Already a subscriber? Log in
He says he started planning for life after the Donmar almost as soon as he handed in his notice towards the end of 2010. He and his former colleague at the Covent Garden venue, James Bierman, wanted to start their own roving production company, free from the constraints of working in one building and one medium. The season in the West End is just the beginning, with films, more theatre and possibly television programmes to follow.
Grandage is great company, warm and enthusiastic, and, even though he’s named his company after himself, he doesn’t seem the least bit vain. The decision to call it the Michael Grandage Company, in fact, makes perfect sense when you bear in mind he developed a brand all of his own during his Donmar decade as a superb selector and interpreter of plays (Guys and Dolls, Frost/Nixon and Anna Christie being just a few of the highlights), who also had a knack for persuading huge stars, such as Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench, to appear in them.
The debut season has taken this latter idea and run with it. Simon Russell Beale takes the lead in Privates on Parade, while Grandage reunites with Dench for a new play by John Logan (the American writer behind the Donmar’s hit Mark Rothko drama, Red). Daniel Radcliffe will then appear in a Martin McDonagh revival before A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with David Walliams, and Jude Law’s Henry V bring proceedings to a close.
I ask Grandage why, after leaving the Donmar, he felt the need to take on as big a project as he has. An extended holiday might not have appealed, but he could just as easily have spent a few lucrative years travelling the world as a director for hire. Grandage agrees that this might have awarded him the freedom he was looking for post-Donmar, but it wouldn’t have given him the control over his career he craves. The very same reason, in fact, he took to directing in the first place after the 12 uncertain years he spent as an actor at the start of his career.
He assures me that not even all the glad-handing of investors, planning meetings and rounds of publicity put him off. He has relished the challenge of bringing his Donmar ethos of affordable ticket schemes and training programmes into the commercial sector. Investors were found who were happy to take a hit on their profits so that 100,000 could be offered for just £10 and, even though Grandage is delighted about that, he is also realistic about the demands of working in the commercial market.
As at the Donmar, the securing of headline stars was a key part of his strategy for getting bums on seats. I suspect the decision to kick off with Privates on Parade, Peter Nichols’s 1973 crowd-pleaser about a British army song-and-dance unit stationed abroad during the 1940s, was part of that plan, too. The festive season is perfect timing for a show that is as camp as Christmas and, although it’s not a pantomime, the fact that Russell Beale will be dragging it up as Captain Terri Dennis seems rather appropriate for this time of year. ‘This year Simon’s played Stalin, Timon and now a camp queen in the army,’ says Grandage. ‘It’s a fantastic display of versatility and an opportunity for him to have some fun and for all of us to watch him having some fun.’
With the final drops of soup nearly mopped up, Grandage just has time to tell me about the long-term future of his namesake company. After the West End season comes to an end in early 2014, he will make his first film, Genius, which will explore the relationship between the great American novelist Thomas Wolfe and his editor Max Perkins. As you might expect, a couple of Hollywood big hitters, Colin Firth and Michael Fassbender, have already been signed up to star in it.
Directing a film has been a long-held ambition of Grandage and he has not been short of offers in the past. When his Donmar predecessor, Sam Mendes, won an Oscar for American Beauty in 2000, movie moguls came flocking to Covent Garden. ‘I think a lot of film people said, “Who’s that new guy running the Donmar? Find out if he wants to do a film.” I had a lot of meetings with people who didn’t even know my name,’ he says, laughing at the memories.
Now that he is following Mendes into the film world, would he also fancy directing a James Bond film at some point too? Mendes aside, Grandage has plenty of other links to the 007 franchise with Skyfall’s co-writer Logan and two of its stars, Dench and Ben Whishaw, part of the upcoming season. While acknowledging these coincidences, he states categorically that’s he’s ‘not going there’, and he’s equally forthright in rejecting the idea that he might want to take over the National Theatre one day.
‘It would never be hard for me to say no to the National because I’ve made a decision that is so clear to me, like a big fat burning bush. I never want to run a theatre again, and there is a degree of utter clarity there.’ Instead, Grandage says he wants to run his new company for the rest of his life, and he seems very much a man of his word.
Trending
Also in Arts Reviews
Also by Will Gore
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in