Rethinking It Through

Sitting on a couch in a midtown Manhattan office, British director Trevor Nunn repeats lyrics from “Oklahoma!” as though they are holy writ. “We know we belong to the land and the land we belong to is grand,” he says in the clipped tones of his native East Anglia.

Were it not for the fervency, the juxtaposition might seem ridiculous: the by-now almost hackneyed sentiments in the mouth of a man widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest directors of the English language; the onetime artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company; outgoing director of the Royal National Theatre, master interpreter of classic (Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen) and contemporary theater (Tennessee Williams, Robert Bolt, Tom Stoppard); and master impresario of such mega-productions as “Nicholas Nickleby,” “Cats,” “Les Miserables,” “Chess” and “Sunset Boulevard.”

But Nunn is dead serious. For most Americans, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” has been a staple of musical comedy puffery since it first cheered embattled audiences in 1943. But the musical has Chekhovian echoes for the director. In Nunn’s National Theatre revival, which opens March 21 on Broadway, the sunny cowboy Curly still battles the dyspeptic Jud for winsome Laurey, but it is foremost a story of a group of pioneers, decent but inarticulate, attached to the land, stumbling along as the lawless order of the West yields to a brave new manifest destiny of 1905 America.

“What Hammerstein encapsulates in his book is the absolutely fundamental tenet of the new American society these people wanted to create,” Nunn says, “climaxing in Aunt Eller’s wonderful reminder to the people, ‘I want to teach you a little saying and learn the words by heart the way you should: I don’t say I’m no better than anybody else, but I’m damned if I ain’t as good.’ So the lives of these relatively simple people can affect us profoundly because we are in touch with the decisions that have brought us to where we are.”

Surprisingly, flinty Aunt Eller is the backbone of this “Oklahoma!,” the show that launched what is still today the most successful and influential musical collaboration in Broadway history. Nunn also had the temerity to bring in Susan Stroman to re-choreograph the show, jettisoning Agnes de Mille’s groundbreaking dances. But if one wants to get a handle on exactly how the director himself came to be where he is today--from Royal Shakespeare Company wunderkind at age 27 to the Music Man of Broadway and the West End at 62--producer Cameron Mackintosh invited comparison with another musical theater character.

“There is a part of Trevor that is Professor Henry Higgins,” says Mackintosh, who has had an extraordinarily successful and lucrative alliance with Nunn with “Cats,” “Les Miserables,” “Oklahoma!” and most recently the revival of “My Fair Lady,” currently in the West End. “There is nothing he likes more than finding an Eliza Doolittle to reinvent or taking a great classic and making it seem fresh. That’s part and parcel of Trevor’s life.”

It is the pedantic professor who is dominant during an interview on the morning after the second preview of “Oklahoma!” at the Gershwin Theatre, although his appearance--the sloe-eyed, rumpled countenance; dark thick mane and goatee; thin frame in jeans and blue work shirt--yields a hint of the much-rumored ladies’ man who has been married three times, always to actresses: Janet Suzman, dancer Sharon Lee Hall, and his present spouse, Imogen Stubbs. Long known to have a combative, churlish relationship with the British press, in which he is alternately regarded with awe or attacked for making buckets of money with commercial vehicles, Nunn appears to be biding his time until he can sprint over to the Gershwin to work on “Oklahoma!”

He has his work cut out for him. Broadway’s “Oklahoma!” comes with high expectations, stemming from the success of the initial production at the National Theatre in 1998 and subsequent transfer to the West End, where it won four Oliviers (the British equivalent of the Tony). When the show opened in London, English and American critics raved. “A masterpiece of a musical, a huge hit,” wrote Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph. The New York Times’ Ben Brantley, in a roundup of London theater at the time, opined, “Triumphant ... miraculously fresh-feeling.”

But the first previews at the Gershwin have not gone as well. (“It ain’t miraculous yet,” says one production associate a week into the run.) Audiences were complaining of its length (then 3 hours and 15 minutes).

Then there’s the challenge of getting the new leads up to snuff with cast members imported from the English run. British actress Josefina Gabrielle, a Nunn discovery, is re-creating her star-making performance as Laurey, along with Georgia-born Shuler Hensley, who won an Olivier for Jud, Aunt Eller’s morose farmhand. Jessica Boevers is the new Ado Annie; Justin Bohon, the new Will Parker; and, most important, Patrick Wilson of “The Full Monty” fame is stepping into the boots of Hugh Jackman, the Australian actor who originated the role of Curly at the National before he was whisked off to movie stardom in films such as “X-Men,” “Swordfish” and “Kate & Leopold.”

Back home, the chronically busy Nunn has another new revival to maintain: “My Fair Lady,” also a National Theatre smash hit that has transferred to the West End. This on top of tending to his 80-hour-a-week duties as the National’s artistic director at South Bank, where he will remain until early next year, when Nicholas Hytner takes over. At the National, he is scheduled to direct a Stoppard trilogy, collectively titled “The Coast of Utopia,” as well as a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” starring Glenn Close.

Within such a context, press must seem a necessary evil, one that Nunn apparently endures by going on at length when responding to even the most basic questions, bringing up all sorts of irrelevant details. Asked, for example, if he played “cowboys and Indians” as a child growing up, the son of a humble furniture maker, he offers up a tangential paragraph about his relationship with Peter Hall, one of his predecessors at the National, who also happens to be from his hometown.

Indeed, it is not until Nunn responds by e-mail to follow-up questions that he comes to life, expressing a directness and sarcastic humor in his replies. There’s also, despite the numerous honors and acclaim, a thin-skinned petulance.

A case in point is his response to critic Spencer’s description of him as “the most appalling public speaker ... boring ... entirely defective in the humor department.” Nunn writes, “I suppose it depends on who you talk to about my ‘public speaking.’ Try asking Judi Dench about my recent eulogy for her late husband, Michael Williams. A long time ago I did win a prize at school for public speaking; I have debated at both Oxford and Cambridge unions, have addressed the Royal Academy ... and the Royal Television Society, and the last five speeches I have made on the South Bank have caused flocks of people to say or write that they have just heard the best speech ever at the National. But clearly you can’t please all the people all the time.” So there.

What Nunn is articulate about is the work itself, according to many of his collaborators. “We love him,” says Ted Chapin, Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization president, whom Nunn set out to woo six years ago for the rights to “Oklahoma!” Two years later, he sought the rights for a revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “South Pacific,” which opened last year at the National to far less praise. “He was very captivating, discussing the serious nature of what ‘Oklahoma!’ was all about. He pointed out just how good a dramatist Oscar Hammerstein was. With Trevor, everything is challenged, investigated, discussed, thought out. Absolutely nothing is ever arbitrary.”

Both “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific” follow other hit revivals of American musicals directed by Brits, including Hytner’s “Carousel,” Sam Mendes’ “Cabaret” and Michael Blakemore’s “Kiss Me, Kate.” Some of these directors have been able to mine the darker veins of these works.

Nunn, at the time of the London opening of “Oklahoma!,” told British journalist David Gritten in the Daily Telegraph that Fred Zinnemann’s 1955 film of the musical had thrilling locations but not the crumpled, dirty clothing and sweat one might expect to find out in the West. “There’s a sense they all have a fridge and a telephone in their homes,” Nunn said. Still, a grittier look notwithstanding, isn’t “Oklahoma!” just about whether Laurey will go to the box social with her handsome cowboy or with the slovenly Jud? Does the book really deserve all that meticulously applied scrutiny?

“I think it starts with the British tradition to honor words,” Chapin says. The darkness in many of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals was always there, he adds, but American directors “have been more inclined to make jolly musicals out of what’s there because of this musical comedy mentality and also because that was the world in which these shows were first introduced. Entertainment value was paramount. People remembered the comedy numbers, not the ballads.”

Nunn is circumspect when considering whether Brits, by virtue of historical and geographic distance, might be able to see American musicals in a new light. He points out that it was Harold Prince, an American director, who mounted the definitive revival of “Showboat” in 1994. “It would be presumptuous of me to say that there is any distinction,” he notes, going on to explain that he and his colleagues come from a tradition in which they continually re-approach classics--Shakespeare, Chekhov, Shaw, Wilde--whose meaning changes “from decade to decade, sometimes from year to year.”

“Our habit of mind is completely the same when it comes to American musicals. We say, ‘How can we inquire into this masterpiece to discover fresh resonances?’ I’m not an expert by any means, but I’m absolutely fascinated by American history, the Civil War and the civil rights movement. And I’m sure that being an outsider can lead to a particular kind of admiration and particular critique, which would not be the same if one was, on a daily basis, part of that society.”

Nunn observes that Rodgers & Hammerstein were actually quite innovative in their critiques of American society, hewing closely to the original source material for both “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific.” The former was Lynn Riggs’ short-lived 1935 Broadway drama, “Green Grow the Lilacs,” an affectionate memoir of his growing up in Indian territory at the turn of the century. Says Nunn, “Both Rodgers and Hammerstein divined that there were larger issues that underlie the Riggs’ play, and one was this outbreak of mass violence between farmers and the cowboys, which would threaten everything this community was trying to build if cooler heads, like Aunt Eller, were not to prevail. They were asking the question, ‘Are we grown up enough, decent enough, common-sensical enough?’”

Likewise, he adds, in “South Pacific,” based on James Michener’s wartime tales, Rodgers & Hammerstein chose in 1949 to remind Americans that they had just fought a war to prove that all men were created equal--something that was not yet true for millions of African Americans. In the musical, Emile DeBecque, a French plantation owner, is in love with an Arkansas nurse who is aghast at his “colored” children, the issue of an interracial union. Observes Nunn, “He’s the one who says, ‘I know what you’re against; what are you for?’ And it is a shattering moment.”

Mackintosh maintains that Nunn’s a genius in that he is able to pose these questions not only intellectually but emotionally. “Trevor has a deep passion for the work,” he says, noting that the two have argued vociferously at times over creative differences. “He is completely unashamed about embracing sentiment, and that’s what makes his productions so powerful. Even when we’re at odds, I know he will always wish to serve the production. He will keep talking and talking and talking about it.”

If Nunn is more than willing to go into battle with both critics and producers, he is protective when it comes to his actors, according to Gabrielle, his Laurey in “Oklahoma,” and Henry Goodman, who realized a triumphant Shylock in Nunn’s 1999 National production of “The Merchant of Venice.” The former, when told of the director’s reputation as a Svengali to actresses, laughs. “I don’t deny that he brought out things in me that I never knew were there,” says Gabrielle, who made her mark in the dance world first as a soloist with the National Ballet of Portugal. “And the day after we opened in London, I did say [like Eliza Doolittle], ‘What’s to become of me?’ to the resident director. But Trevor guides, he doesn’t dictate.”

Goodman, who makes his musical Broadway debut on Tuesday, taking over for Nathan Lane in “The Producers,” praises Nunn for giving actors a net over which they feel safe to pursue their instincts. “Early on, he establishes a base camp from which to take on Everest,” the actor says. “We talked about [‘Merchant of Venice’] nearly a year before we did it. He comes well-equipped for all eventualities because you never know what’s going to hit you.”

Stroman suggests that the Higgins label belies Nunn’s comfort with strong women. “I know Trevor’s wife, Imogen Stubbs, and she is very strong and very bright. He’s definitely attracted to women who are fearless, who will challenge him. What makes this ‘Oklahoma!’ different is that the women are more like pioneer women; they have a stronger, more freeing spirit. The women stand their ground. In a number like ‘Many a New Day,’ which was originally staged with women brushing their hair and dancing in bloomers, the women now mock the cowboys and toss Curly’s hat around. I wouldn’t have done this show had it not been for Trevor.”

Some British critics, such as Sheridan Morley, writing in the Spectator, have faulted Nunn for putting the National’s resources into “South Pacific” (presumably because he couldn’t get the rights to “Mary Poppins,” Morley adds sarcastically) instead of developing “unknown Sondheims.”

But Mackintosh said that Nunn’s ability to elevate musicals such as “South Pacific” and “My Fair Lady” to equal rank with dramatic classics may be one of his lasting legacies at the National. “He proved that you could do musical work and still be considered a great director,” Mackintosh says. “It wasn’t slumming.”

Even so, one would be hard-pressed to include in that list Nunn’s “Starlight Express,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lightweight musical about trains that was trashed by U.S. critics when it came to Broadway in 1987 but won commercial approval in London. By e-mail, Nunn insisted that “Starlight” was an “attempt to create a visceral, non-linguistic, rule-breaking theatrical event, expressed through the competing genres of popular music.... It ran for 17 years, and if there weren’t a dearth of London theaters, would be running still. I think of it more as an experiment with the idea of ‘installation’ rather than show.”

Furthermore, Nunn believes that the media attention paid to his mega-productions has unfairly eclipsed his nonmusical work and his innovations as an administrator who created several new theaters while at the Royal Shakespeare Company and reorganized the ensemble system there and at the National.

Any discussion of Nunn’s new work should probably start with the huge endowments he has created for both theaters as a result of his musical hits. By his estimates, Nunn left the Royal Shakespeare with an annual income of $1.5 million from “Les Miserables” royalties, and the National is likely to benefit from “Oklahoma!” and “My Fair Lady” for years to come.

As for the charge that he is not nurturing new work or audiences at the National, Nunn succinctly replies via e-mail that the National is producing more new plays that at any other time in its history, that new theaters are being developed for experimental work, and that “we have hugely broadened our audience.”

“I think he’s done a very good job,” critic Spencer says. “He’s kept the place full, done very good work with these musicals and ran a very strong ensemble company. The writing was weak in early years but is much stronger now.”

Indeed, the National of late has been lauded for premiering such new plays as Joe Penhalls’ award-winning “Blue/Orange,” Mark Ravenhill’s “Mother Clap’s Molly House” and the currently running “Humble Boy” by Charlotte Jones, starring Diana Rigg and Russell Beale.

Stoppard’s trilogy looks to be a fitting coda to his tenure at the National, given how the director describes its themes: “How do you approach utopia? Even, if we can identify utopia, how do we reach it and at what price? Is it fine to kill people along the way because a better society would be at the end of it?”

It’s not hard to see what attracted Nunn to the project. The one thing that appears to unite most, if not all, of his work is a fervent belief in the humanistic evolution toward a just society. Quoting Victor Hugo’s preface to “Les Miserables,” he says, “Yes, I do believe like him, like Chekhov, that a mixture of God’s blessing and brave people and taking the necessary action will deliver the future we believe in.”

Stoppard says such a belief, while not naive, is hard to defend given the present political and religious climate worldwide, but that such sentiments are vintage Nunn. One of the protagonists in all three plays, he adds, is Alexander Herzen, a Russian radical who went from elation to despondency at the state of social development in Europe. “But he did not end up a pessimist,” Stoppard says. “He had a fundamental faith that history had no libretto and that it was very much in our hands how history turned out. We should not think we were just characters in some ridiculous comedy.”

Nunn, no doubt, will continue to explore that faith in his work as a freelance director next year. He would say nothing of his plans apart from the fact that he is developing a movie (“contemporary and set in both Britain and America”) to fill in a part of his resume that is comparatively scanty (“Hedda,” “Lady Jane” and “Twelfth Night”). He also hopes to do a revival of a Stephen Sondheim musical (“one of his masterpieces”), and has opera and television projects in the pipeline. “But it will all happen, from now on, according to a schedule that’s more about living, more about family--with things like vacations, which I have not had for five years.”

Perhaps Nunn will even have the opportunity to explore for the first time the land that the characters of “Oklahoma!” profess to love so well.

“I’m determined one day to go down the old Route 66 and stop many times along the way, to have the full American experience,” Nunn says.

“I did have a life-changing experience of going up into the Rockies in a small plane some years back. It was the most frightened I’ve ever been while also being the most awed. I had the feeling, ‘Wouldn’t this be a rapturous way to go?’”

“Oklahoma!” opens Thursday at the Gershwin Theatre, 222 W. 51st St., New York. $20-$90 (212) 307-4100 or (800) 755-4000.

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Patrick Pacheco is a regular contributor to Calendar.