BWW Exclusive: Diary of an Englishman in New York- You Took the Town, Mate
By: Rufus Wright Jun. 23, 2015
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Academy Award winner Helen Mirren returns to Broadway as Elizabeth II in Peter Morgan's The Audience, which just opened at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. Playing one of Her Majesty's twelve Prime Ministers is Rufus Wright, who takes his audience with the Queen nightly as the UK's current PM, David Cameron.
Follow along as Wright takes us behind the scenes of The Audience's Broadway journey with 'Diary of an Englishman in New York'.
Follow Rufus on Twitter (@rufusgwright) for even more updates!
15th June 2015
You took the town, mate.
There's always a big crush at The Audience stage door. The audience (small 'a'- that joke just keeps on giving) have spent two hours in a room with Helen Mirren, in character. But now they are elbowing each other for the more exciting prospect of seeing her outside- and out of character- as she walks from stage door to her car carrying her shopping and handbag.
Context is everything when it comes to people in the public arena. The broadcaster Danny Baker does a soccer phone-in on his British radio show. One recent subject was 'Have you ever seen a footballer in his strip outside the ground?' Someone rang in to tell the story of the legendary Paul Gascoigne, who was subsitituted early and famously marched straight off the pitch and into the pub without so much as taking his boots off- people's eyes were on stalks. Just as they would have been if he'd been on the pitch in his jeans.But there's a big division between the stars and the other actors in a show. On stage an audience member will stand and applaud you, on the way out of stage door you might get a 'Good job!', but once you're reached the end of the block you disappear.
I've sat on countless subway carriages with people clutching Playbills for The Audience. Sometimes they'll be scanning the cast list and I'll smile gamely at them. They'll double take and say:'Excuse me...'
Straightens tie knot, pushes hand through hair... 'Yeeeers?'
'Does this train go to Delancey Street?' We are invisible to them. I think many theatregoers imagine that after curtain down there are special tube and tunnel systems which transport us magically to ultra cool bars staffed by gamine hand models called Astrid. I genuinely think many of them imagine we don't take the subway home. But we really do. And if we've spent the evening channelling Bob Fosse you can be sure that our sunglasses will fall from our breast pockets as we reach down to pick up our Metrocard.
I suppose it's just a plea for normality. Having done a spit and a cough in Bond movie A Quantum of Solace, I used to joke that Daniel Craig was just 'a guy I knew from work'. But that's what we're all doing- just going to work.
And when I leave the theatre on Sunday evening I'll be leaving work for the last time. It's been one hell of a ride. In London a cab driver said, of the West End production: 'You took the town, mate.' And for a play which is basically about two people in posh chairs talking, we're proud of what we achieved on the Great White Way.
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15th June 2015
We can hear you...
We can hear you.
Every cough, every cellphone, every candy wrapper, every 'Oh God, not him again'- We. Hear. It. There's a belief among some theatregoers that they're at the cinema. Quite literally- I heard from some West End theatre ushers that the most bizarre things they heard from tourist theatregoers was 1. We don't want to watch the trailers- what time does the actual show start? And 2. Can you pause the show for me? I need to go to the bathroom. True. I promise you. The second one sounds actually more like they think they're at home watching a DVD. But the magic of theatre rests almost entirely in the opposite to magic. Not starlight and fairy dust: rather, a few hundred people facing in one direction and a handful of people in funny clothes facing the other. It's a bunch of people- audience AND actors- in a dark room, listening to a story unfold- and while we want what's happening on stage to drive the narrative, that's not the whole story. Because a play is a constant transaction between the two groups. And we both work at it: you have to remember not to just turn to your partner and tell her conversationally that you've just recognised that guy from Homeland, and he looks better with the beard. And WE have to work to keep your interest up. Rehearsing a play is simply four weeks of a room full of people asking: 'How do we keep their interest up?' It's incredible how much one sharp cough, directly covering the active word in a funny line, can kill the laugh for a 1000 seater house. But that's fine! Every single sound in the theatre space is present, and heard, and changes what is going on. Actors know that a regularly coughing audience is probably a bit bored. We either tut that they aren't listening or we think- 'Right. How do we keep their interest up?' Some theatre scholars favour the atmosphere of Shakespeare's original Globe. Jeers and beers and hazelnut shells being hurled about. I've performed in high security prisons where the atmosphere was far from stately. I think behaviour in the theatre changes over the years- we've actually had mercifully few cellphones during our run, and only a handful of miscreants attempting to film Helen Mirren mid show. But the important thing is that once your ticket gets scanned, you're part of the story. That one performance you witness will be unique- and will be different because you were there.Rufus trained at The Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He created the part of David Cameron in the West End production of The Audience and previously worked with Peter Morgan on the original Donmar Warehouse production of Frost/Nixon and in the filmThe Special Relationship. Other theatre credits include: The 39 Steps (Criterion), The One, The Backroom (Soho Theatre) The Empire (Royal Court), Serious Money, The Madness of George III (Birmingham Rep), Private Lives (Hampstead), Crown Matrimonial (Guildford and Tour), Mary Stuart (Donmar Warehouse and Apollo), Journey's End (Duke of York's), Trust Byron, Life With an Idiot and Franziska (The Gate), Single Spies (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Secret Garden (Salisbury Playhouse), and Richard II (London Pleasance)
Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos
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