Nicholas Martin on Directing Arthur Laurents (2003)

GABRIEL MILLER: Did you first meet Arthur Laurents when you were doing Time of the Cuckoo or do you go a little further back than that? NICHOLAS MARTIN: No, we lived near each other and Andre Bishop arranged for us to have lunch to see if we liked each other and to see if he thought I was the director for the play. Another director was originally supposed to do it. GM: This was Cuckoo? NM: Yes, and he couldn't at the last moment. And I have to say, while I don't like pitching myself very much, I did with this play because I had loved it ever since college when I was in it. GM: No kidding! NM: I played the little Italian boy. This was a long time ago, but as Arthur said to me, You must have been very, very bad. And he's right. GM: What college was this? NM: Carnegie Mellon, used to be called Carnegie Tech, in its last years as a great school I might add. So, I enjoyed Arthur as I feared I might not. And apparently he thought I was as good as anyone else. I think he had seen something of mine, I can't remember what. GM: What did you think would be appealing or important about reviving Time of the Cuckoo in the year 2000? NM: I think, first of all, that it's a perfect play, not simply of its time, but of a kind of play that is perhaps no longer fashionable, that is, how do I put this? A play of character, in which every story is told and they're not simply plot devices or manifestations of the writer's emotional problems. It's a kind of play that has enormous appeal for me, I suppose, and it's the kind of play that's almost passed from us now. GM: What? The sort of a high sophisticated comedy of manners? NM: Yes, but with touches of the Russians (as we see now finally with 2 Lives). He's very scrupulous in giving us Venice at this time, I think, and that's what I tried to concentrate on in the production, giving us the place as well as the characters. There's a problem in that play and Arthur acknowledged it, and so did Debra Monk, which is that if you play Leona honestly, and I don't know if Arthur said this in other interviews with you, as he felt it was nor necessarily played originally, but he's clear about that in the book. If you play it honestly, she's not a loveable sweetheart of a girl. She's a very neurotic twentieth century figure who can't accept the love that's given her until the end of the play when it's too late. It's an extremely bittersweet play, and I think, beautifully drawn. And Debra, at Arthur's and my urging, really, really examined and explored these aspects of her so there was no sugaring of the character. GM: He mentioned in his autobiography that Shirley Booth wanted too much to be liked on stage. And that, he felt, undercut the party scene where she had to play the part and be less likeable. And he thought that seriously weakened the original production, despite the fact that she got rave reviews and a Tony award. NM: Right, well we took that to heart and played that theme much more honestly, because Debra doesn't worry about being liked, and we played that theme much tougher and much more grittily, if you will. GM: Two things about that: in the biography of Richard Rodgers, the author quotes a letter that Laurents wrote to Richard Rogers when he was turning the play into the musical, Do I Hear a Waltz?. He wrote that Leona, ideally in her early thirties, not forties, and a woman who has known sex, but not love, rather than a frustrated spinster who has known neither. So, is that the take you...? NM: Yes, it was, not necessarily the age, but certainly ... I can't say the familiarity with sex, but she was never meant to be a spinster in our production. Nonetheless, audiences today, particularly women are not necessarily in touch with a character like that, whether she's played strongly or not, and you take your chances that way. GM: It seems obvious in the movie version, for example, that Katherine Hepburn has a sexual affair with Rossano Brazzi. …