Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

For those who have noticed, I didn’t post post for a long time before my notes on Vanya. That’s because, for a long time, I wasn’t in New York seeing new shows but in London putting up one of my old ones.

Though I keep my hand in as a theater journalist — posting here and writing books — my primary focus is still playwriting.

A few years back, the folks behind the off-Broadway production of my play Kunstler tried to make my dream of putting up a show in the Edinburgh Fringe come true. We started raising money with the hope of taking Kunstler there with our original star, Jeff McCarthy. But the budget for Edinburgh kept rising to the point where it was beyond our reach.

And then one of our team remembered a connection with a pub theater in London, the White Bear. It turned out that it would cost considerably less to produce the play there, and so the Creative Place International, in association with AND Theater and a British partner, Hint-of-Lime, did indeed bring Kunstler to the snug space in Kennington. Beautifully directed by Meagen Fay, featuring McCarthy and his new acting partner, Nykila Norman, Kunstler played three happy weeks, racking up mostly 4 and 5-star reviews from the press that covers pub and London fringe theater. The artistic director of the White Bear asked me to return.

I decided to come back with a production of one of my most-produced plays, The Value of Names. The story concerns a young actress named Norma who discovers that Leo, the director of the play she is about to start rehearsing, was responsible for putting her father Benny on the blacklist. It premiered at the Actors Theater of Louisville in the late, lamented Humana Festival and has been staged around the US with such folks as Jack Klugman, Helen Hunt, Dan Lauria, Louis Zorich, Ronny Graham, Keene Curtis, Hector Elizondo, Judd Hirsch and Shelley Berman, mostly to warm responses. It had never been produced in London.

Since I was partially responsible for the money for this production, I thought I would make a budget-friendly choice and chose myself to direct. I knew casting Benny in London would be a challenge. Henry Goodman and David Suchet weren’t about to accept an offer to play in a pub theater. Then it occurred to me I had seen playwright Jeremy Kareken (co-author of Lifespan of a Fact, which played Broadway with Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale) in an off-Broadway play that was a response to The Merchant of Venice (he played a Shylock distinct from Shakespeare’s) and he had been awfully good. Jeremy is about to marry a British woman and is spending a lot of his time there, so it was not only convenient for him to say yes, it was an appealing way to introduce himself to a lot of folks in London. A West End and Broadway veteran named Tim Hardy is a friend, and he signed on to play Leo, and, via an open call, we found an American with working papers in London named Katherine Lyle to play Norma.

I anticipated that switching gears to directing would be a challenge, especially directing Tim, who has dozens of international directing credits himself. But halfway through the first day I thought, “Oh, I can do this.” I’m not claiming I could direct a big, whopping play like The Ferryman, but a three-character, one-set piece that’s mostly about getting the tone and pace right? Yes, that I could manage.

We had two weeks to rehearse, and it came together with very little trouble. Previously, the play had frequently been presented on detailed sets representing Benny’s opulent patio overlooking the Pacific, but for pub theater all we needed were a table, a couple of chairs and the easel holding the canvas on which Benny paints his enthusiastic and amateurish pictures. The minimal scenery put all the focus on performance. And I was wonderfully lucky in my performers. I had approached Jeremy thinking that if he just played a version of himself we’d be OK. He turned out to be a much more resourceful actor than I’d realized, and found opportunities in the text I had not seen in the dozens of earlier productions I had experienced. I suspect he will be able to pick up more acting gigs when he settles in London. Tim brought a droll presence to Leo, somewhat reminiscent of Claude Rains. The result was the audience was tempted to like a character they were pre-disposed to hate, which I think deepened the contest. And Katherine — who was one of about a hundred who auditioned for the part via an open call (and we saw many terrific people) — was a find, falling into a rhythm with Jeremy that made it all the more credible that she be taken for his daughter.

To say I was pleased with the experience is an understatement. The White Bear was pleased, too, and I’ve been asked to return with another play. Plans are afoot.

One of the things I come away with is the wish we had comparable venues and producing models in the United States. It costs way less to put up the show at the White Bear than it does to put up a showcase in New York. And there is a sector of the British theatrical press that pays attention to pub and fringe theater. Sometimes stuff even moves to larger venues. (There is a possibility of this happening for Names, which is being explored.)

I was in New York for much of the heyday of off-off-Broadway and my career was largely launched when the first-string critic of The New York Times came to see Porch when it was playing on dark nights on the set of a revival of Marc Blitzstein’s Regina. I would be surprised if our budget was more than $500. Such a thing couldn’t happen today. But I do wish we had better ways for actors, writers and directors to put up stuff in the States without having to take out mortgages.