Double Directing Tony Nominee Matthew Warchus is Serious About Comedy
Matthew Warchus is the first director since A.J. Antoon 36 years ago to be nominated against himself for a Tony. The 42-year-old Englishman, cited three times previously (for Art, True West and last year's Boeing-Boeing), will go up against Bartlett Sher (Joe Turner's Come and Gone) and Phyllida Lloyd (Mary Stuart) as well as himself. Warchus was nominated for both God of Carnage, with its starry American quartet of actors (Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini), and The Norman Conquests, whose ensemble cast of six Brits are all but unknown in the States. But far from lingering in New York to soak up compliments, the director was busy back home in London the very week of the nominations with a workshop of the forthcoming stage musical version of the Bruce Joel Rubin film, Ghost, due to open on the West End next year. The amiable director has been married for eight years to the American actress/singer Lauren Ward, with whom he has three children. Broadway.com caught up with the busy helmer at the end of a day's work to talk about delivering Alan Ayckbourn across the Atlantic, bringing God of Carnage to the boil, and what it means to move from directing Ayckbourn, Mamet and Chekhov to something like Ghost.
You've achieved a double Tony nomination in a single category for directing, not seen on Broadway since 1973.
That's ironic, since that's the year The Norman Conquests was written.
The success in New York of this Old Vic production of Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy must be especially pleasing.
It is, not least because I was the person pushing to get it to New York. I was the person who got Sonia [producer Sonia Friedman] in and said to her, ‘Surely there might be a way of doing this on Broadway; give me two weeks to make some phone calls and see if anyone bites.' I am often told when I bring things to New York that they probably won't work—that they're very French or very British or very dated. I'm always being warned. I was warned on Boeing-Boeing, Art and God of Carnage, as well.
So what made you hopeful about the Ayckbourn plays?
I was convinced that if a production can tap into the almost Chekhovian depth of his writing, that it then becomes universal. When humor is based on human truth, that becomes universal humor, with none of the shrillness of the British stereotypes [of Ayckbourn] as performed by Americans. I really believe you can do all his plays in the way that we did The Norman Conquests.
The problem in the past, then, has been one of presentation?
That's right. I think it's possibly because of the way Alan has been acted and directed in America before, rather than the actual material. People said God of Carnage was too cynical for Americans; and that the characters in Norman are different kinds of failures, and Americans don't like failure. All these clichés got trotted out. The thing that makes Ayckbourn travel well is his depth and his universality.
Alan Ayckbourn's work never seems more quintessentially English than when seen in the US.
There is something quintessentially British about it in the same way that a British audience gets something different out of the American company of August: Osage County when the Steppenwolf company visits the UK. There's a landscape available in the acting and the writing which has got a ring of truth about it when it comes from an English troupe of actors - the extra pleasure, actually, that no matter how good Hope Davis or Marcia Gay Harden, say, might have been in an Ayckbourn play, there's something special about seeing a British company do it. There's also the rare pleasure that comes with seeing actors who are first-rate whom you don't recognize, so you can think of the character. [Laughs] You've got to overcome a hurdle when you see James Gandolfini act.
To have these dual nominations must feel like having to choose between various children.
They are like children, and I'm deeply fond of both of them. I don't think winning or failing to win an award will affect my feelings for either production. You inevitably fall completely in love with your productions as you're working on them.
One thing they share is a pretty blistering view of marriage.
They do have this seeming connection of painful marital relationships and a dark humor, I suppose, but they are very different pieces of work and different exercises in direction. God of Carnage is very rigorous and almost brutal in its choreography, whereas The Norman Conquests is more soulful and textured and its impact comes from its length and breadth. God of Carnage feels sort of like a tequila slammer [laughs], whereas The Norman Conquests is almost symphonic in its effects on an audience. With Boeing-Boeing and Speed-the-Plow [the Old Vic revival with Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey], I've had this tunnel of work that I've just come out of the end of now, and they've all been so enjoyable to me in completely different ways. They've also had a lot of laughter and some extremely powerful acting.
How do you generate a true company feeling in plays that contain such quantities of pain?
What you have to ensure is that the company is very, very tight and interconnected because they need to hate each other [laughs]. And no actor is going to go out there and get into that kind of hostility if they don't trust each other profoundly. That's the paradox.
Speaking of acting, it must be bittersweet to have eight of your 10 Broadway performers nominated for their performances, including the entire Carnage ensemble but not Ben Miles and Amelia Bullmore [from Norman].
Yes, well, first of all, it's probably correct to assume [with Norman] that the acting nominations were fairly arbitrary in the end. There was an interest in acknowledging as many people from the company as they possibly could, and how could you really separate out any of the six? I think Amelia and Ben and the other four probably appreciate that there was no real distinction intended, which must be the case, as far as I can see. The truth is, awards are a strange thing. They're collaborative, but they also turn a community momentarily into a set of competitors, and one mustn't get hung up on that. The purpose is to celebrate.
Still, your own double nomination must be hugely pleasing.
It's sort of irresistible to be in some way relieved and excited that people get what you're trying to do. Of course, the downside of having hits is that you think, ‘Shit, I've got to do it all again!’
It must help your directing work, courtesy your American wife, that you've got a foot firmly in both cultures, Britain and America.
I do get asked to do a lot of American plays in England. The fact that I've lived in America and have immersed myself quite a lot over the past 10 years in American life and culture, means that I do feel as if I straddle the two cultures. I think it really does help when a director knows something about his audience. After all, you do stand between the writer and the audience as a director: you're the interpreter, the mediator. I do adjust my London productions when I bring them to America to feed that volatility of audiences on Broadway. I've probably said before that theater on Broadway is more of a sporting event than it is in London, so it's important to find an intensity in the work. Boeing-Boeing was sort of turbocharged by the time it got to Broadway, just as I sort of threw a lasso around Norman and tightened the knot in bringing it over.
And now you've got Uncle Vanya on tap for the West End [with Ralph Fiennes, Ken Stott, and Carey Mulligan, in a new adaptation of Chekhov's play by Ayckbourn], and, further ahead, a musical version of the film Ghost. That's an eclectic slate.
Yes, I was sitting here working on Ghost [at the Dominion Theatre for a two-week workshop] when I got a text about the Tonys. Have to say that although we are a bunch of freaks who work in this business, I do believe very strongly in what we do. I believe in arts and culture, whether it be something erudite and mind-expanding or pure escapism. It's such an eccentric way to spend our time that at times like this [awards season], I do think there is genuine reason for celebration.