Actress, Director Are Very Busy Collaborators

Acclaimed British theater and opera director Deborah Warner makes an impressive transition to feature films with the period drama “The Last September,” which opens Friday.

Based on Elizabeth Bowen’s classic novel, “Last September” examines the end of the British rule in Ireland--circa 1920--and with it, the demise of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy who were the wealthy heirs of English immigrants in Ireland.

Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Lambert Wilson and Jane Birkin star. Also featured is Irish actress Fiona Shaw (“My Left Foot,” “Mountains of the Moon”), who has collaborated in the theater several times with Warner, including “Hedda Gabler,” “Electra,” “The Good Person of Szechwan” and “Richard II.”

In “Last September,” Shaw plays the colorful, sophisticated Marda Norton, an Anglo-Irish woman who has lived most of her life in England and stirs up emotions and passions when she visits her friends (Smith and Gambon) at their Irish country house.

The London-based Warner and Shaw recently were in town to discuss “The Last September” before jetting off to Dublin to begin rehearsals for their next theatrical collaboration, “Medea.”

Question: [to Warner]: Had you been looking to make the jump to directing features for a long time?

Warner: It sort of sought me out. The script was sent to me and I loved what it introduced me to, really--the story and this material. I didn’t know the novel. I didn’t know Elizabeth Bowen’s name, to my everlasting shame. I was fascinated.

Q: Why?

Warner: I am English and I didn’t know much at all about these people who were known as the Anglo-Irish. It was fascinating to have that door opened and move in on them. It is the story of this extraordinary tribe who needed to be moved and had to go for the new Ireland to be formed. It is terribly interesting in the way that “Last of the Mohicans” is interesting and “The Last Emperor” is interesting. Fifty percent of films are stories--aren’t they?--about people who had to go so greater changes could occur and the world could move forward.

And as a psychological portrait it is fantastic. Elizabeth Bowen is an expert observer of the psychological and of detail in general. If she hadn’t been a novelist she would have been a filmmaker because of her attention to detail and her love of the close-up.

Shaw: I hadn’t read “Last September,” but I am from County Cork, Ireland, and she was from County Cork. Elizabeth Bowen was a well-known character but hadn’t been on our [lessons] at school because, I think, there was a revisionism in Ireland not to have Anglo-Irish writers.

Q [to Shaw]: About your character, Marda--on one hand she seems the very essence of the modern ‘20s flapper. But she’s allowing herself to marry someone she doesn’t love.

Shaw: Well, the book and the film [do] talk about her limitations. She has to settle down and marry a banker or she’ll land on a shelf and she doesn’t want that, either. She had thrown the dice one too many times, hadn’t she? She has got to accept where it’s landed now with this chap. It is very much what Elizabeth Bowen did. She married a rather dullard.

Warner: Elizabeth Bowen had a very rich and extraordinary extramarital love life it seems.

Q: How much did you rehearse before filming started?

Shaw: By film standards we did a lot in that Deborah summoned us for a week to this other country house which was near the one we filmed in. We all lived there for a week and we dined together as well as doing all the dialect and dance lessons and rehearsing the scenes. That’s much more than people normally have on a film.

Warner: I was reeling that I wasn’t going to have 10 weeks rehearsal. I try and fight for that when I do a play. How can you make a film with only one week’s rehearsal? But I learned in the end [that it can be done]. That one week was invaluable.

The house was an absolute reflection of the house we shot in. We used to eat as a company at night and Maggie, of course, would sit at the top of the table. Michael would be at the other end. They all completely became their characters.

Q [to Warner]: What was most difficult about making the leap from theater to film?

Warner: Difficult isn’t quite the word--incredibly exciting, for sure. I really did know how important it was to get the right collaborators. When you live in a world you know, whether it be theater or opera, you are working often with collaborators, you work hard to find and are delighted to have an ongoing working relationship with--especially a lighting designer in the theater.

Having not spent 20 years making films, I did all I could do to pursue the person whose work I most admired, really, which was [cinematographer] Slavormir Idziak, who shot Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “The Double Life of Veronique” and “Blue.” I went and talked to him and the moment I started our conversation everything felt fine. I knew he would be a real guide and teacher and mentor. I knew I had to have someone properly challenging and supportive. But once that was done, it was a real pleasure. I do like challenges. I can’t pretend that I don’t.

I think his use of color is incredible. It is ravishing. He justifies color in the cinema. It was very important to me that this film would be very beautiful and rich. These are colors I perceived to be of this class of people who were very, very highly colored people and highly centered.

Q: When does “Medea” go into production?

Warner: A week from today, we begin rehearsing “Medea.”

Shaw: We should be there already!

Q [to Shaw]: Have you performed “Medea” before?

Shaw: No, no. Goodness, no. Once in a lifetime will be ample.