It wouldn't take too great a leap of imagination to cast Michael Greif as a grown-up Harry Potter. The sprite-spirited, mid-40-something director has the same inkjet-black hair and moon-shaped eyeglasses as the world's favorite boy wizard. Greif, however, confines his alchemy to America's finest theatres. Both at the Public Theater, where Joseph Papp appointed him Director-in-Residence at age 31, and at LaJolla Playhouse, where he was made Artistic Director at age 35, Greif was known for levitating challenging new plays and less familiar classics in highly theatrical ways.
Noah Haidle's a lucky playwright. Although Mr. Marmalade requires little rewriting, Greif's greatest gift to writers is his willingness to undergo in-depth development. Two of his most successful productions were new works shepherded through months–even years–of rewrites and readings: Jonathan Larson's rock musical Rent, which he ushered from the first workshop to Broadway; and the stage adaptation of Jessica Hagedorn's sprawling historical novel, Dogeaters, produced both at LaJolla and at the Public. Greif won Obies for both.
Many New York theatregoers may remember Greif's breakout work at the Public Theater. He directed scripts by such provocative new American playwrights as Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, and José Rivera. He executed Cinderella stories with such rarely produced classics as Sophie Treadwell's Machinal (for which he won his first Obie Award in 1990) and Shakespeare's Pericles, transforming them into something startling and new.
It's no surprise that many summers find Greif in the mountains of Utah at Sundance Theater Institute developing new projects. This summer, he took a break from working on a new musical about Andrew Cunanan, the disturbed killer of fashion designer Giannini Versaci, to speak with Front & Center about Mr. Marmalade.
Some time last year I started hearing wonderful things about this playwright Noah Haidle and saw that his work was being produced here and there. So I called his agent and asked if it'd be okay to take a look at his scripts to see if we could ever work together. I read them and was very excited. I thought he was the real thing.
I was excited by how theatrical his scripts were and how firmly they lived in a theatre setting. His plays are always founded in reality and peopled by characters who have true and real emotional arcs, but then Noah always manages to put them in some heightened context. This is especially important as we find ways to define theatre and its place in a world dominated by film and television.
“What's meaningful and heartbreaking in the play is how the girl's imagination and industry intersect with her reality and the places where her fantasy and reality collide. They really smash up, especially with the abandonment issues, which are pervasive.”
Although audiences and critics have often marveled at the theatricality of your productions of Broadway musicals and classic revivals of Wilder, Chekhov, and Shakespeare, much of your resume is filled with very surreal, nonrealistic new American plays like Casanova, Marisol, and Dogeaters. Have you always been drawn to such material?
As an emerging director, when interviewers asked that question, I said I was looking for interesting stories told in interesting ways. I guess that still holds. It's the “interesting ways” that translates into the theatricality. I require real stakes and emotional need in the story and characters who are identifiable, but they must be in situations that I find complicated and complex. I'm most excited about a playwright who can juggle all of those things.
So getting back to Mr. Marmalade, how did you eventually get involved?
Right... so I called Noah's agent and told him that I would like to meet Noah. So we met and we talked and I told him how much I liked his work. We actually spoke more specifically about another play called A Long History of Neglect. It was clear that he understood where I was coming from and so we kind of said, “Well, let's see what happens in the future.” Very soon after that his agent called me and said there might be something coming up and I expressed my enthusiasm. It turned out that Roundabout was doing a production of Mr. Marmalade.
The play was produced once on the West Coast and has been published. Does that mean the script is set or will the playwright work on it during rehearsals?
I'm approaching the play as if it's predominately finished. I've talked to Noah and asked him to help me understand this line or that beat. Directing new plays falls into two real categories: there are those plays where it is going to be a process during which the script is going to undergo lots of change; or sometimes, as in this case, the play feels finished, although you work on it with an openness to what might happen during rehearsals with a different cast. I am thrilled that Noah will be around during rehearsals.
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Noah Haidle
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What would you say Mr. Marmalade is really about? I mean, the plot concerns the life of Lucy, a 4-year-old girl, played by an adult actress, who play-acts the dysfunctional world around her–which is kind of shocking–but how would you describe its main theme?
Well, let me go at that question from a different way. What really excites me about this play is that I love the way Lucy's imagination, activities, and her mental industry intersect with Noah's industry as a playwright. That's very exciting theatrically. That's part of it. What's meaningful and heartbreaking in the play is how the girl's imagination and industry intersect with her reality and the places where her fantasy and reality collide. They really smash up, especially with the abandonment issues, which are pervasive.
The play really seems to address America's troubled relationship to children and child-rearing. On the one hand we complain about kids playing graphic, violent video games and yet we'll put a 12-year-old on trial as an adult for murder. At 18 they can die serving their country but they're not old enough to have a beer...
Yes-that's it. Pretend I just said all that. I think that part of the heartbreak of the play is the way Noah shows us how adults treat children, and the utter expendability and disregard they have for children's innocence.
I know that there's the cliché that 90 percent of directing is casting, but it seems particularly crucial in Mr. Marmalade, where an adult actor plays a four-year-old.
Yes. We're looking for actors who can both portray the emotional truthfulness and innocence of those kids, and yet they must have the acting skills to put a theatrical spin on them. They have to get at the emotional neediness of children and must also have comedic and dramatic acting talent to be able to operate on all these different levels.
The play has a kind of Shakespearean era doubleness to the characters. On the Elizabethan stage a boy would play a girl like Rosalind in As You Like It, for example, who then pretends to be a boy. In Mr. Marmalade adults play children pretending to be adults.
Exactly. The actors have to be able to reach all the different levels. They have to embrace that metatheatricality.
This season you'll be extremely busy. You begin rehearsals of another remarkable young playwright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Nilo Cruz.
Yes. I begin rehearsals at MTC just as we open Mr. Marmalade, after a healthy preview period, of course, which I'll attend.
Do you tinker a lot during previews?
I love the preview period. It's an extraordinarily productive time because we can continue to refine the production before an audience. That's what is so great about New York theatre: you get a long preview period. I relish that. I find previews a very fertile time.
One of my favorite elements in Haidle's play is the scene titles. The first is: “Of the strained relationship between Lucy and her imaginary friend, Mr. Marmalade.” How will you use them on stage?
I love them too. The scene titles will certainly be used–their irony and their wit is an important signpost to how audiences can receive the play—their seeming innocence. At the moment, I imagine they're supertitles.
The child characters play “house” and “doctor” in a way that shows they have a scarily good grasp of adult problems. Some audiences in California, where the play was first produced, were reported to find the play very disturbing.
It is disturbing, and it's about issues that need to be seen and confronted. I would hope the play's virtues would overwhelm its.... I shouldn't say anything. Let me just trail off there.
Like some of the other highly theatrical plays you've directed, there doesn't seem to be a single meaning or message but a variety of interpretations to what Mr. Marmalade means.
Great art is open. There is a complexity to it. That's what makes it great art.
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