Education Dramaturg Ted Sod spoke with Michael Longhurst about his work on Caroline, or Change, in early 2020.
TED SOD: The last time I interviewed you was in 2012 when you directed Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet here at Roundabout. Will you tell us about some of the seminal career changes and directing assignments that have happened in the intervening years?
MICHAEL LONGHURST: After If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, I was still a freelance theatre director. I continued to work with Nick Payne. My production of his play Constellations, which started at the Royal Court, transferred to the West End and then to Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. I directed a bunch of productions on and off the West End including Simon Stephen’s Carmen Disruption at the Almeida, Caryl Churchill’s A Number at the Young Vic and Florian Zeller’s The Son at the Kiln. Classics included ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore and The Winter’s Tale in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe and the UK premieres of several American play including Josh Harmon’s Bad Jews, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Gloria and Francis Ya-Chew Cowhig’s The World of Extreme Happiness. I directed a high-profile revival of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus at the National Theatre, which incorporated a 20-piece orchestra and opera singers that were fully integrated into the staging. Next came Caroline, or Change, which started at Chichester in 2017 before going to Hampstead in 2018 and then the West End in 2019. And, most recently, I became the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse taking over from Josie Rourke in March 2019. We’re just coming to the end of my first season there, for which I directed a revival of David Greig’s Europe, and we currently have Teenage Dick by Mike Lew running.
TS: Why did you choose to direct the musical Caroline, or Change?
ML: Daniel Evans—who is artistic director at Chichester—is also a musical theatre star—he was in Sunday in the Park with George at Roundabout—he’s very passionate about them. We had had a conversation back when I directed The History Boys for him in Sheffield, and he asked me if I was interested in directing one and I said I’d love to, and that resulted in an offer to do this several years later. I didn’t know Caroline, or Change, but I remembered its reception in the United Kingdom when we had the original New York production come over in 2006.
It’s such a brilliantly complex and rich piece of work and I was really drawn to it because of that —the characters are portrayed very three-dimensionally, which maybe is not always the case in musical theatre. Jeanine’s soaring music thrillingly combines African-American and Jewish musical styles and is constantly changing so the composition evolves with the characters’ thought structures and the drama. I love the fact that Tony has written an intimate domestic portrait that is also, absolutely, a state-of-your nation in 1963 and which also combines his flourishes of magical realism. This is my first professional musical and it was a big opportunity to work in a new genre. I’m a massive Tony Kushner fan, so it was a bit of a dream to get to work on it.
It’s a heartbreaking portrait of the corrosive psychological effects of racial and socio-economic disadvantage, and the incredible strength, resilience, and bravery needed to survive and make change.
TS: Did you know you had something special during rehearsals or previews at Chichester?
ML: I must say even when we opened the show in Chichester, you could feel a really profound reaction in the audience to the material and to the production, and that is a huge testament to the brilliance of Sharon D Clarke’s performance. It was so exciting to see Sharon have the opportunity to step into such a gargantuan role and she stopped the show. Sharon has always been an amazing theatre actor and performer, but this role presented her at a whole new level to UK audiences.
TS: How have you collaborated with Tony Kushner on this project?
ML: As I was preparing to direct this show the first time, I had a series of extensive conversations with Tony on the phone, really just trying to find my way into the nuance of the piece as an English director—particularly race relations in 1963 in Lake Charles. And to understand what that was like in this household he and Jeanine are portraying and in the context of the wider picture. The piece is partly autobiographical—it’s about a Jewish family in Lake Charles, and that’s an incredibly small community. So Tony and I talked a lot about the specifics of race relations between the Jewish community and the African-American community in his hometown, about Jim Crow laws, and how the civil rights progress was manifesting locally.
I was very keen to make sure that I understood what the dinner party was like for Emmie when she was with the white family. How does privilege function in this “polite” family? He would tell me amazing stories and anecdotes of his childhood and all of this fleshed out the world of the play. And then he came into rehearsals and did a Q and A with the cast, which was beautiful because there were details he could share that were just gold for us. He talked about giving up the cello as a kid and having a big fight with his dad about not wanting to play it anymore. It was wonderful having him there, sharing like that.
TS: I am curious what you looked for in the American actors you have cast. Were there specific traits that you wanted?
ML: Because this show is entirely sung, we always have started with the voice. Stage one is about who can deliver the score. The next stage is accessing the psychological insight that they can bring to the character. The standard of talent in New York is thrilling. There’s a greater diversity of talent—more people to choose from working in the field. We were really able to choose the best people.
TS: Your musical director is Chris Fenwick, correct?
ML: Yes, Chris Fenwick is the musical director in New York, a long-term collaborator of Jeanine’s over here. Nigel Lilley, who was the original musical director, is the musical supervisor now. Nigel had helped me find some singers for a play I directed. So, I absolutely trusted his ear since I had auditioned performers with him in the past. Nigel’s precision working with the actors to deliver the score and his skill translating the dynamics of Jeanine’s score and the psychology behind why those dynamics exist was invaluable.
For me, it is akin to directing Shakespeare. The structure of the verse dictates the rhythm and meaning. It’s the same with a musical score. I have such respect for the artists who can sing a set melody but make it feel like an utterly fresh thought.
It’s really fulfilling as a director to have co-creators in the room. Directing plays can get very lonely sometimes, whereas in musicals there’s actually a really nice tag team of who is leading the room that can happen.
TS: Ann Yee is the choreographer. Why did you choose to collaborate with her on this musical?
ML: Ann Yee is an American and just a wonderful person to collaborate with. She had worked in England and I had met her years earlier. We had done a little bit of work together, but I hadn’t worked extensively—so it was great to finally be working on a musical that justified bringing her back over to England.
There’s a complex domestic family portrait in this musical and a lot of magical realism and our collaboration was about how to harness the playfulness. We also had to make sure that these forces were swirling around Caroline and putting pressure on her. We explored the Radio as a Greek chorus rather than a step-tapping trio. That idea allowed us to bring the anthropomorphized appliances in the show to life.
With Ann’s choreography; every floor pattern and movement was discovered and then set with the performers. Ann’s work was all about understanding the intention of a character and how that might manifest in space. And for certain characters, that was polished into tighter choreography, but sometimes it was just about the dynamic of the space, and realizing the story on Fly Davis’s abstract minimal design, which uses a revolve in order to convey the cycles of life, work, and change.