Stage Door Jonny

Stage Door Jonny gets well classy this week, with a double episode recorded in the gilded environs of Glyndebourne. One of the greatest influences in the modern theatre on how we see and experience a world onstage, Paule Constable is the nonpareil of modern lighting designers. The most nominated artist in Olivier Award history (17 nominations, 6 wins, 2 Tony awards) Paule has defined a visual aesthetic in modern theatre. War Horse, Curious Incident, Wolf Hall, His Dark Materials, the 25th anniversary production of Les Mis, Paule has her fingerprints all over modern theatre. But she’s retiring! Jonny goes in search of why. They talk rock’n’roll lighting, running over the South Downs to work, learning to look, torturing a performer with light, what happens sometimes when you put light to music, the loneliness of the long-distance lighting designer, how to make an actor glow and the spirit of her fighter pilot father that made her bold enough to pull off the audacious lie that started her career.

The second half of Jonny’s conversation with Ewan McGregor kicks off with reminiscences of Oscar Isaac’s covid-era Oedipus. What Ewan needs from a director like Michael Grandage and their most recent partnership, Lila Raicek’s My Master Builder; scenes with Kate Fleetwood that felt like dancing and giggling together in the wings afterwards; Ewan’s battle with fear, drying onstage and being willed on by supernumeraries; drying in the middle of a song in Guys and Dolls; seeking the utopia of relaxation; being put in a chokehold on the set of Black Hawk Down and the insight it gave him into Iago; his admiration for Alan Cumming; what pisses him off about theatre and the tantalising plans he has to get back to it.

Welcome back! A slightly lengthy hiatus comes to a close with this, the first episode of Jonny’s Festive Season. And what more festive guest to kick off with than Ewan McGregor? There’s a distinct frisson with the Stage Manager, the question of whether actors should just shut the fuck up, being frustrated by some theatre interviews,Ewan’s three plays with Michael Grandage, learning his lines before rehearsals begin (and crying over Iago), how acting has changed for him over time, starting his career working backstage, sticking pornography in a senior actors folder, the huge influence of his uncle, Denis Lawson. How being beaten up in Glasgow gave him a key to unlock his acting, Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs, naked and slipping (arse-first) towards an elderly matinee audience in Salisbury, his farting co-star and how he learned to steer an audience to make a play land.

Tony Award-winner, 2,800 year old vampire, bona fide American Horror and one of the most thrilling actors on the modern stage or screen, Denis O’Hare is Jonny’s guest this week. In his dressing room at the National Theatre in London, far too close to the time to go onstage, Denis and Jonny discuss what learning means to an actor, brutalist architecture, why he’s a bad director, saying “why?”, the influence of his friend and virtuoso writer John Logan, the indignity of his first role (a pig), music and poetry in his work, contradicting a legendary director of comedy and celebrating not working with the people he shouldn’t. 

In the second half of their chat, the artistic director of the Old Vic, director of the internationally acclaimed hit musical Matilda and perhaps modern theatre’s pre-eminent master of comedy, Matthew Warchus, discusses laughter, audience noises, not having a plan, the illusion of fusion and the philosophy that it will all work out in the end; the obstacle of fear, the unknowability of an actor’s courage, loving Michael Gambon and not hassling him about his lines; how watching a good rehearsal spikes his blood sugars, being in an elevator with Harvey Weinstein, being trapped in a relentless loop of dissatisfaction, his legacy- and the nights sitting in that beautiful Old Vic auditorium that will stay with him forever. 

One of the titans of the English-speaking theatre joins Jonny for a deliciously insightful chat this week. Sitting in the storied auditorium of the Old Vic, outgoing boss, Olivier and Tony award-winning theatre and film director, Matthew Warchus guides Jonny through a decade of coming into that space to think; why directors should be waiters, Tragedy and whether or not he sees the point of it, under-rehearsing and why vagueness is important, what not to say in America, his foundational relationship with Mark Rylance and the awkward eavesdropping that shaped his approach to being a director; turning mathematics into emotion, using distance onstage and why not all laughs are equal. 

In the second part of their chat Indira reveals to Jonny that she didn’t know she is the Best Reviewed Actor on the British stage: they discuss sharing the boys dressing room, whether or not she thinks chemistry is bollocks, what she makes of her theatrical partnerships with Ralph Fiennes, Andrew Scott and Ramy Malek and whether as a woman she’s ever felt a lack of space onstage or in the rehearsal room. They discuss not playing the title role, learning to talk to the audience from Judi Dench, the thrill of playing non traditional spaces, her very particular butterfly effect, what she absolutely doesn’t need from a director, why she’d make a good acting teacher but a bad director, working with Harold Pinter, the great advice he gave her and the unstinting honesty he showed her in his famous shed. At the end of this gloriously comprehensive chat the discuss leaving a show before its even started, ticket prices, people of colour at the Oliviers and auteur directors. CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE!

In this week's episode Jonny shares grapes, birdsong and theatrical butterflies in the garden of “Britain’s best reviewed” theatre actor (J Cake)- Olivier award-winning star of Game of Thrones, Indira Varma. Indira talks about her calmness under pressure, what she thinks rehearsal should be, what daring to fail actually means, seminal experiences working with Katie Mitchell, the Maly theatre and Martin Crimp. How children teach us to be and not to perform, her desire to an actor of the body and not just the head, trying and failing to please her dad, embarking on Tim Crouch’s experiment in radical storytelling and the challenges of Jamie Lloyd’s production of The Seagull.