New York in the Spring

New York looking splendid in the spring sunshine this morning. I walked from my hotel on 31st up to Central Park and back, passing through Macy’s on the way where the strong Pound makes shopping an unexpected pleasure.

I particularly like the grid system of streets: it offers up sudden vertiginous views like this where you think you can see from one side of Manhattan to the other just by turning your head:

And two tourist classics:

All this while back in London Total Eclipse plays its last performance (a 3.30pm matinee). I can’t remember missing a last performance of something before. There’s a sadness to them though and, like press nights, can sometimes disappoint. So the show will live on in my mind’s eye. A fine play, a fine cast; it looked a treat and I was – am – very proud of it.

So tomorrow we audition more people for The History Boys. The people I met last week all seemed so lively, gifted and nice. What will it feel like in NYC? The atmosphere is markedly less laid back here. “Name?” I was crisply asked as I stepped up to the hotel front desk to check in last night.

And lastly, after all my previous ravings I guess I shouldn’t really wade into the fuss about the critics which has arisen after Nick Hytner’s comments on the opening of A Matter of Life and Death or I’ll begin to look obsessed. I don’t know whether the critics are strangling the theatre. But I do think there has been a shift in the last 10 years or so from giving due consideration to a serious artform towards the lazy, spoilt temper-tantrums of the greedy consumer; everyone’s a blogger now. I think the older critics don’t know how to conduct themselves in this new market-place and it results in some curious outbursts as they try to join in (out of fear presumably that they will be replaced if they don’t). It also then influences the theatre as people will do anything to get away from what Robert Hughes calls ’slow art’. I think most of the reviewers survive because their Editors pay no attention whatsoever to the theatre: they must be worried about all this focus on them…

It’s terrific coming back to New York: the last time I was here was with Simon Bent in 1996 when we came for a ten-day tour of the place for some reason which escapes me now. I do remember that we went up to the top of the World Trade Center (Simon even went up and out on to the roof).

Strange also to be in America now with Blair finally going. Jimmy Carter’s jeremiad today fits with what I’ve heard since I’ve been here, “Why did he do it??” the main question about Blair that people want to ask. Important to remember, too, that it wasn’t Iraq which prompted the Labour MPs to give him the shove: it was the unpardonable refusal to condemn the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer (again in support of Bush) which tipped them over the edge; it seemed to add insult to injury. There’s a Victoria Wood sketch about a carriage full of people on a train who are too embarrassed to do anything other than ignore a couple making love until afterwards when they light a post-coital cigarette: “Excuse me, but I think you’ll find this is a no smoking carriage” says one of the commuters. That’s the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday evening. LAX much easier to get out of than Heathrow: after baggage and customs there’s just a sign which says “Street”.

I’m staying at the Biltmore Hotel, an extremely grand and old fashioned hotel in Downtown LA. The original home of the Oscars it retains an extraordinary charm. Italianate baroque from the 20s.

I’m going to do The History Boys by Alan Bennett at the Ahmanson Theater in October: this trip has been about starting the casting. In the past four days I have seen 141 boys. The meetings have of necessity been rather shorter than I’m used to. But American actors have usually learnt the “sides” (selected scenes) so time is saved that way.

I arrived exhausted and am now no less so. Tomorrow I fly to New York for a further few days of auditions. More once I’ve set up shop there the day after tomorrow…

My LA Life…

The lobby of the Biltmore Hotel (original home of the Oscars).

(The Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall)

More soon on what’s actually going on. Just photos for now.

Elling opens

(John Simm in Elling, by Tristram Kenton in The Guardian)

After a rather intensive production week (start tech Mon eve, tech all day Tues, dress Weds afternoon, preview Weds eve, preview Thurs, press night Friday) we opened Elling last Friday night. Due to the extreme good judgement and steadiness under fire of the company the press night performance was as good as it gets. They’re often tense and weird and unrepresentative of the work. But on this one the company hit the sweet-spot of the piece and the audience seemed very tickled indeed by it. Reviewers were seen to Laugh and even Clap at the end. This all had to be reported to me as for the first time in my life I didn’t go in to see the show at its opening. The Bush is just too small and I realised I cared too much about it all to sit there bunched up against po-faced people taking down all its shortcomings. In fact, the reviews in what are still called the broadsheets were so good that it even provoked a think piece by Lyn Gardner called When Critics get Carried Away. (Of course, being me I immediately thought she was about to recant when I first saw this).

So last week for the first time in fifteen weeks I wasn’t rehearsing a show. Thankfully I had to be busy preparing other stuff otherwise I would have slid into that kind of post-opening depression which happens when you re-enter reality. But the anxiety dreams which wake me at around 3am and last to 6am didn’t subside ’til this weekend. In them I try to solve apparently insoluble problems in the play which arise at the technical. No amount of re-blocking, trying it again and again, cutting it or whatever seems to make it any better and worst of all I know as I’m having these waking dreams that the scene in question isn’t even in the actual play. I emerge newly exhausted into the day.

Meanwhile I went back to see Total Eclipse the continuing run of which seems to be something of a closely guarded secret. People come up to me and say how sorry they are that they missed it. (It’s on ’til May 20th). It seemed in very good shape. I like it when shows have played themselves in like this. There’s none of that anxiety about what’s going to happen next and the actors can be relaxed and expressive in the parts with great confidence. I am so lucky that this year especially I seem to have worked with such tremendously good actors, who have also formed themselves into such happy companies.

This weekend I have almost had a normal time trying to relax and even had dinner with a friend and went swimming. Unheard-of indulgence. It will come to an abrupt stop tomorrow as auditions continue for The Enchantment at the NT and the ‘white card’ design model for that gets presented. Plus I fly to Los Angeles on Sunday for my first visit there to prepare The History Boys in the Autumn. Or the Fall, I guess I should say. It never rains, etc. Readers of this blog at the moment who are tempted to see all this as some sort of ghastly trumpet-blowing exercise should recall the many long periods also recorded here where I was doing not much more than swim, read the papers and moan about the government. I set out to record the odd rhythms of a director’s life: this is the busy bit (and you can even trace it back to where it started). Those who enjoy schadenfreude will surely not have too long to wait…