- It's a very obviously very famous Coward play; it's done a lot. I think a lot of people
who have been to the theatre, at all, will have probably come across the play before.
- Yeah. - and, as such I have thought about directing it quite a few times. It has always
made me laugh, it's laugh out loud when you read it, isn't it? - yeah, absolutely. That's
its chief attribute. - yes. - Audience's adore Coward, they just adore him, and I think they
adore him because he love's audiences. He's interested in the audience and he gives to
the audiences, do you know what I mean? Present Laughter seems to me to be a play about Bohemian's,
artists and rebels, actually, sometimes I think they are presented, you know, as people
who are aristocratic to a certain degree, or just very posh at least and it's all smoking
jackets and cigarettes. - Part of what is being re-created and sometimes most of what is
being re-created, you could argue, is theatre of the 1930's. In which people actually acted
in a different way – acting was different then, and so the question when you approach
it now is to what extent do you have to inherit the theatre style, the acting style, the production style,
of the 1930's, when you do it. Well, what we're interested in, what I'm interested in,
is how you can show these people who were living in the 1930's, these characters,
who are really extreme characters, extraordinary extreme characters in this play, in a very
extreme and intense situation. There's nothing, sort of, everyday about it. - No. - However,
can you make it feel like, we're recreating real people. - I think what has been, I think
what we're really excited about, speaking to the Coward estate and our ideas for adding...
- some changes. - some changes, exactly. - So we've been given the responsibility and permission,
rather foolishly, to experiment with a part of the play and make a change to a couple of aspects of it.
- Which is really, genuinely, exciting. I think there's something about Garry that
is unique in the sense that he's both funny, he know's that he is funny and he knows that
he has an affect on people, but he is also very, he takes it very seriously as well.
- yes, he's kind of a monster, you could say he is a monster to a degree, you wouldn't want to say that!
- yeah. - But also, he's quite wise, in some respects he is the least naive.
- he is sort of a truth teller, in some aways. - yeah, he becomes a truth teller
during it and weirdly likeable, even though he is outrageous. - I think that is really
true. I think it's important, you know, for some reason to me it's important that you
see the human behind the celebrity, matinee idol, that he is and I'm not saying that he
doesn't play that and use that but it's what that is and seeming, seeming is acting and non acting.
When are we acting? - Oh, that's a big thing in the play. - It's a big theme in the play
- when are we acting, and people saying 'oh you are acting now', and you're
thinking 'no, I'm not acting' and you go, ‘well actually you are acting’ and actually
sometimes it's exactly as you say; if we apply our 21st Century attitudes towards acting,
towards this play, how do we act now and we tend to act now, we don't present the problem,
we want the audience to do a little bit of work. - detective work. - and applying that
to Coward will make it really, really exciting because his dialogue is not just funny, but
so actable, which he talks about in the play... - quite modern. - ...and modern, yeah.
- Noel Coward was called the first pop star. - yes! - not only being a star, celebrity, through his acting,
songwriting and singing, and thousands of people would turn up to see and hear him sing
his songs. And so, there's something about that. What I have tried to do is think about
contemporary pop stars who have lived a life which is, it's not uncommon is it, I think
you, you kind of did a play about it once? - yeah, yeah Birdland. - There's this extraordinary
life of an artist in the middle of this intense focus of adulation but also pressure and people
wanting things from you and stuff like that. So I think, even when you say, 'oh well Garry
Essindine was kind of a pop star' as well, that releases a sense of modern, contemporary
understanding of the character and stops him being out of reach.
He is kind of a Peter Pan figure, you know, a big part of him just wants to stay in Neverland and stay airborne
and have the sexual relationships and fulfil his appetite, enjoy the fame that he enjoys,
and yet another part of him is felling old, tired and lonely; it's a very important thing.
This play was apparently originally called, Sweet Sorrow, which is a fantastic title.
- absolutely. - because it's got a paradox in it; it's got both things in it. It's got
Neverland in it, the sweet, and it's got sorrow, sort of, melancholia that Peter Pan has as well.
That loneliness is a byproduct of fame isn't it? and you do see that a lot. I'm very
interested in success and fame, which people always look up to and think it's only positive.
It actually removes people, it creates an identity crisis in people and that is what
Garry is dealing with in this play. So it is a comedy – quite lightly written.
- but I do think there's a thing, I mean, they say you can disguise so much through comedy and
I think before people can dismiss the play, if you don't really look at what the play
is saying and I just think looking at the play with really fresh eyes about really trying
to say, ‘what are these people?’ If you just take out all of the tropes that we associate
with the play, and I think the age of the character is important, and I think that ‘it
is a comedy’ doesn't mean that it's completely superficial, I think that actually there are
a lot of things that he really was saying. He was rebellious and he was transgressive
and he was provocative and I love that about it. - What's going to be exciting is really
casting it with a group of people who are absolutely at ease with comedy. But also, just bringing
with them a kind of dimension as well as that, which isn't always seriousness.
Sometimes it is seriousness; sometimes it's just a kind of soul in the character. That makes you believe the
character; it's not just script bouncing along at the surface, you believe the character.
- yeah and it doesn't make it any less funny. In fact, I think with any comedy you have
to have an element of depth and with any tragedy you have to have an element of lightness,
I just think that is. And it's really, you know, reading the play it is hysterically
funny. - And it becomes like a farce later on. So a farce being a sort of something that
builds and builds and builds in energy and becomes out of control, and I don't know about
you but, always before I go away somewhere for work the boiler breaks down... - Yeah!
- ... I get a parking ticket or sprain my ankle or my back goes out. - the Wi-Fi goes
and you're like putting in the password... - yeah, somethings goes wrong before you go
away, it always happens and true to form. I don't know what that is; the cosmos conspires
against you because it doesn't like change or something. So Garry is about to go away
and all of those things go wrong and the different people needing him for different reasons,
as well as his own personal sort of conflicting needs. These are the ingredients: running
out of time and having some sort of secret about your identity, or hiding a truth.
They are the key ingredients of farce really. - absolutely. - So even whilst it is spiralling itself up, hopefully...
cut to the least funny production. - I mean I heard him saying that but I just didn't find
it at all funny. - if we just go back and watch the video those guys made... - That
was funny, quite funny... - ...that was funnier than the show.