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This fall, director David Grindley brings George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and its cherished characters Eliza Doolittle (Claire Danes), Henry Higgins (Jefferson Mays), Colonel Pickering (Boyd Gaines), and Alfred Doolittle (Jay O. Sanders) back to life.
An interview by John Istel
Director David Grindley could hardly have guessed that his applauded, Tony®-winning revival of Journey's End would jumpstart the beginning of a new journey. When cast member Jefferson Mays revealed to Grindley his desire to play Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion, he asked the 30-something Brit to direct. Grindley gladly agreed. Once Roundabout's artistic director Todd Haimes signed on to produce the 1913 social satire, made even more famous by the subsequent film and musical version, My Fair Lady, fellow Journey's End ensemble member—and frequent Roundabout star—Boyd Gaines (Company, Twelve Angry Men) came on board to play Pickering. Claire Danes agreed to make her Broadway debut as Eliza.
While the plot of Pygmalion (linguistics expert Higgins bets friend Pickering that he can turn Eliza, a Cockney flower girl, into a genteel aristocrat) may be familiar to most U.S. theatregoers, Grindley's career may not. Until last season's critical hit with R.C. Sherriff's war drama on Broadway, the director worked primarily in Britain, where he was born and raised. A few years after graduating from York University in 1992, he worked on 15 high-profile shows as an assistant director at Chicester Festival, the theatre in England that Laurence Olivier had founded. In 1998, he made his first foray to the West End as director of Joe Orton's antic farce Loot. Since 2002, he's worked consistently in Britain's capital, mounting notable West End productions of Abigail's Party by Mike Leigh, Neil Labute's Some Girl(s) starring David Schwimmer, Orton's What the Butler Saw, and The Philanthropist by Christopher Hampton. Recently, he talked to Front & Center by telephone from his home in England.
FRONT & CENTER: Is there a clear moment in your life when you knew theatre—or directing theatre—was something you wanted to pursue?
DAVID GRINDLEY: A deciding factor was that my mother was a director for amateur dramatics. I used to come downstairs and see her in our dining room. In the back of Samuel French acting editions, as you may know, there are stage diagrams for each play. And I remember watching my mother use my LEGO men as her cast and move them around the ground plan before she went to rehearsal. To be a child and see her do that was hugely influential and also going to the village hall to see her productions.
It wasn't until the very end of university that I realized I wanted to be a director; I initially wanted to be an actor. Then I realized I was better suited to be a director. When you got the work, it would be your vision onstage. You wouldn't be a cog in someone else's wheel. That appealed to me.
I noticed you've directed a wide variety of work—plays by Shakespeare, contemporary comedies, farces—but I didn't notice any Shaw. Will Pygmalion be the first?
Yes, it will. Without being deliberatively alliterative, I had always shied away from Shaw because I had found him a bit verbose and longwinded and pedagogical. I'm very much a believer that drama isn't about lecturing an audience; it's about allowing the audience members to witness interaction between people within a dramatic narrative and make their own decisions about what they're witnessing. What's so impressive about Pygmalion to me—especially because we'll be using the original 1913 text, not the one that was amended and enlarged after the film—is the spareness. There's very little fat in the text. Our Pygmalion should be an evening that will surprise people. I don't want it to be My Fair Lady without the songs. I want it to be much more ambivalent, much more provocative.
Class differences are rarely discussed, it seems to me, in America, where the spotlight is more often on racial and ethnic divisions. How will you bring focus to the British—and particularly Shaw's—preoccupation with social class in this production?
What we can do is highlight the pressure of conformity in different guises. For example, Eliza's dilemma is brought on by herself. Beside the fact she can get away with the transformation, she doesn't feel that she deserves to be there. Similarly, when her father comes in for his second entrance, when Doolittle's received his legacy, in no part of that legacy does it state that he's got to dress up and become middle class. That's pressure he puts on himself. That's the important point to make: the stranglehold conformity has over all of us. That's where all these life stylists and gurus and counselors come in: they prey upon the insecurities of those who are moving away from their origins and who are insecure about where they've arrived. That's a very pertinent idea in the play that survives to this day.
In one interview, you said great comic stage actors are difficult to find because so many go into standup or film or television. It seems to me that Shavian actors, if such a species exists, are rarer still.
To a degree. What's so fantastic is that our lead trio—Pickering, Eliza, and Higgins—are actors with whom I've had a working relationship. With Jefferson playing Higgins you have an actor who doesn't mind if the audience doesn't like him; he'll push the boundaries of how abrasive Higgins can be. You have someone like Boyd Gaines, who will kick Pickering, thought of as this old man from India, into a man who's in touch with people. Then you have Claire Danes doing Eliza, and she can play both sides of the character.
Claire Danes and Jefferson Mays in Pygmalion
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It always seems in other productions of Pygmalion or My Fair Lady—the recent National production with Jonathan Pryce is one example—that Higgins and Pickering are portrayed as old bachelors, stereotypical old Englishmen, even kind of chaste.
Jefferson is the right age as dictated by Shaw in the stage directions. He's in his early 40s, and that's perfect. They're not father figures for Eliza. Both should have the potential to have relationships with her. We have to believe that for the play to work. Obviously it's the romance—the Cinderella story—that people want in the play. But that's the easy route. It's more interesting if Eliza is a woman who wants to be noticed for the incredible transformation she's made, yet her part of the bargain, her achievement, is not recognized by Higgins and equally appreciated. Once the bet has been won, what is there for her to achieve? So much of her relationship with Higgins is about earning respect and getting his attention. We can read that with a bit of erotic attachment, but at the same time there's so much more going on and that's what I want to bring forth in this production.
Getting back to your work as a director, you obviously do a lot of preparation, but how would David Grindley rehearsals differ perhaps from those of other directors? Is there any particular element you focus on or strategy you employ that you'd consider a mark of your process?
Yes. A mark of my process is that I like to provide the actors on the first day with two things. I like to provide them with a lot of information. I put it all over the walls and maybe give them research packs which we fill with texts illuminating references in the play. So when we do Pygmalion we'll have pictures of the street where Higgins' laboratory is and Covent Garden where Eliza sells flowers. I like to give actors a real sense of the world they have around them—visually and textually they're immersed from the start.
I don't like sitting around a table. From the first day, I like to enter the world, the information's available and I hope fully give a very galvanizing speech to raise the dynamic, enthusiasm, and passion for the show that sets everyone in the right spirit and tempo. Immediately, the next day, we'll go on the floor. What I mean by that is I'll get the actors to start working through the play because I think actors are physical practical beings. The more we can work things out in the space, in three dimensions, the better off we'll be.
I can't really comment on how I'm different in the day to day rehearsal except for the fact that I am relentless. It's a testament to Boyd and Jefferson that they're willing to come on the line again. The most important thing in any production is attention to detail because it's theatre. The people's attention can be lost at any moment so every moment from the first entrance must count. As a result of that you have to be unsparing with the actors in your notes. You have to ensure that everything you do and say ensures that they keep on listening to each other, which is one of the most important things.
I'm sure you're familiar with the famous actor on his deathbed who, when asked how he was faring, replied, “Dying is easy. Comedy's hard.” How do you both keep the actors' work fresh and yet work on it enough to get the timing and technical aspects sharp?
The difficult thing with comedy—and it's true about directing—is that it's all about timing. In my view, if you have a comic actor who has exquisite timing you'll have an exquisite dramatic actor because the best actors all have great timing. You also have to work with actors who are really open to the mechanics of it to a degree. You have to say, You may really feel your character should do this, but then I can't see that—and it's going to have an adverse affect on the next bit. Although you do that in any play, you do that particularly in comedy because if you do not dictate where the focus is absolutely precisely, then the opportunity for the work to be received in the way you want by the audience is very difficult.
Do you have any opening night rituals or superstitions?
I always go to opening night to be there with the actors. You can't literally give them nerve since they're out there doing the show while you're obviously sweating blood. But I like to be in the house with the actors on opening night, as a witness. I never sit in the body of the audience; I always sit up in the mezzanine. That way I can't see the critics. I remove myself from the scribblers. One superstition I've had—and I did it with Journey's End—I always have what I call my “three graces”—my wife and her two Irish friends—attend opening night. They always bring me luck.
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