John Doyle

John Doyle, at 53, is a newcomer to the Tonys—as he was, until this past year, to the American theater. Doyle's stripped-back, neo-Brechtian Sweeney Todd arrived on Broadway last fall two years after its run at the 200-seat Watermill playhouse in Berkshire, west of London. Hailed for its innovative use of actors doubling as the show's orchestra, the American version of Sweeney picked up six 2006 Tony Award nominations, including Best Revival and Best Director. Doyle's American success comes after a long career in England: Born in Inverness in Scotland into a non-theatrical family his father drove a van for a bakery, he studied to be an actor at drama school and then began directing in the regional theater circuit. He first directed Sweeney Todd 15 years ago in a far more orthodox staging in the spa town of Cheltenham. At age 20, Doyle came to the U.S. on a fellowship at the University of Georgia, meeting various theater practitioners—one a member of Brecht's ensemble—who would influence his work. In London, he's currently represented by the acclaimed revival of Jerry Herman's Mack and Mabel, which again uses performers who play instruments, and he will extend that way of working to the arena of the straight play when he revives Amadeus in September at Wilton's Music Hall. Later in the fall he returns to Broadway with a production of Sondheim's Company that originated in Cincinnati. As if to prove, however, that he is not simply a "one-trick pony" Doyle all but shudders at the phrase even as he employs it, the director has two full-scale operas on tap: Brecht and Weill's The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Los Angeles next January, with a cast including Audra McDonald and Sweeney's Nellie Lovett, Patti LuPone, and Lucia di Lammermoor in his native Scotland. Doyle began his week in the run-up to the Tony Awards with an expansive chat about his singular methodology, folding stars into an ensemble, and an American interest in awards that goes unmatched in Britain.

All this Tony-time frenzy must be surprising to you, to put it mildly.
It's completely unbelievable, particularly for people like Michael [Cerveris] or Patti [LuPone] who are expected to be out there every moment of the day on behalf of the show. In England, that wouldn't happen; there would be some terrible arguments.

That's because the stakes here are so much higher.
Much, much higher, and I hadn't been aware of that. For somebody to win a Tony is a big deal. In London, you think, it's nice that person got an Olivier, but they never worked again. [Laughs] Somehow the stakes are higher in a country where, and I mean this respectfully, the whole concept of succeeding has to do with the American dream.

Exactly, whereas the British, at least in Britain, often seem slightly shameful of awards.
In England, we're immediately apologetic. [Laughs]

Have you ever been to the Tonys, just as an onlooker?
Never, and I've not ever been inside Radio City Music Hall, so this is a huge event for me for lots of reasons. I have a whole mixture of feelings, but whatever happens, it's just exciting to be part of it.

What about all the articles assessing everyone's Tony chances?
You read them and can't help but get caught up in it. Even though you may be thinking, "Don't be so stupid," it's hard not to go there. I never thought for a single second our little show would end up nominated for six Tonys, and I mean that.

Of course, you've managed something with Sweeney that can be rare on Broadway: to get an audience to sit attentively, in concentrated silence.
I've had people, particularly the very experienced Broadway members of the cast, say, "How did you get [the audience] to shut up?" There they are, listening, and it comes from the very first image they see when the curtain goes up, a boy in a straitjacket. Somehow it's as if the audience is told, "Be respectful." This is not a nice image, a comfortable image.

It helps that you don't have conventional "buttons," as it were, on the numbers.
There are only three applause points, one at the end of each act and one in the middle of Act 1 after "Johanna," about 35 minutes in. And that, I think, helps because it keeps people wondering and questioning, and they keep listening more and more, with sets coming on and off to give them the answers if they're prepared to take the imaginative journey—and 99% of the time, that's what happens. Maybe there's something about the slightly dark world that draws them in.

You're asking more of the Broadway public than is often the case.
I think so, though—and this is just the apologetic Brit in me speaking—it creeps me to read these things about myself like I'm attempting to revolutionize the Broadway musical. That's absolute bollocks; it's not true. There was never any sense of my coming as a savior at the right time, or whatever. This Sweeney grew out of a necessity back in England and just happened to be seen in New York at a time when I think there probably is a hunger for something different. I didn't come thinking, I'll show these Yanks their musicals." I mean, I'm a number one Hairspray lover. So it's not an intellectual reaction to some sort of vacuous form; I love good musical theater of all sorts, and there's something about a theatrical hunger for involvement that has come through silence. No question about it: That's very exciting.

It's something that could only have begun away from Broadway.
Michael [Cerveris] has said to me many times, "This could never have started on Broadway." It needed to come out of an impoverished British subsidized system that had to find a language for itself. It's not solely about people playing their musical instruments—it's about storytelling rooted in the fact that you couldn't do the piece in any other way.

It's fascinating that you had done Sweeney before in a more traditional production.
Yes, with an orchestra in the pit and a barber's chair that we borrowed from Cameron Mackintosh; all the stuff everybody does with Sweeney. Our Mrs. Lovett was Susan-Jane Tanner, who had worked with Patti at the RSC in Les Miserables. So when I was asked to come to the Watermill, I said, "I will consider doing Sweeney if you will consider the fact that I want to look at it a different way—and I want to design it myself to allow myself the opportunity to look at it afresh, since we won't be able to afford a barber's chair anyway."

So what exactly happened?
We rehearsed in a fish-and-chip shop over by Newbury race course in freezing cold weather with no heating. I knew people would come and see it because I knew the audience at the Watermill was loyal. And then [UK producer] Adam Kenwright came to our second preview and said in an Adam Kenwright way, "I'm going to bring this into the West End." Well, I have to hand it to him—he did it. We played the Trafalgar Studios, which was nice, and by that point a lot of people had got in touch with Mr. Sondheim and said, "You should see this," which he did when it moved to the Ambassadors, and he was very encouraging. This production's journey has been remarkable, not least because I never wrote a letter to anyone, which just proves that if you do your work the best you can, if it's the time for it, then it's the time; the fundamentals of our show have never changed.

Nor, it seems, has Britain's special relationship with Sondheim: not just your two productions but the current West End Sunday In the Park With George and, of course, Side By Side With Sondheim, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary in London.
I think certainly that's true: Steve says himself that Sweeney was his love letter to London, though maybe it was ahead of its time there. Who knows what makes critics like or not like something? It would be a dream come true for me if Sweeney and Company could overlap on Broadway, these two Sondheims that I've done myself in this way; that would be extraordinary. And Company is exciting because it's so different. Sweeney is such a complex and complicated piece of storytelling, whereas Company hardly has a story; it's a series of relationships. With Sweeney what one was doing constantly as a director was problem-solving: You would hit a moment and think, "How am I going to do this? How am I going to kill these people or convey an upstairs and downstairs without having one?" Company doesn't do that. It's a more elegant piece in its own right, more serene, and it's psychological in a different way. We've all been that boy [i.e. Bobby] at some point in our journeys.

What challenges did Company pose for you as a director?
It's not done as a '70s piece, which is interesting because you kind of think it could only be set in the '70s. But we've made a choice to set it totally modern and stripped of almost everything so there's hardly a prop on the stage; it's very, very simple. It's been quite a journey from me going around Salvation Army homes finding bits and pieces for Sweeney to being able to do Company with, for instance, David Gallo, who's nominated for a Tony for The Drowsy Chaperone. Company certainly feels very contemporary, very stylish; it's more Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives than it is rooted in the '70s, but nothing has changed: There are still Bobbys and there are still ladies who lunch; there's so much about it that's relevant.

Patti LuPone has praised you for saying some remarkable things to the Sweeney cast during rehearsals. Tell us more.
I don't want to put words in Patti's mouth [Laughs], though I wish she was my agent; she's just great! And it's sort of hard to quote the things I said, since most of them were personal. But I start with 10 people in the room and work on a very personal level: How can we as a group connect with Sweeney? It's not like a therapy session, but I would be very honest with them and, I hope, non-dictatorial. A lot of the British tradition is rooted in "Let's make this piece of theater together," so my job is to illuminate the story in the hope that the connection for you as an actor carries you to a connection between you and the audience. It's about the breaking down of the fourth wall and the absolute recognition that you the performer and you the audience member are in the same place at the same time sharing the same story.

You tapped the ensemble player in Patti LuPone, going back to her days at Juilliard and in the Acting Company.
I think that's what Sweeney has done for Patti: It has brought her back in an ensemble piece of theater. Of course, she's going to stand out—it's her job to stand out, and Michael's, too. But then she goes off into a dark corner and plays her triangle with the best of them. You have to bear in mind that this woman was Evita, which tends to mean that a lot of ego was brought with it, but here I think the pressure was taken off her; she didn't have to be the diva playing the diva. She could be a member of an ensemble in which she could thrive in a great role and be respected as an actor, which of course is what she trained as. In the U.K. that split is less prevalent. If you're Judi Dench and a classical performer, you're also allowed to play Desiree [in A Little Night Music]; that would be harder to do here.

You've spoken of flying to Portland, Oregon, to meet with Patti during her concert tour to talk to her about her joining the production. How did you select Michael Cerveris?
I met Michael and thought, "It would just be great if this guy could play Sweeney." I was very keen to cast people who were not the expected choices, because the production isn't archetypal in terms of the types of people who are in it; you have to try and find a Sweeney who breaks some of the rules about how Sweeney is normally perceived. Plus Michael's such a lovely guy, and it helped that he knew Patti.

Patti and Michael work beautifully together.
A lot of people have said to me, "How was it working with Patti and this cast?" and all I can say is that I am doing it again in January, in the case of Patti, in LA with Mahagonny. Working with these people was the most creative time I've ever had in a rehearsal room. Yes, Patti has been a champion of the show, but knowing Patti as I now do—and love her—the thing is that she's honest, and a lot of people find honesty hard. She's not afraid to open her mouth, and that can bring stuff that people have found it hard to deal with. But I'm thrilled to see her back where I truly believe she belongs: on that Broadway stage doing those Broadway musicals in a production that brings out the best in her as an actor. Nobody in the company ever brought that thing of, "This is how I do it." I've not had any of that at all; Patti wouldn't have been able to do the production if she'd brought that into the rehearsal room.

It may have been useful that you were something of an unknown quantity to the cast.
I'm sure that was good, too, in that none of us carried any baggage. It was a definite positive that I was coming over here to do this classic piece of American musical theater in an unorthodox way but that I was also just a new kid on the block to the performers, and they were to me, as well. There was no history, which is very freeing. Not that I'm very well-known in my own country, I have to say, and now I'm probably better known here [in the U.S.] than I am back home; maybe you've got to go somewhere else to become accepted.

Let's talk a little about the symbolism in of your production: I notice people get very worked up trying to decode what various things mean in the show—the white coffin, for instance.
I sort of love that, though there's one part I find a little disturbing, when people start to read things into things which were never your intention. Sometimes you meet a problem and you have to solve it, so up to a point, that's what the white coffin was. The fact that people become so obsessed with it is on the one hand somewhat strange and on the other hand kind of moving. I mean, people read things into the back wall which were not my intention, but it's like, if you and I both went to MOMA and looked at the same piece of non-prescriptive modern art, we might have two different interpretations. I heard a kid the other day at the theater saying to his teacher about the coffin, "Well it's completely obvious: it's Johanna, the loss of his daughter, the loss of his past," and that's absolutely right; [Laughs] out of the mouth of babes. If this same production were happening in Germany and Poland, to be simplistic, I'm pretty sure these questions wouldn't be asked. Audiences there are perhaps more used to things being symbolic.

We like to have things explained.
[Laughs] If you read all the stuff in theater chat rooms here, you feel as if you're either going to be canonized or crucified, and I felt that particularly before we opened. I remember during preview time when people would stand under the marquee saying, "How dare he do this," and you wanted to turn around and say, "Don't you realize Mr. Sondheim has been here all day working with us? Don't you get it? Do you think we'd be doing Company if it weren't okay to have a go at it?" Surely, all this proves that Steve is able to take a leap into different creative forms, and because he's an artist and a visionary, he's able to see that.

How has this production changed your life?
I'm staying in a very nice apartment on 57th Street that I could never afford. [Laughs] It's much nicer than the room you're put into at the Watermill in January. How has life changed? You meet a lot of really interesting and wonderful people, many of whom have had big careers, who you discover are just the same as you and me. Also, you think, "How did this happen?" Sometimes that's not so positive, of course, and I'm at the point where I have to be a little careful in terms of not wanting to do too many things. At the same time, I don't want to simply do a series of revivals; I also want to do new work.

And there's always that "one-trick pony" question hovering, as you yourself have said.
I think Company will negate some of that. At least, I hope so. I think people will see this is a legitimate way of working. You may not like it, but it's a form that can be used in many different ways. I feel that about Amadeus, which starts rehearsals in mid-August with a cast of 16, the same size as the play. I really want to do the play but I don't want to do it with a lot of money thrown at me. I'm more creative in environments where I have those restrictions, and I will always choose to do that. Yes, I will do Sweeney, but you have to let me do it my own way. I mean, it's hard when you follow great productions—Hal [Prince]'s production of Sweeney Todd was a masterpiece, let alone the masterpiece that was Sweeney, and soon I'll be following Peter [Hall's] Amadeus. These are great pieces of work. My reinvention is not about saying, those productions weren't the way to do it; it's just that I'm an artist and I have to find my way. I'm kind of happy now, I have to say, in the artistic world we live in, at last to be recognized for something. I may be a one-trick pony [laughs] but better to be that than nothing at all.

See Sweeney Todd at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 230 West 49th Street. Click for tickets and more information.