Photographs by David Nicolas
Artistic Director Todd Haimes and Associate Artistic Director Scott Ellis look back
at their ten-year collaboration and ahead to two unusual revivals, The Man Who Had
All the Luck and The Boys from Syracuse
Front & Center: Scott, this is your tenth year with Roundabout Theatre Company. How did you come here originally and what kinds of things do you do as Associate Artistic Director?
Ellis: I met Todd after he saw a production I had directed of The World Goes ’Round, and we began talking about a couple of projects. Later I brought him a tape of She Loves Me and suggested he listen to it. He liked it and that’s how it all started. Roundabout had never really done a big musical. She Loves Me was a huge show. I think if we had known more about it, maybe we wouldn’t have tackled it!
Haimes: I had seen The World Goes ’Round and loved it. Around that time we had moved into our new Broadway home at the Criterion Center and I was interested in doing American musical theatre revivals, which I thought would be a logical extension of the revivals Roundabout already did.
We announced a Great American Musicals series, before anybody on Broadway was doing big successful musical revivals. Our first musical was going to be A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, but that fell through for various reasons. So we were stuck with having announced this Great American Musicals series and no musical. Then I remembered my earlier discussion with Scott about She Loves Me and I thought, "well, at least he’s eager and enthusiastic!" At the time I had no idea what a glorious musical She Loves Me is.
We did it that season, spending more money than we had ever spent on anything before, and we were terrified. Luckily it was also a bigger hit than anything we had done before. She Loves Me started our musical series and our relationship with Scott. I think almost immediately we asked him to become our first Artistic Associate and to direct William Inge’s Picnic the following season.
Ellis: I had never had that kind of artistic home before, someplace to work and to bring my ideas. My responsibilities changed somewhat later when Todd asked me to become the Associate Artistic Director. As the Artistic Director, Todd still makes all the decisions about what shows are done. But the door is always open for me to come in with suggestions.
I have had so many great experiences at Roundabout. Working with Helen Mirren (in A Month in the Country) was incredible. Directing 1776 was great too; that was another show not many theatres were doing. It was a huge show—we even had to build extra dressing rooms—and it also happened to be an extraordinarily wonderful company, so that was just a really nice experience from beginning to end. But She Loves Me was my first Broadway show, my first chance to do something so large in New York and—as Todd said—it wasn’t such a sure bet. Todd gave me a huge chance, and we had such a great time with it, so that is still one of my favorite accomplishments.
 
|
Now I’m much more involved with the theatre’s various other departments. The Education Department is important to me, for example. I have been interested in Roundabout’s education programs since the very beginning: I just do whatever I can in different programs, going to classes to help teach, serving on the planning committee and so on. We also started a program of commissioning new playwrights, which grew out of an idea I brought to Todd in 1994 or so, not long after I had arrived.
Haimes: It’s wonderful for me to have an associate whose work I really respect, someone who will bring most of his projects to Roundabout for a first look. It’s also wonderful for me as an artistic director to have a director who thinks about his own work and also about the institution. In every way it’s been a very complementary relationship. Plus we get along very well and have become close friends: that’s important because it’s a tough business, with lots of highs and lows.
F&C: How did you decide to produce and direct Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All the Luck?
Haimes: This is actually a perfect example of how Scott and I work together. I have to admit I was not familiar with the play. A commercial producer named Elizabeth Williams sent the play to me because we do these kinds of plays and because of our relationship with Arthur Miller. In all these years, Arthur had never mentioned the play, and I wasn’t sure what to expect from a first play nobody had heard of. But I read it and thought, "maybe I’m out of my mind, but this is really a good play, not just from a historical interest, but a really good play." Then, as I do with most things I like, I gave it to Scott. Since he also has a relationship with Arthur, I thought it might be perfect for him.
Ellis: I read it and really liked it. I was shocked. It’s remarkable that Arthur Miller wrote this when he was 25 years old and no one knows about it. We did a reading of it, and Arthur came and liked what he saw, and we both were surprised. We both liked it but weren’t totally sure if we should jump right into a Broadway production. Personally I felt a little uneasy, because it’s a hard piece. So I suggested to Todd that we go up to Williamstown Theatre Festival and try it out there in the summer. (We did that with The Rainmaker also.)
"It’s exciting for me, as a producer, to show people work that is not only fantastic, but also something they haven’t seen before. "
Haimes: You can always get a first-class cast up there and see how it plays before a truly objective audience. And then Chris O’Donnell, an actor we all know from the movies but who had never worked on stage, said he was interested in doing it. Scott met with him, auditioned him, and cast him. And I have to tell you, I have never, ever, seen a finer performance from a young actor—particularly one with no stage experience. You would never dream that this man was not a stage natural. It’s not an easy role or play, either, because you have to walk a line between fable and reality, which I think the production did very nicely.
F&C: Did the play’s fable-like quality influence your approach?
Ellis: No. You have to approach it the same way. You still have to find a certain reality: what a character wants and is going to do and what the obstacles are. But there are certain things in the play that you must accept and fill because of the fable quality. There are some questions that are not quite answered, things that you just have to go with.
Once in rehearsals I asked Arthur where exactly the play takes place, because it doesn’t really say, and Arthur said, "it hovers about three feet somewhere in the West." We talked a lot about things like that, but we also dealt with the reality of what’s going on. I moved the play into the 1930s though it was first staged in the 40s, because I’ve always been interested in the Depression and what was going on in our world then.
The play raises important questions: Do we have control over our lives? Do we have control over our destiny? And according to the play, we don’t know the answers. There’s a wonderful speech in which one of the characters talks about how "the jellyfish goes in and out"; in other words, things happen and you either have to go with them or not. It’s an interesting ending, because there is no answer provided. Is David Beeves’s luck going to continue? Is something to change for him? He doesn’t know. He has to live with that.
It’s also fascinating that Arthur Miller was dealing with certain things he later developed in more detail. He’s dealing with father and sons, with brothers, and his next play was All My Sons.
F&C: You’re also directing a new version of Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse this season. How did you decide to take on that project?
Ellis: Again, this really shows how our collaboration works. Todd came to me and said, "I think this is a wonderful musical we should look at doing." I had always liked it but had never thought about it. I listened to it, and, as Todd says, it’s an incredibly beautiful score. We both agreed, however, that the book needed reworking. So we sat down and talked about authors. The idea of asking the playwright Nicky Silver came up, because I was trying to find someone who could fit into the original world set up by George Abbott. Nicky has a wacky and crazy sense of humor that just fit.
|
The script is totally new. It has been completely rewritten. The story and structure are the same, but the dialogue is new. When The Boys from Syracuse was originally written and performed, it was very much of its time, very topical, full of inside jokes, and over time that has slipped. Jokes that were funny then are no longer so funny. It felt a little creaky, especially next to this remarkable, incredible score. So we wanted a totally new attack on it.
Haimes: We held a workshop, which we wouldn’t normally do with a musical revival. But because it had a new book, we did a workshop when the first draft was done, a year and a half ago. It went extremely well.
Ellis: Fans of the original will see that we are keeping the same structure but with a totally new script. The characters are defined differently, too: they are twins but are more clearly drawn and divided. And the humor of the book now matches the humor of the songs, which are very funny. We have also gotten permission from the estate to do some changes in the music: a couple of songs have been cut and one has been added. We’ve rearranged two scenes, and revamped some things—all of which they have embraced. I think of all the Richard Rodgers productions being done this year for his centenary, this is the only one that is being reconstructed and re-looked at in this way.
Haimes: It sticks to our original interest, which is to do great musicals that are not frequently staged. Most people have never seen The Boys from Syracuse done professionally. It’s exciting for me, as a producer, to show people work that is not only fantastic, but also something they haven’t seen before.
|
