ANDY DRACHENBERG – This is your triumphant return to Broadway! Coming off an extended run of “Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them” at The Public, as well as dozens of other Off-Broadway productions, how do you feel about returning to the “Great White Way”?
CHRISTOPHER DURANG – I’m pleasantly surprised to be involved with a Broadway show and I have to say when [producer] Jeffrey Richards called up, I was really delighted. Usually my plays are sufficiently odd or offbeat that they don’t quite seem right on Broadway. Oh gosh…there was a period when it was either Neil Simon, or my friend Wendy Wasserstein, or British people, and that seemed to be the extent of plays on Broadway. (It actually feels a little bit better now.) I’m really not wildly versed in Broadway. It’s weird. I grew up in the 50s across the river in Jersey and I was one of those kids who was taken to Broadway shows a couple of times a year. I loved musicals and I actually thought I would end up writing more in musicals.
AD – What has the process been like for you to write a script for two well-known personalities?
CD – I’ve had to be very flexible about not holding onto things as I’ve written them. Barry Humphries is so brilliant at improvisation, that a lot of my work was to be editor and curator of the funny riffs he did. In the two person scenes, I tended to write more, but I went into knowing that Barry is the best judge of how Edna speaks. And learning that Michael and Edna were actually friends over the years made it seem as though it must have come, in a way, from them. I must say once Casey [Nicholaw, director] joined, I found it easier to be flexible because he has a really good imagination. I found that Casey would spark my imagination with his responses to what I’ve written or to comments that Edna or Michael made.
AD – Does their recognition by an audience make getting your voice in the play heard more difficult?
CD – I haven’t been thinking about that. Because they came up with the idea of being double booked, and because they’re playing themselves, I didn’t really feel it was my place to “have my voice in it”, unless it happened. I’ll be curious if people will go, “Oh, that’s a Durang touch.” And I’ll tell you, sometimes they’ll do it, think it’s something that “seems” like my sense of humor, and it will actually be a Dame Edna touch, or a Casey touch, or Michael. Not to say I’ve done nothing, I’ve contributed too… it’s just extremely collaborative.
AD – How do you think this piece falls into your collection of works? Have you done anything like this before, or was this a step into foreign territory?
CD – I did a couple of cabaret shows with Sigourney Weaver in the early 80s. She and I Both in my student days at Yale Cabaret, and later in New York, I’ve worked on several cabaret shows, and I think they prepared me more for working on this than did my plays. I did a couple of cabaret shows with Sigourney Weaver in the early 80s. She and I wrote them together and I think our “voices” were in them but they didn’t exactly feel like plays of mine, they felt different. The combined “voice” was a different entity.
AD – In the past, you’ve been complimented on your ability to take the everyday language of America and turn it into a hilarious theatrical experience. What was it like to work with two new mediums- The Great American Songbook and Australian?
CD – I was already a fan of Michael Feinstein’s, and had many of his cd’s. He and Dame Edna are an unexpected duo. In the show I think he’s kind of the Everyman (if Everyman sang really well) – he’s the Candide to Dame Edna’s Dr. Pangloss, or he’s the male Alice to Edna’s Mad Hatter-Queen of Hearts combo. In my head, anyway. And there’s one thing I’ve discovered about Dame Edna. When I’d only seen a couple of her shows (and greatly enjoyed them), I thought that she perhaps had an ornate way of speaking. However, although she uses some very interesting words, sometimes her thoughts are very simple, like, “Oh, isn’t that darling, Possums?” I realized that I might write something more verbally complicated and that that wasn’t always quite right for Dame Edna. It’s the housewife in Edna, perhaps, that sometimes keeps her diction simple. Her thoughts aren’t simple, though.
AD – Any hints about what we might see coming from the Durang legacy next?
CD – I have two plays I’ve begun. I had started a play before “Why Torture Is Wrong…” and it is political in a similar way to “Torture…”. I have a commission that I owe the McCarter Theatre… part of me wonders if I should go back to that same material again. I have this other thing that’s really just beginning. I live in Pennsylvania and, in my head, I’ve been calling it “Chekov in Pennsylvania.” It would be like my version of Uncle Vanya but it’s silly and comes from a light place. The present title is “Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike.” I’ve also been writing a lot of pieces for the Huffington Post, and one of the non-political pieces got sent to an editor. In meeting with him, we discussed a memoir which has a title- “The Memoirs of Pippy Ding.”
AD – In an earlier interview, you chose two words that best describe you: “iconoclastic” & “quiet”. Is there perhaps a new word or phrase you might like to offer that describes this new piece, All About Me?
CD – When I’m in a good mood, I’m a very good laugher. I sometimes have to warn actors that I can laugh for about two and a half weeks at the same thing, over and over. Then even I reach the saturation point at my own material. So I warn them that my being quiet doesn’t mean they’re not doing it well. I’ve just run out laughter for a bit. Then it usually comes back, especially with a super responsive audience.
Plays include A History of the American Film (Tony nomination), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Obie award), Beyond Therapy, Baby with the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie award and Dramatists Guild Hull Warriner Award), Laughing Wild, Betty’s Summer Vacation (1999 Obie award), Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge (2002), Miss Witherspoon (2005 Pulitzer finalist), Adrift in Macao (music by Peter Melnick). Most recent: Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them (2009) premiered at the Public Theatre, directed by Nicholas Martin.. Two summers ago the Roundabout presented a revival of his The Marriage of Bette and Boo, directed by Walter Bobbie. In the 80s he acted and sang in Das Lusitania Songspiel with Sigourney Weaver, and in the 90s with Julie Andrews in Sondheim’s Putting It Together, He’s acted in films such as Secret of My Success, The Butcher’s Wife, Housesitter, and Mr. North. With John Augustine and Sherry Anderson, he performed his crackpot Chris Durang and Dawne cabaret multiple times, winning a 1996 Bistro Award. He’s a member of the Dramatists Guild Council. www.christopherdurang.com