feeling for it is absolutely essential a few days ago I someone sent me a little video of Ian analyzing Macbeth's great tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow speech and and several decades ago this was filmed and Ian talks about the character but also talks about the essential rhythmic nature of that speech and how it informs the emotion and the mood well we both come from that same tradition and I think that's helped us a lot in some of those sections of both plays where rhythm is almost everything since these plays are so tightly constructed and the rhythms important do you ever find yourself sort of off the rhythm off the beat if you will at some point and when you find yourself there huh how do you get to get back back on right temple unfortunately there are two of us and we're not monologuist we are a doer and I'm sorry I think we've been at it so long as a partnership now on stage that we don't really fall out of rhythm and we cling on to each other you were laughing though well I was laughing because not only they got it the rhythms Beckett are so complex and extraordinary and they've got to crack that they then got to go and hang up their Beckett frocks turn around put on their Pinter frocks gown stage and do his rhythms so it's quite a challenge you know to that well Patrick we before we started taping you said that it's hard when you you stopped the one play and then going to next to get rid of the residue of the of the first place I feel elements of the character and certainly of the language infiltrating into the second play of the day and I found it helpful I found it elevating it lifts and energizes me feeling that in but beyond that I I don't know how to analyze it more maybe it's like something being in a magic house where you're in one sort of room then you walk through a door and another one and I don't it's it's a wonder it's a wonderfully exciting I'm not I'm settling experience and they're both about death and dementia we may say and futility but I want to ask you this do you find any optimism in them yeah I'm asking that but tell tell because I people know these places being sort of down placed but I want you to speak to our viewers about what's so up and optimistic about them besides the fact that you are there for many people in life getting through the day getting through the afternoon or the next hour or the next minute is a challenge all of us have experienced this sometime or other and I find in both these plays that at the end these guys are going on we have not come know will talk about suicide we talk about hanging ourselves and we're you forgot out twice but they never do they are going on and the the the the the urge to hold on to hang in is so powerful a presence in both these plays for me I also think these plays are about about friendship which is it's optimistic nature to that as bleak as it may be if you're two people who love each other and they do win in both of these plays in their way that connection is his life dependability yeah so many plays are about basically one character mmm King Lear wonderful part surrounding but not King Lear that everything depends on it and that's one the reason that we don't get to work together very often because there aren't many plays that are about two meters are of equal status and these are two examples of plays which absolutely depend on the the the dependability of the of the two characters getting on and in in in the Beckett particularly and another double activity where another duo pot so and lucky who arrived out of nowhere and take over the stage absolutely we have to make way for them and then decide how we're going to join in our we were going to become a quartet go go things I think I might become a trio and Lee lived about that then he gets drawn back so relationships relationships in both players crucial and you can't get through life without other people I think easily be the message of both I think that's right um we only have humans leopard I want to ask you all since it is the fiftieth anniversary of the great National Theater and have you had a Kim you've had the connection to the National heavy a war of indeed Judi Dench sang send enough clowns from my production Little Night Music on the Father I just wanted to get a sense from each of you when you what it was like when you first went to work for the National Theatre as an actor or as a director who was there what it was like to walk into this great building to know in some ways you've stopped because I think I got there first III I worked at the National Theatre but when it was at the Old Vic Theatre right before they had the the custom-built premises on the south bank well you under olivier was and he was my employer i I didn't work at last with him I worked for him but with Maggie Smith and her then-husband Robert Stevens and Joan Plowright Lady Olivia and many many other actors practically every actor with the exception of Patrick of my generation I went through that company for a living I mean Hopkins Derek Jacobi Mike Gambon were all there and it just felt to be the center of world and was I'm reading Michael Blakemore's wonderful book stage blood I don't know if you've come across it but there was a sense of a lot of intrigue always at this theater you know oliviers to pose by peterhall were you ever aware of that stuff going you can forget that because that happens in any organization of course that there's a hierarchy which is challenged but you know for the audiences and that's why theaters exist there was such richness and one of the rich is what was the first production of no-man's land which happened there and then things changed and the directors came in and a new work for them and when did you when did you arrive at the National eighties was yes in 1985 i I've only worked at the National once Oh our seat guy right was that I was largely yes Peter Hall employed me at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 and the following year he resigned right right Peter Hall employed me at the National Theatre in 1985 and the following year design I lost my hook in both it I hung on in the RSC I loved going to the National Theatre it is the most exciting place in London for live theatre and I hope that we now have a new artistic director about Rufus Norris yeah yes mmm fine director I hope that I'll be adding to my presently rather modest total of one appearance and hood and who was running it when you walked in Richard they're two of the biggest influences my Carribean Richard air and Jerry show we took him revival up of a play that he and debut bents we took the the revived the the first revived revival of it ever we did it for a stone what we did it as a fundraiser to remind him one night only to raise money for Stonewall which was the you know gay awareness activist group when going to the history of section 28 or a number of things that had happened in England and from that one night owner we'd got we were invited to the National but I went on to do I did Vanya with he and Tony Cher and Janet McTeer oh I saw that later on cerebral Oh with Jerry Brule of course always into square Eileen and Eileen out Eileen and Kathy Internet Jude Law first thing you did Cynthia Nixon and but I also did little night music there which was so successful it ran in the end in the repertoire for over a year broke at that time all the box-office records of the National Theater and so I richer there was a wonderful image I read rich I loved the diaries that new British theater people keep because they they settle score isn't a review or fix and I as I asked you about the intrigue around Olivia I remember reading Richards heirs die Richard Ayers Diaries he talks about battling Great Depression at the same time he's running this major institution are these things that you were aware of well you were aware because Richard was quite maybe Moody's too strong a word but a sort of private person and and the rumor always was that if he got bad reviews he was absolutely so didn't come into work couldn't come in but as an impresario to work for his producer he was the absolute best the tip-top he'd come to the run-throughs give you such positive notes and then all through previews would guide you I mean for a young directors myself Declan Donnellan was there Sam Mendes was there Deborah Warner was there Stephen Daldry was there it was an app she thrilling time when we did Vanya in the cottesloe the other plane the repertoire was angel Declan Donnellan Angels in America right his production of angels in America that theater that time between Vanya and ancient America was the hot spot of London so it was a thrilling time because all one's one's own talent was growing and being encouraged and it was you know very exciting for you but everyone around you was so tight and you can't set too often in this country with deep respect because there's no more exciting for an actor to play that in on Broadway yeah I really mean any English actors have told us that really mean that Sam here from abroad but if you're if you're going to try and earn a living and live at home and your British national theaters where you want to be and really America could afford a national theater couldn't it wouldn't necessarily be what we've got unpublished oaring theater but the idea of public money going to provide a resource for visitors to the to the country well you miss a very appealing one sorry - really you have to leave now or we could get into whole thing about the politics of America and how they can't even afford their children lunches invite us back and we won't but I would say that I do think the National Theatre actually has become a very important part of our landscape here in America because so many great productions are coming from there and and coming here that the - that this you know the divide between America and and or New York and London is almost gone as far as I'm concerned when they make a point that's been made by Sean very effectively what we are doing now on commercial Broadway is a little microcosm of what the National Theatre would do where would you go to see Harold Pinter and Beckett in repertory with the same company of actors on the same day on the same day you don't certainly have to get on a plane to fly to the National Theater in London to the south bank well we've brought that same world on into commercial Broadway and I think we feel not smug but a little pleased because we've all we felt this right from the word go but when some initiated everything that we didn't want to be a British company arriving we wanted we wanted to be working with locals absolutely it's an American production because no man's land originated here we did do godoh in England yes but not with these two new American actors and Ian and Patrick were very very keen that the other actors would be American have we mentioned Billy Crudup a sensational lucky and and Shula to be on the stage with Shula is be on stage with the tornado and it's sure I believe who also is a product of the National Theatre if I'm not mistaken Oklahoma Roy it brought him to a Tony Award via their ideas a quartet I mean I know oh yes we are an ensemble it's an absolute but it's a true ensemble well don't miss it in repertory at the Court Theatre no man's land great peril Pinter play and Waiting for Godot you'll Beckett I would imagine that the best way to experience them is to do them in one day that way you have the immersive experience what I would do is an audience and you can get very cheap tickets day tickets for any performance $30 you can sit on the front row of these pledged wonderful Patrick Stewart there Patrick Stewart sir but sorry and play laid out so thanks a lot for what do we do now know that we're happy our thanks to the Friends of theater talk for their significant contribution to this production theater talk is made possible in part by the Frederick Loewe foundation the eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust the quarry and Bob dinelli charitable fund the Noel Coward foundation Kari J fries the Dorothy stralsund foundation the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the arts a state agency [Music] we welcome your questions or comments for theater talk thank you and good night [Music]

Channel: Theater Talk Archive

Views: 17,946

Rating: 4.8904109 out of 5

Keywords: Waiting For Godot (Play), Theatre (Award Discipline), Ian McKellen (Activist), Patrick Stewart, Sean Mathias, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, No Man's Land (Film), Theater Talk, Michael Riedel, Susan Haskins-Doloff

Id: -5t4C7p3dqg

Length: 26min 41sec (1601 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 26 2013