A ‘Rent’-er Settles In

Sea gulls screech and caw overhead, and the late afternoon fog rolls in as artistic director Michael Greif holds forth from a patio chair in front of the La Jolla Playhouse. On break from rehearsal with scant time to wolf down dinner and sit for an interview, he still seems comfortably at ease in his domain.

What a difference a few years make.

In 1994, Greif was anything but at home in this same spot. Just tapped to succeed artistic director Des McAnuff at the prestigious Southland venue--which took the 1993 Tony for outstanding regional theater--the young director spent much of his time acknowledging the admittedly big shoes he was stepping into while promising that he, too, would make his mark.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long. As it happened, Greif was then on the verge of a breakthrough of his own--one that would see his directing career shoot suddenly to a new level of national visibility, thanks to a show called “Rent.” The Jonathan Larson musical that Greif first directed at the off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop in 1996--then transferred to Broadway, where it won both awards and acclaim--opens at the La Jolla Playhouse next Sunday.

In a way, the coming of “Rent” to La Jolla is a particularly fitting cap to the final phase of Greif’s first three-year contract, which is expected to be renewed when it comes up for consideration in November. Without “Rent,” after all, Greif might still be trying to live down the McAnuff legacy.

“What ‘Rent’ allowed me to do was to quickly get over the ‘You need to prove it, you’re filling big shoes, how are you going to do that?’ thing,” says the still vaguely cherubic 38-year-old director. “I came in [saying], ‘I’ll do that in my own way, and the theater will take on my personality.’ But how wonderful that I also took care of a lot of [questions about], ‘Will we continue to get national exposure?’ because of ‘Rent.’

“Wasn’t that lucky? I certainly didn’t expect that. Timing was great. I did feel very lucky, and I continue to feel lucky.”

Whether it was luck or simply fortuitous timing, Greif’s good fortune hasn’t gone unnoticed beyond La Jolla. “He’s come along at the right time, as it were,” says Center Theatre Group artistic director-producer Gordon Davidson, who will bring the La Jolla production of “Rent” to the Ahmanson in late September. “He’s good for the playhouse and for the theater in general.”

The La Jolla Playhouse, which was originally founded in 1947 and revived in 1983, is currently marking its dual 15th and 50th anniversary season. Greif has been associated with the theater since its 1983 resurrection.

A 1983 MFA graduate of the drama department of the University of California, San Diego--which houses the playhouse and shares its facilities in the off-season--Greif was house manager for the reborn playhouse’s memorable and still much-lauded first production: Bertolt Brecht’s “Visions of Simone Machard,” directed by Peter Sellars.

He went on to serve as McAnuff’s assistant on several shows, including the hit musical “Big River,” which began at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., and then came to La Jolla, prior to Broadway. Greif eventually ended up staging the touring version and two international companies of the show.

During McAnuff’s reign, Greif also co-directed “The Three Cuckolds” with Bill Irwin in 1985 and directed a 1992 production of Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw.”

Mostly though, Greif spent the decade between his UCSD graduation and his La Jolla appointment working as a freelance director in theaters in New York and elsewhere. He gained notice in 1989 when Joseph Papp--impressed by Greif’s production of the Expressionist play “Machinal”--selected him as one of four resident artists at the Public Theater in New York.

Another important association for the New York-born-and-raised Greif was his work with the 150-seat East Village-based off-Broadway company known as the New York Theatre Workshop--the group that was to bring him together with “Rent.”

James C. Nicola, NYTW artistic director since 1988, began working with Larson on “Rent” in 1992. Two years later, when the script about a group of young artists and other bohemians living and loving on the Lower East Side was deemed ready for a public outing, Nicola knew that Greif was his first choice for director.

“Michael was the first thought I had,” says Nicola, speaking by phone from the annual NYTW retreat at Vassar. “The combination of great storytelling instinct, a real psychological insight in his work, and an ability to stage things theatrically all seemed just right.”

Greif joined the Nicola-Larson “Rent” team in the spring of 1994 --just after he’d learned that he’d won the La Jolla job. “What I remember thinking a lot was that he was extremely familiar with the people in this world and had, at a point in his life, lived a similar life,” says Nicola. “But he also had perspective on it.”

Following a 1994 workshop staging and further refinements in the script, NYTW went ahead with plans for a production. Then, on the night of the final dress rehearsal in 1996, the 35-year-old Larson died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm.

The show went on. “It was very clear after Jonathan died that there was an increased sense of urgency about making it as good as we could make it,” says Greif. “We felt an unusual bond and sense of shared urgency in keeping Jonathan’s voice around and getting it as much attention as we could.”

Less than three weeks later, in mid-February, “Rent” opened to positive notices. The New York Times’ Ben Brantley hailed “the exhilarating, landmark rock opera,” likening it not only to “La Boheme,” the Puccini opera on which the show was modeled, but also to the 1967 “Hair.” He also noted, as did many others, that the show “inevitably invites reflections on the incalculable loss of its composer.” “Rent” won a Pulitzer posthumously for Larson and received the 1996 Tony Award for best musical.

Greif’s work on the show didn’t fare as well, with Brantley citing him for “staging that obscures crucial plot elements” and letting “his cast come to the edge of the stage to serenade the audience entirely too often.” Yet the criticism doesn’t appear to have affected the continually sold-out audiences, many of whom were new to the theater and responded to the simplicity of the approach.

Davidson saw the NYTW production of “Rent.” “It had a tremendous impact, partly because the life outside the theater was brought right into the theater,” he recalls.

“Rent” transferred to the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway in April, where the venue was dressed down to approximate bohemian chic, and sales were brisk from the get-go. In addition to the best musical Tony, it garnered Tonys for best book and best score of a musical, an Obie and other accolades. A Boston company, also directed by Greif, has been running since November.

For Greif in particular, it has been a watershed period. “ ‘Rent’ brought with it so many ecstasies and so many tragedies,” he says. “It was just enormous in its scope.”

Although Greif couldn’t have foreseen the “Rent” phenomenon--”I certainly never began work on ‘Rent’ thinking that it would be this thing that it is now,” he says--he knew he was taking a big step with the La Jolla job.

“I certainly felt at a turning point,” he says. “I felt like it was a very good step for me, just in terms of moving beyond a freelance career and one in which I had a little more producing control.”

With all the hoopla surrounding “Rent,” Greif’s concurrent La Jolla tenure has provided him with stability. “The day-to-day workings of it are very much what I expected it to be and very much what I’m excited about it being,” he says. “I like the notion that while I’m in the middle of this [staging of ‘Rent’], I’m also looking for projects for next year and the following year. We’re actually commissioning things now for two years down the line.”

Greif directed one show at the La Jolla Playhouse--Neal Bell’s adaptation of Emile Zola’s “Therese Raquin,” which he had previously staged elsewhere--during the 1994 season in which his appointment was announced.

He began working on playhouse business then--although “Rent” kept him in New York for more time than he’d anticipated--and the 1995 season was the first to bear his imprint. That year, he directed the West Coast premiere of Tony Kushner’s “Slavs!” and the premiere of the Randy Newman musical “Faust,” which he restaged at the Goodman Theater in Chicago this past August.

In the 1996 season, Greif brought in Julie Taymor’s production of “The Green Bird” among other shows, and staged the premiere of Diana Son’s “Boy.” The current season, which opened with “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “The School for Wives,” will also include the new Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical “Harmony.”

But above all, it has been “Rent” that has bolstered Greif’s profile. Which may account for his new sense of confidence.

“When I worked on ‘Boy’ --which happened right after the Broadway transfer [of ‘Rent’]--I did work with a real sense of ease and assurance,” he says. “But I don’t know if that was because of ‘Rent’ or because I was back here in La Jolla, away from that.”

Since “Boy,” Greif has mainly “done ‘Rent’ over again. So, of course, I’m again working with an assurance because I sort of know where it’s going,” he says.

“I don’t know if the next time I work on a play if I’m going to feel different because of ‘Rent,’ ” he continues. “Feelings of capability are wonderful, but if you stop asking questions and being concerned, then you’re not doing the work as well.”

Greif does claim, however, to have seen the light of “less is more.” “I think that my work has changed in the time I’ve been here,” he says. “I like doing less. I can be less controlling, and other people’s hearts and minds and souls can come to the fore.”

Financially, Greif’s tenure has also been good for the playhouse. He’s less extravagant in his productions than McAnuff, and some would argue less ambitious. Nevertheless, the theater, which had debt of just more than $1 million when Greif came on board, expects to retire the remainder of that at the end of this season. During the same period, the subscriber base has grown from approximately 9,500 to nearly 14,000, of which 5,000 came in the past year, much of it due to the popularity of “Rent.”

Greif has also proven himself adept at collaborating and negotiating. Unlike McAnuff, who never transferred a production to Davidson’s Center Theatre Group, Greif sent Kushner’s “Slavs!” to the Taper, and the amicable relations continue with “Rent” going to the Ahmanson. Both will have been seen in La Jolla first, however.

“Des and I used to talk about it all the time, we just never worked anything out,” says Davidson. “Michael is willing to take some chances in that direction. Although we haven’t done a play in reverse order, we’ve talked about it.”

If “Rent” has influenced Greif the director, so too has it had an effect on Greif the artistic director. Another consequence of his “Rent” experience is his increased commitment to the development of new works.

“It’s steered me a little more toward play and musical development in that I feel either a little more secure or a little more interested in it,” says Greif. “When I look forward to projects for me at this point in time, they’re more either new plays or musicals than they are classics.

“Certainly we’re looking forward to more and more financial independence as we retire the debt, because it is such an extremely expensive proposition mounting a musical,” says Greif. “We are finally putting stuff in place for there to be commissions, workshops, for us to be able to do some sort of festival.”

While new works have been seen at the playhouse in recent seasons, only one commission (to Jessica Hagedorn) has gone out under Greif so far, and another (with Neal Bell) is in the process of being finalized. The artistic director is confident that it’s soon to be a regular thing, however. “I think we’ll be able to do two per year now,” he says.

If there’s an area in which Greif feels he has yet to make good, it’s the local connection. “The part about it that I feel most behind on is how to make it a great theater for this community,” he says. “I think we’ve done really well on the national scene. I think perhaps we could do a little better with the local scene.”

Specifically, he’d like to see the playhouse present a work with a particular connection to the locale. “I’d like to be able to do community- and location-specific projects and commissions about a local issue or with a local playwright--even a history piece about San Diego or La Jolla,” says Greif. “Raymond Chandler lived in La Jolla for a while, so we’ve really been looking at his stuff in terms of what we might adapt.

“I think the next big project should be local, and it’s good that I’m saying that in print, because I don’t know if that will ever happen,” he continues. “It’s always in my mind and we’re never moving on it. We should move on it. I think we have to try, that’s all. Maybe it will be good to know this can’t work.”

Greif certainly is sounding settled, unconcerned about the outcome of his contract negotiations in the fall and finding himself at home here.

“I’m happily planning,” he says. “I might be surprised, but I am certainly operating with the assumption that I am here next year.

“It feels like I’ve been here for three years and I am the artistic director, as opposed to the transitional artistic director. This is my job.”

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* “Rent,” La Jolla Playhouse, UC San Diego campus, La Jolla. Tuesdays to Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Sept. 14. $30-$65. (619) 550-1010. Also, Sept. 28 to Jan. 18 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. $32-$70. (213) 628-2772.