Stage Door Jonny

Part two of Jonny’s chat with actor/director Joe Mantello starts with a discussion of the response to their production of Death of a Salesman, the staging details that bothered some people, the director as dad, the award that was Joe’s professional pinnacle (and the closest he’s come to feeling like a parent), wrangling problem child like Glenda Jackson, his praising policy and how it’s changed over the course of his career, the early success that led to a reckoning with himself , how the production of a Balm in Gilead broke him open artistically, the pure experience of acting in Angels in America, the thrill of a bare stage, collaboration with Sondheim, his virtuosity with new plays and his relative lack of classics, his debt to Terence McNally, missing shows when you’re a little sad and the joys of his bonus round. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back-or welcome to- a new season of SDJ. And who tastier to kick it off than the doyen of American theatre directors and Tony-nominated actor, Joe Mantello. Joe has won the Tony for best director three times, his latest coming shortly after this chat with Jonny, for directing Death of a Salesman starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf (and Jonny Cake). Jonny had a front row seat as Joe shaped Salesman into a show that won more Tonys than any revival of the play in its storied 77 year history. Joe is the great American director of new writing (Blackbird, Vagina Monologues, The Humans, Take Me Out, Love! Valor! Compassion!) as well as the cultural behemoth that is Wicked. Joe talks about his dislike of unnecessary noise, the silence during Salesman, the concept of “sonder”, what makes Laurie Metcalf special, details of his staging that made Salesman into the tragedy of whole family, the best-lit strand of snot on Broadway, Joe’s ventriloquist doll, the secret conversation at the back of the stage in Mame and its influence on his artistic taste, his devotion to artistic restraint, shame and the influence of Miss Windsor, sex and a shift in consciousness, who’s his primary watcher and what he doesn’t need people to see after watching one of his shows. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second half of Jonny’s chat with Lesley Manville, Jonny recalls seeing her onstage for the first time in The Cherry Orchard with Judi Dench, what she learned from Judi, the story about working with her that she won’t repeat (but you should hear it, so here it is), why some great performers need to be on the verge of laughter, Tony Sher flashing in Tamburlaine the Great, her 13 projects with Mike Leigh, the man who influenced Lesley’s stage work maybe more than any other, playing a hamster at the Royal Court for a 10 year old, the pressure on young actors now, telling Caryl Churchill how she could improve Serious Money, breaking down the method behind Max Stafford-Clark’s rehearsal process, her response to men who take up too much space in the rehearsal room, where her confidence comes from and the magic- and pitfalls- of last shows.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This weeks guest is a gem: Oscar nominee and two time Olivier-award winner, the magnificent Lesley Manville. In her plushly upholstered dressing room at Studio 54, Lesley and Jonny discuss him hunting her like a fox, her upcoming appearance in Marianne Eliott’s Les Liasons Dangereuses, how theatre is a time machine, ending her triumphant run as Jocasta opposite Mark Strong in Robert Icke’s Oedipus on Broadway, her fabled 15 minute monologue, getting ill and wondering whether her lifelong feeling that she didn’t take her characters home with her was really true, wondering if great actors must be private people, Sam Mendes‘s advice about lying and it’s relationship to acting and the all-conquering past that Jonny and Lesley have in common. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE) In the this week’s episode Jonny talks to celebrated theatrical disruptor Tom Morris. They talk about Tom’s most embarrassing moment in the theatre (it’s very embarrassing). His artistic directorship of Battersea Arts Centre and putting on shows without a script; how his work in alternative theatre was incorporated by Nick Hytner at the National; making Jerry Springer: The Opera; making Hytner experience Gay Shame; the genesis of the theatrical mega-hit War Horse; the two types of directors according to Simmo (spoiler: its blockers and wankers); when the floor opens up in front of a director, the paranoia sin-bin and what to do about it; why a puppet and a mirror gave Tom two of his most thrilling experiences at the theatre; why uncertainty in the theatre can provoke the perfect audience state; the creativity of an audience, setting Romeo and Juliet in a care home; what nags at him about the shows he’s done and getting older and less prophetic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.