Sondheim himself flies in from America for the final rehearsals next month.”I saw a production at drama school which had a profound effect on me. I went out and bought the music and I’ve been playing it for 10 or 15 years,” Grandage says. When Mendes asked whether he knew the work and would like to direct it, he was delighted. “I knew there was a queue of people who wanted to do it.”The musical was a flop when it opened on Broadway two decades ago and has suffered a history of rewriting since. In the version the Donmar has chosen, it tells a cautionary tale of a successful but unhappy 40-plus songwriter who goes back to address his old school.
As the story unfolds, the pupils act out his life, taking the audience back in time to see how it went wrong.Not content with the Donmar, Grandage has set about transforming the fortunes of the 900-seat Sheffield Crucible. He was already an associate director and, following the departure of artistic director Deborah Paige, agreed to take on the programming. The theatre is as different from the compact Donmar as it is possible to get. The stage is more than 30 feet wide and nearly 40 feet from front to back.
“An actor once told me it was one of the few stages in the country where you can run from the back to the front of the stage and feel wind rushing through your hair,” he says “There isn’t anything like it in the country. It’s a wonderfully liberating space to work in.”So Grandage is thinking big. He wants to put on classics as well as new writing, which he believes to be as vital to the regions as to London. But he doesn’t intend to stick to Shakespeare for classics, and wants new writing on a grand scale at a time when most writers are producing two-handers for small studio spaces.This week a cast of eight premiÿre Accomplices – about a violent northern family – by Simon Bent, whose earlier works include Sugar Sugar at the Bush. A cast of four will perform Mr England, a new dark comedy about a middle manager, by Richard Bean, whose previous credits include Toast at the Royal Court. They will play in repertory and are “of extraordinary calibre”, he says.There is a buzz surrounding Grandage, and his championing of Sheffield is already luring actors never before seen in the city.
Joseph Fiennes, star of Shakespeare in Love, will make his Crucible debut in March.This casting was sheer luck. One of the works Grandage wanted to include in his first season was Marlowe’s Edward II. “It’s a bold play, a gay play, a political play, but I love Marlowe and I wanted to do it,” he says. He discovered on the grapevine that Fiennes had always wanted to play the title role and asked whether he would do it in Sheffield. Fiennes flew in from Europe to watch the director’s Crucible production of As You Like It and agreed Where Fiennes dares to tread, others are likely to follow.
