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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: The Norman Conquests The In-Laws and the Outlaw
By Harry Haun
24 Apr 2009
Mangan has come closer to Broadway than any of his co-stars. "I did Much Ado About Nothing ten years ago at BAM with Cheek by Jowl as part of a world tour. We played Moscow, Paris, Barcelona, London, Sweden and New York, and New York was by far our best audience. They were the smartest, most generous. I've been trying to get back here since then." Now, he has. Happily, BAM does not a Broadway debut make. "I lost my Broadway virginity tonight."
More seriously, he continued: "Playing on Broadway matters a huge amount to me. It has always been one of my biggest ambitions my whole life to do this, so tonight I've achieved that. I'm beside myself with excitement, I really am. To come here with a production that I am so proud of and really love doing is the icing on the cake."
And he has a randy-dandy role to debut in, warts and all present and accounted for. Norman, as a hedonist-in-heat, is a curiously likable chap, but he still creates all manner of tragicomic problems for everybody that he encounters. "That can be hard sometimes," admitted Mangan. "He has a self-confidence, especially in those shorts, that I don't especially have myself. He's a man just trying to connect with people, and he's so desperate to do it. He really does. It is: 'I Just Want To Make You Happy.'"
That line, yelled like "Steeeeellla!" at the end of one play, is the rule Norman lives by, and it has been emblazoned on T-shirts peddled by the theatre's marketing people.
"Norman's so desperate to be liked and to make connections and, yes, sexual connections with the women. His vulnerability to love he needs to have that because audiences could tire of him. Nobody likes a smart-aleck for too long. He's so multi-dimensioned. He's a brilliantly written part, and hats off to Alan Ayckbourn for writing it. It's a spectacular, hilarious, touching and deeply human set of plays."
As Norman's workaholic, profoundly myopic and extravagantly tolerant wife, Bullmore has to work double-time to make her character convincingly blasι about her hubby's extracurricular, in-family high-jinx. "Well, I hope this is what Ayckborn meant to write," she preambled before launching into her take on the part.
"What I get from Ruth is: Actually, Norman is an incredibly interesting, exciting man, and she chose him kind of as an act of rebellion, but he is the opposite of a boring husband. It nearly kills her being married to him, but I think there must be something some fundamental attraction that she cannot kick so I think they fight and they make love, and it's a very, very tempestuous, exhausting thing, but they're kind of stuck with it. I think that she thinks he's the most interesting man in the world and the most impossible man in the world. That's how I get into her head.
"I think they spar. I think some marriages are competitive, and I think marital partners compete to be top dog the whole time. Every conversation is a kind of battle, but, in a way, they're into that. People get off on that. You know, the only time they really agree is when they kiss. I don't think they ever agree verbally. The two moments in the plays when Ruth and Norman are in agreement are nonverbal."
Her spinster sister, Annie the first in line for Norman-conquering gets a positive, sympathetic depiction from Hynes. "I'll tell you what's wrong with her: She's a people-pleaser. She does that to the detriment of everything in her life. What I like about her is that she has got a good heart. She's not a mean, malicious person. She has actually tried to do the right thing her whole life. She has tried to make everybody happy really, all her life to a degree, and she's left slightly nowhere."
With a dull suitor on her hands and an invalid mother always draining her from off-stage, she finds Norman's suggestion of running off to a hotel in a nearby village a very do-able thing, and she confesses this to her sister-in-law, Sarah next in line for Norman-conquering who vows not to be shocked but is and then partakes herself.
"She's a hypocrite at the end of the day," assessed Root, the actress playing Sarah, who advocates the civilized decorum at first, and, when that doesn't work, she jumps in and brawls with the best of 'em. In that very funny 360-degree about-face, she is deliciously echoing what Marcia Gay Harden is delivering in God of Carnage.
"I have a huge amount of fun," said Root. "Sometimes, I feel that she's obviously a Catholic. She's a particular kind of character, and audiences will respond to her in a particular way. She's not necessarily the most likable character, but she's the character who's going to stir everything up because she is, after all, The Moral Core.
"She's got to go on and fight for that. However, she's a very mixed-up lady and has a lot of sadness, if you like, in her own heart. Her marriage isn't very happy, so she's going to come into problems especially with someone like Norman around. She's very set for a catastrophic weekend. I think they all are. They're all at that point."
Root was previously in New York 14 years ago, premiering "Persuasion," a Jane Austen movie from England. "This is my first time here properly, my first time working here, my first time on Broadway," she itemized. "It's surreal. I think it will probably hit me in a day or two. You can't quite take it in and particularly when you have a job to do. The dressing room was full of flowers and gifts. And to be honest, I've got to do my hair. I've got to get my makeup off because, as part of these things, I've got to focus. There's no point in getting carried away with it now."
Her favorite moments are centrally located "probably moments that aren't very relevant to the play. There are certain moments that I love playing with Paul Ritter, who plays my husband. But I just love doing it all. The language is so fantastic."
Ritter chivalrously returned the compliment. His favorite, he said, "is a very subtle physical moment the look that Amanda Root (as Sarah) gives Stephen Mangan (as Norman) when he congratulates her on the preparation of the lettuce. He says, 'This lettuce is superb.' And the tremulous look of pride and suppressed passion that Amanda Root gives Stephen across the table is my favorite moment in the show."
He subscribed to the three-in-a-day approach to The Norman Conquests. "We're going to do a triple Saturday and a triple Sunday, one after the other in the coming weeks, so that'll be a challenge. That'll be a real challenge." And will six ambulances be lined up after the show? "I hope so," he jested. Actually, in truth: "You develop the muscles. It's like training. It's like a distance race. Your voice muscles, your physical muscles they build up. There's no mystery to it. Just takes a bit of practice."
The marathon is the only way to go, he contended. "That's the way to do it. You find you get to know the people next to you over the course of the day. And the audience, particularly at marathons, are a tremendous presence and become great friends."
The starriest person associated with this production is the artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre Company, Kevin Spacey, and he is the one who has rushed into the spotlight to publicize the show. "In a way," said the two-time Oscar winner and one-time Tony winner, "I felt I had to because this company of actors as brilliant as they are are just not known here, so it takes a little while to convince the networks to put them on TV. So, if I can go out there and start the ball rolling and hope that if the reviews that came in tonight were great and they are great then now they're going to get discovered, and they won't need me anymore, and I'll go home."
Home, now, is London and The Old Vic. "We've only brought Moon for the Misbegotten here and now this, and the two Sam Mendes-directed Bridge Projects which were just at BAM and are headed to the Vic now." [Both he and Mendes won Oscars for "American Beauty."] "We've got a lot more plans to bring more work over, over the next number of years." Any little role for the artistic director? "We're about to announce our sixth season of work at the end of May, and there may be some news then, but at the moment I'm not at liberty to talk about it."
In a career-combo only an Olivier could master, Spacey wears well the hats of theatre executive and practicing film actor. "It really isn't hard to do," he advanced. "You have to look at it this way: Even if the Old Vic didn't exist, I'd be lucky to do two or three movies a year that I liked and wanted to do. I did three last year. I'm doing two this year. I could work in a lot of crappy movies, but I don't want to do that. I want to work in good movies and movies I'm interested in. It really hasn't changed that much. The only change is my availability which is now dictated by my theatre work."
"Men Who Stare at Goats" is his next flick, due out in December, co-starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges. "Essentially, it's about the people in the U.S. military who believe that they can use psychic techniques in order to conquer the enemy, and they begin by whether or not they can stop the heart of a goat by just staring at it. It might be the first comedy to come out of the Iraq war."
Other stars on hand included Gina Gershon (the Italian stewardess of Boeing-Boeing, who arrived in character by plane to be Warchus' date for the evening), Alan Cumming, composer David Cornue (Smoking Bloomberg) and wife Milena Govich of "Law and Order," Swoosie Kurtz ("returning to the scene of many crimes here at Circle in the Square" crimes like Tony-nominated performances in Tartuffe and Frozen), Cote de Pablo (beginning a big theatre bender, having wrapped yesterday her sixth season of "NCIS"), Kate Burton (trilling over the Elliot Norton Award nominations that went to her, her son Morgan Ritchie, director Nicholas Martin and their revival of The Corn Is Green, written by Burton's godfather, Emlyn Williams and lamenting New York hasn't got a place for it right now "and Morgan is growing older as we speak") and playwright John Guare. Among the show's credited 17 producers, Michael Filerman brought screenwriter Susan Rice (whose Hallmark movie with Cybill Shepherd, "Mrs. Washington Goes to Smith," will air Aug. 7), and Jamie deRoy came with writer-director Barry Kleinbort (who leaves April 28 for Paris to put together a musical, half in French, half in English called Metropolitain).
That lovely, Tony-winning loon, Julie White, was asked at intermission what role she's like to play in The Norman Conquests. She didn't hesitate a beat: "NORMAN!"
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The cast of The Norman Conquests
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
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