THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Neil LaBute, world famous playwright, Anglophile and possibly one of the most brilliant literary minds writing today, is clarifying who we are, while I’m fumbling with my recording set up. He is clarifying that The American is, in fact, the most widely circulated and longest running magazine for US expats, and not a publication dedicated to a 2010 thriller movie starring George Clooney. “You couldn't have a whole magazine about that movie, I guess”, says Neil. “You remember the film? He was a deadly assassin, but, of course, he couldn't help but have a heart of gold.”
The American: I usually remember Clooney as the less good Batman.
Neil LaBute: Now, there's a legacy.
Although he's doing an interesting play now…
He's doing a theatrical version of his Good Night And Good Luck, but he's playing Morrow this time.
He showed some images of Elon Musk doing the Nazi salute at the end of the premier.
Way to get sent to El Salvador! Even if they're wrong, they won't bring you back.
And most of the time they are apparently wrong.
That's a good feeling to go to sleep with. Oh God!
As Beckett would say, that passed the time! So, Neil, you have a relationship with London, haven't you?
Yes, I did a fellowship at the Royal Court while I was a student at NYU. Truth be told (this'll probably get back to them, but it's fine now, because they have my grades!) it was the only reason I really wanted to go to NYU. They had a fine program and everything, but I knew they had a fellowship with the Royal Court and I was determined to get that. My love of London and the country in general was set early, because my mother was a huge Anglophile; her father was born in England then moved to the States, so anything English was good, and that was instilled in me. Once I became a theater person, and realized the kinds of theater beyond what you normally are given at school, I was very enamored of the British stage and set that as a bar to work there. I got lucky enough to have that happen. Ironically, after making a film, I had many more offers to do stage than I had previously. Film has a kind of universal appeal, I guess, and in some ways unlocks a few doors. So for the last 25 years or more I've been having plays in London and elsewhere, and it's been marvelous.
I was hooked on the London stage from the first time when as a student I bought the cheapest third balcony tickets, so high up that I felt like I couldn't tell the difference between Timothy Dalton and Vanessa Redgrave, for instance (and there is a difference, if you take a look!). But the vibe was so good. And seeing so many classics, and new things that were coming out, I felt like this is the place I would love to be. I still have that kind of boyish feeling of happiness every time I get a chance to work in London.
I'm very happy to have a show coming back to the Park Theatre because I was there a couple of years ago, when The Shape of Things was revived. It’s 25 years old, and I haven’t aged a day, which is miraculous, but it happens, I guess, to some of us. [laughs]
People are paying $900 to see Denzel Washington play Othello on Broadway. I teach kids in college here in the UK, some of them wouldn't choose to go to see a play but a lot of them would. I didn't realize how prohibitively expensive it was in the States compared to here.
If you were so disposed you could pay $900 to go see Denzel. Broadway has become a bit of a petting zoo. It's like, who's the star and how much can we charge for a ticket, all while trumpeting that we're breaking box office records. When you set tickets at eight times what they are normally, sure, you break some records, but it feels like a record with an asterisk. And yet they are able to continue doing it because someone will go out and pay that. I think a lot of times it's tourists who will come at any price... ‘I would love to look in the eyes of Denzel Washington, hopefully he'll look at me out in the audience when he takes his bows, or he'll come out of the stage door and sign something for me…’ and all those things have values placed on them. Some stars will go do a play, but they're getting paid 100 grand a week to do it, so prices have to accommodate that. And the costs, the rent and all that are high. It's made it difficult for people to come and see a show like that. People now, unfortunately regularly, expect it's going to be $100 or more, and then there are always ‘special tickets’ giving you something slightly better, they find so many ways to increase the price.
I can't speak to London prices in the same way, but I know they're not as high. When I was younger, I could get a really good seat and actually hear people who don't have to use microphones. That’s a difference as well. What a great way to break an illusion, to have someone with this thing coming out of their hair. I'm like, isn't that the job? You had one job! To project! What you spent your life learning, and yet now you put a microphone on your head and look silly and don't do the job. I get why they might need it for a musical – and some of those houses that musicals are in are extremely large – but in a perfect world, that wouldn't be the way it is, for me.
It sounds like there's something unique about theater in London and the UK, as opposed to the States, that draws you to it.
I'm a fan of the country! Everywhere that I've been, and certainly London. Gosh, I would probably live in London if I had to choose someplace to live and I could work there as well, as easily. I'm just very comfortable there, always have been. And I do feel like the theater has been ingrained in the lifestyle of a lot of people in English society, and that's in almost any town I've been to, going to the theater is bred in the bone a little more than it is here in the States. It does get marginalized here in a way, especially if you don't grow up in New York, because there's cinemas everywhere but there's only one theater in town, or it's in the next town over, or there's a community theater that uses another space to do a show twice a year. I certainly didn't grow up in New York, I grew up almost as far away as you can get geographically, and artistically twice as far [Neil was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of a hospital receptionist and a long-haul truck driver - ed] yet once it hit me, theater hit me like a sack of bricks. So it's not that you have to have it as an upbringing to go into the theater. But it didn’t feel like it was part of our lives. When I was younger, it was more ‘throw everybody in the car and we're going to the drive-in’. We’d watch a couple of movies, one of them will be absolutely not for you but your parents don't care and they hope that you fall asleep by the time that one comes around. So at a very young age, I was able to see Deliverance, much to my father's chagrin, having thought this was going to be some big outdoor epic. In the car home, he said was like, ‘I don't ever want to talk about that movie again. My mistake. You're scarred for life, but we're not going to talk about it’. Happily, I wasn't scarred for life. I was awake for every minute and curious as to what I had just seen. So that's what they do camping! That's why you never take us camping!
But, gosh, yeah, I could spend every night going to the theater, to get that live experience. And that's why, when people say the theater is dying, I'm like, ‘It'll never die, because it is so unique to our artistic experience’. Films and TV have much more in common now in terms of the way movies are now released so quickly on television, because they're going to get as much money as they can, as quickly as they can. But the theatrical experience... there is nothing quite like it.
Is there something to the idea of that you're sharing a three dimensional space with the actors.
I think so. Not that the cinema doesn't have many things going for it, the experience is larger than life with close ups that are towering over you, the immersiveness is quite strong and I understand how that becomes a part of people's DNA. Although, now, is there a generation that prefers the smaller screen? There was a fun New Yorker cover within the last year or so – a kid sitting in a Park Avenue apartment and there’s a big, big screen on the wall above him, but he's laying on the carpet looking at his phone. His preference is to watch things on something this size, which he controls. Maybe I shudder at that idea. But I probably don't shudder as much as someone like Christopher Nolan does. He’s trying to make as big a film and experience as he can, and the idea that someone's going to watch his Oppenheimer on their phone, intermittently between classes, or stopping to take a call or send an emoji to a friend, is probably not what he was dreaming of as a kid!
I'm wondering how you think about telling stories now, as we're all surrounded by so many distractions.
I'm slow to grow. I include myself in my audience as much as I can. What would I like to see? What kind of theater am I gravitated to? I love just being told a good story, you know, no matter where it is. It can be movies or TV, but on stage I'm trapped here in this real time. You can move around as much as you want, but each scene is in real time. I'm watching this thing that is playing out in front of me. Those people are really there. It's probably harder for you to lose yourself, to get that suspension of disbelief, but, boy, when it works, it really works. You’re suddenly like, wow, I was kind of gone for a while there, I was so into this, this thing that's happening in front of me.
And I don't need too many sparklers or colored lights for that experience. As an exercise, as a writer, I've pushed those boundaries of how long I can hold someone's attention with an actor just sitting in a chair, talking to the audience and taking them for that ride. I also still spend a lot of time writing short plays, which not everyone writes. I’ll put them in a desk or look for a festival to put them on at. I have a festival named after me, of all things, in St Louis which has been going for a dozen years, and we fully stage short plays every year for writers. There's such a history of short plays, but they're hard to put on because you have to have an evening of them to make it economic.
Technically, Miss Julie is a one act, short play. It's a form that I love. People come up with these ten minute playwriting contests – you try to create a play in ten minutes. It's not so easy. They turn out more like Saturday Night Live sketches most of the time. I love trying to fully realize something in a short period of time. I've written some short stories as well. That very contained form is interesting to me, how expansive or simple it can be.
Stage has some elements that I just adore. I've taught a number of workshops for students around the world how to do monologues, that kind of thing. The monologue is the great tool of theater. The idea that I can break the fourth wall and talk to you as an audience member is not done very often in films. Occasionally, you'll have Alfie talk to you throughout the film, and House of Cards – obviously they did it in the version with Kevin Spacey, but the original House of Cards with Ian Richardson, years ago, that's where that all came from. It's fanciful, and it makes the audience smile. ‘Oh, my God, he's looking right at me!’ Now that’s a real connection!
In a theater like the Park – or the Donmar, maybe my favorite space in the world – you are literally feet away from the people. The audience can feel a sense of security out there, even in a small house, because they're in the dark and there's more of them than there are of you on stage. Worse, they’re paying money and they're going to judge your performance. But to be able to pick up that little magical veil and do a monologue, and suddenly say ‘You know what? I'm going to tell you something tonight that I haven't even told my wife. It's just you and I are going to know about this…’ That connection is really strong. It’s such a great device and tool. To say, not so fast, I'm right here, I know you're there, and to connect with them is a real treat. I love that experience maybe more than anything else in the theater. I’m not trying to say my job is to make the audience uncomfortable, it's to connect with them in a way, the best way I can.
I use it quite often. Because in the end, I don't write fairy tales, or science fiction, I'm creating relationships and breaking them apart or starting them out. There's a lot of people who've done that, so, I ask, why do I have something I think is worth saying this time around? Why am I going to ask you to come to the Park Theatre, as opposed to anywhere else tonight? So the story better be good. That's my side of the bargain. You're gonna pay your, not $900, but whatever it is. The contract between us is, I'll tell you a story, hopefully that you haven't heard before. I like that bargain. I'm happy to try and fail every time out.
I like that bargain as well. So there's an intimacy that's possible in theater that maybe isn't with film and TV?
There has to be, because of the living connection, there just has to be. I can be overcome by the size of a close up, or the music that's used in a movie, but I have to remember that that's not even live action, it's single pictures that have been captured and shot in a way that appears to be action. It's really just single photographs run at a rate that my eye takes in as actually happening. But as many times as I watch a movie and wish it will happen a different way, it always comes out the exact same way, the experience will be the same. Maybe it will grow in estimation, maybe it will lessen, but it is always not unlike that first time you see it.
But gosh, how many times can you go see someone new in Hamlet, and go, Wow, I never even thought of that? Even with my own work, I sometimes see something and I’ll think ‘interesting reading on that line’, or the set design’s great, or there’s something I never even thought of. If it's good, of course, I'll take credit for it! But even if it's not, I'm still like, ‘that was cool’. I'm never like, ‘I want to stop the production, because it's not what I meant’.
How many times have I seen A Doll's House or a Caryl Churchill – I've seen Top Girls I don't know how many times – and I just love the play, but I love the adventure of seeing what someone does with it.
I remember seeing John Hurt in Krapp’s Last Tape in Dublin, at The Gate. You felt an incredible sense of closeness.
That's a little jewel box of a theater. And in the Donmar, wherever you sit, except maybe that little balcony, you're just so close to the action, it's crazy.
Tell us a bit about the inspiration for your play on at the Park Theatre, How To Fight Loneliness.
I can't say that I've been around death so much, but I lost both parents within the last 10 years or so, and that's an experience that, no matter how close you are with them, is very, very deep and moving. I was close to my mom, and spent time with her when she was in hospital. At some points she was really crying out and begging, just wanting it to be over. And you're going through this system where people are going to try and help and give you something to make you feel better for a minute, all those things. But the idea of having the autonomy of being able to choose those things is something I haven't seen a great deal of in the theater, even in a country like ours that touts its democracy, when it wants to, on its sleeve. There's only a handful of states that have any kind of built in system for assisted suicide. Someone who wants to help someone has to go through the scenario in their head of ‘Am I willing to go to jail for this? Am I willing to go through those kinds of things just to help someone who's asking, not on machines and can't respond, but is openly asking you to help them, and they're ready to go’.
I thought it would make for an interesting play, so I rolled up my sleeves and tackled it. I'm not much of a message person or a theme person. It just kind of came out of me. Then there was this Wilco song that I liked called ‘How To Fight Loneliness’, that's a great title and the play built out of that. That happens a lot of times, I can have a title or something, and I'm like, ‘What does that mean to me? Why do I like that so much?’
I did a play at the Donmar 20 years ago, This is How it Goes that had a trio of of people who knew each other from school and then got back together again years later. I thought of a situation where you call on somebody you know but don't know that well, and bring them into a world where you're requesting something monumental from them. You can talk about the two sides of what's right and wrong, what is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, things like that. I thought I could do something with that. So I found those characters and went to work. And that’s as glamorous as it ever gets for me, I come from the story and pound it out until I either run into a wall or there's a play at the other end.
We have either told ourselves, or we've bought into the idea through religion, that there's something beyond, there's reincarnation, there's heaven, there's all these things that are promised to us, that it's going to be okay, because the idea that we would just ‘be’ and then it's over, and you have this completely unique experience in the universe that just ends with with nothingness, would stop everyone in their tracks. We all have some personal sense of how that works. But when parents go, not only is that devastating, because they've been there in that role for so long, but also, you're next in line. It’s just the natural order of things but when the parents are removed from that equation, you are standing next in line, staring into the abyss, and you go, ‘Okay, let me think about this. I may have 50 years, I may have 10, and it might be tomorrow, but I should start thinking about this with a little more sense of purpose than I did when I was a teenager and felt completely immortal’. That's why kids do such stupid ass things, because they think they're invincible. Mostly they are, until they're not, of course.
Those are some big subjects, which I love. Going back as far as I've written, I've always loved the idea of those big questions about sin, and good and evil. Am I a good person? Am I a bad person? What does that mean? Who put the labels on that? There are so many variations of how we live with people, and relationships.
Do you ever feel as though you're mislabeled as a misanthrope?
I think I was mislabeled more as a misogynist than as a misanthrope. I think Your Friends and Neighbors could easily be labeled as such, whereas in The Company of Men, which got the misogyny label, if anything the lead guy is a misanthrope – he hates everybody.
Labels are labels, they're tiresome after a while, but it hasn't really stopped me in my purpose. On stage, I've been pretty true to myself in terms of wanting to write this kind of play and examine this stuff and make an audience feel something. You always going to have times when you're in fashion, then less so, and then there's a revival. Everyone goes through that sort of thing.
How To Fight Loneliness debuted in 2017. We’ve had a pandemic since. Have you changed it?
No, I did nothing to change it. I'm a tinkerer, I've rewritten plays that were published 20 years ago, that's just my nature. But I did nothing to this to bring it up to date in terms of COVID. Now, because we're way past it in terms of that experience was so unique and universal and we worked as hard to get past it and pretend that it never happened, it feels like a play can go on without having to make any reference to it and it'll feel as fresh as it did then. I’m always looking at character, can I make this funnier, take this out, or make that sad or a little tighter.
Death has been a constant forever, and has found a lot of ways to get rid of us, and they're all remarkably similar. In the finale, no matter how it happened – quiet, loud, terrible, about as good as it can get – the ending is pretty unanimously the same.
How To Fight Loneliness is at Park Theatre, London, from April 16 until May 24, 2025.
