Comedy is what we need right now, says Nicholas Hytner (The History Boys, The Madness of King George), who directed London’s National Theater for ten years.
It’s okay to have heavy dramas from Ibsen or Schiller, but boyish laughter is becoming more and more an uplifting necessity.
Which is true boys and dolls and James Corden, post his life The Late Late Showcome in
Along with longtime manager Nick Starr, Hytner now owns and manages London’s Bridge Theater and is overseeing a major revival of the classic Broadway musical boys and dollschoreographed by Dame Arlene Phillips (Be sure to come dance) and now in early previews.
It stars Daniel Mays (The Long Shadow, 1917) as Nathan Detroit, Andrew Richardson (A call to spy) as Sky Masterson, Celinde Shoemaker (rocket man) as Sarah Brown and Marisha Wallace (Aladdin) as long-suffering Miss Adelaide. Cedric Neal plays Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Also in the cast are Jordan Castle, Cornelius Clarke, Cameron Johnson, Anthony O’Donnell, Mark Oxtoby, Ryan Pidgen and Katy Secombe.
Corden finishes his The Late Late Show experience with CBS this summer. Hytner spoke to Corden about what he wants to do when he lands in the UK. One of the things he is confident about is strengthening his stage skills with a return to One man, two governorswhere he presented a physical comedy masterclass that earned him a Tony on Broadway.
“We’re driving it forward,” says Hytner.
Corden, he says, would do the show at The Bridge or the West End late this year or early 2024.
Hytner directed the original production at the National in 2011, when he hired Richard Bean to direct Carlo Goldoni to add lighter fare to an otherwise “serious” season servants of two masters with Corden as the star.
Cal McCrystal, a director, writer, actor and trained circus clown, was hired as assistant director to develop physical comedy routines and create a comedy vocabulary for the show.
I happened to be there for the first preview. Made me laugh out loud I came back three nights later to see if it made Mrs B laugh. The moment we left the theater, the lyrics flew to all her friends. I knew then it was going to be a hit, and it was.
After that, McCrystal’s wit livened up other productions with whimsical sketches of funny stuff. Most recently Ian McKellan plays mother goose in London, now touring the UK.
McKellen’s Mother Goose is rumored to be laying golden eggs on Broadway. I like the idea of being a pantomime lady in high heels and giving it to the theater knight – and that at the age of 83! Well, Nancy Pelosi has no problems.
There has long been a zeal to convert One man, two governors on the big screen, but viewers shake their heads and complain that “the physical jokes don’t translate.”
What it takes, they say, is a complete reboot to create a script that can visualize the humorous physicality that works so effortlessly on a moving stage. It was nice to see the NT Live version of current events One man, two governorsfilmed during the original run, but I wasn’t home rocking on my couch like I did at the National.
The likes of Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond carefully crafted every comic moment Some love it when it’s hot.
I remember seeing a stage adaptation of Some love it when it’s hot with Tommy Steele. It was about as fun as being locked in a walk-in freezer with an incontinent elephant.
Perhaps some theatrical performances are not destined to be adapted into feature films for theatrical release. And vice versa.
Take boys and dolls. There have been some sensational revivals (Oh, come on! I wasn’t there to cover the original 1950 production with Robert Alda, Isabel Bigley, Vivian Blaine, Sam Levine and Stubby Kaye, but I knew people who were. )
With the exception of Blaine, Kaye and Jean Simmons, Hytner has little credit for Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1955 film version, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra. “The stories about it are pretty good,” Hytner says.
“His stories are better than the movie where Sinatra and Brando hate each other,” he argues.
Kaye and Blaine stand out by doing the show.
Hytner smiles as he tells me that Laurence Olivier once wanted to play Nathan Detroit when the National was based at the Old Vic theatre. The National Council scrapped the idea.
It would be decades before the idea revived. By this time the National had moved to its own archaeological site overlooking the River Thames. Here’s how Richard Eyre performed the very first NT musical in March 1982: boys and dolls.
Bob Hoskins, Julia McKenzie, Ian Charleston and Julie Covington starred and it was a sensation.
Jim Carter (Downton Abbey) and Imelda Staunton (The crown) was further on the cast list, with Big Jule and Mimi, one of the Hot Box chorus girls. Since then they have been a couple.
“It was the first time a major Broadway musical had been performed on the London stage with all the care and detail, expertise and resources of the sponsored theatre. Nobody made a great Broadway musical the way he did Shakespeare,” says Hytner, as we meet during a break from rehearsals where he is choreographing Runyonland’s opening number with Phillips and the stage managers.
As the troupe raced across the stage, they had to imagine what it would be like to have 400 people on set, fully immersed in the action. Phillips explains that stagehands will lead the audience across the stage so they don’t collide with the cast and the moving background.
It’s fascinating to watch and I stay hours beyond my allotted time. The riveting performance makes every actor shine. I’m also glad to see that Mays, who is a stranger to musical theater, is having fun and clearly getting along with co-star Richardson – unlike Brando and Sinatra.
Hytner believes that musical comedies written “by boys” “all tell the same story, which is that boys are stupid and the puppets get smarter and smarter and fight the odds”.
“And when you think about it,” he adds, “everything Much ado about nothing to the big Hollywood movies… think of the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn images. Katharine Hepburn is always smarter. Beatrice is smarter than Benedict Much ado about nothing.”
I nod because I know he is right and Ms. B. would also like his opinion.
“In a world where boys make the rules, it’s always the boys who learn when romantic comedy pays off. The romantic comedies in which the puppets learn are not classics,” he emphasizes. “They’re gone.”
Hytner believes the musical is “an American art form” and few would disagree, although he admits there are some great British ones. However, no one made it into the top 5.
He recalls a conversation he had while directing a musical Sweet flavor of success on Broadway with music by Marvin Hamlisch. Someone asked, “What are the five best musicals ever written?”
Hytner noted Carousel, Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, Showboat. “And I can’t remember what my fifth was. And a little voice behind me said, “What about? A chorus line?’ And it was Marvin. I said, “Number six, number six.” “
JULIANNE MOORE’S POKERFACE
The art of deception is to exude confidence. And not to give yourself away.
I am completely hopeless. I usually burst out laughing when I try to fool family and friends. Cards? Does not matter.
My whole face is a sign.
That’s why I’m obsessed with Apple TV+ and the original A24 film sharperwhere con artists play a scam involving a Park Avenue billionaire played by John Lithgow.
This top thriller from director Benjamin Caron stars Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, Justice Smith and Briana Middleton. They’re all great, but it’s Moore’s poker face that I keep coming back to.
What about this film, I ask her, made me analyze her character’s body language for clues?
“It’s sexy in the sense that it’s about people and their relationships with each other and their personal desires. And we haven’t seen many movies about people trying to get things from other people through their relationships,” Moore tells us over a crackling phone line as she walks back from the sets of another tantalizing project they’re working on here. London, drove home. is called filming Mary and Georgedirected by Oliver Hermanus (Life) and produced by Liza Marshall (Son A, Temple) for Sky and AMC+. It is a historical drama set in the 17th-century court of James I, where her character, Mary Villiers, gave herself away. “I haven’t done many historical films outside of the 20th and 21st centuries,” she says, “and I’ve never done anything Jacobean, that’s for sure.”
she’s having fun Based in trendy Notting Hill, she enjoys playing with Nicholas Galitzine, who plays her son George.
The people inside sharper, says Moore has the “sexy idea that people use their intelligence and their ability to improve another person.”
Madeline, the mysterious woman who plays Moore, is “very troublesome. You have to be careful,” she tells me.
We talk endlessly about the film’s wonderfully bad twists. Yes, but is so and so confused, I ask. And what is when The happen? “Bass, listen. You can’t say anything about it. You can’t reveal anything,” says Moore pointedly about the need to keep secrets sharper For myself.
I can understand why she wanted to play Madeline. As she says, “It’s so lovely and refreshing to read something mature and entertaining” as we briefly analyze the screenplay by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanka. Moore loved what she read so much that she signed on to star and produce.
The Oscar winner opens up about “the joy” Madeline must have to make a living. “What she is doing is extremely dangerous … it turns her on. I love playing that type of person who feels like there’s no obstacle to what they can achieve,” says Moore.
We are all a little like Madeline, she adds. “We are different people, our people are all different. We have a different relationship with ourselves than with someone we work for, with a childhood friend, with someone in a restaurant. We have different personalities as people and Madeline is skilled at presenting different faces to the world. “But that’s really just an exaggeration of what we all naturally do as humans,” she tells me.
At the recent BAFTA Film Awards, Moore presented the BAFTA award to her boyfriend, costume designer Sandy Powell. They have collaborated on several films including The end of the matter, far from heaven, Wonderstruck And The delights. “It’s quite important,” she says. “I was very privileged to work with her.”
I ask Moore what she wanted for the costumes she wears sharper to say about Madeline. “That she is rich,” she said with a knowing smile.
Source: Deadline
Bernice Bonaparte is an author and entertainment journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a passion for pop culture and a talent for staying up-to-date on the latest entertainment news, Bernice has become a trusted source for information on the entertainment industry.
