Tatler Magazine
February 2001
By Kate Weinberg

Could young buck Michael Grandage be the next artistic director of the National, asks Kate Weinberg

As a boy, Michael Grandage had sticky fingers. His parents ran a sweet shop in Cornwall, and he loved to wander around slipping sweets into his pockets. Even sitting in the whitewashed emptiness of a rehearsal room, Grandage has a boyish freshness that belies the long list of his accomplishments as a director. He rocks back in his chair, pulling at the sleeves of his frayed denim jacket, and chats easily about everything, moving his hands expansively as though the sweet shop were there in the room with us and he could pluck a never-ending stream of ideas from its shelves.

After directing for just five years, Grandage has made his mark. Previously, he was an actor (one of his roles was the plummily named Hugo Bunting in The House of Elliot), but he speaks of his acting years with a certain detachment, waving his hands about as if warding off an invisible fly. „I knew I was good. I had an OK career, but I also knew my limits, and my abilities fell well below my ambitions.“ So, in 1996, Grandage turned to directing, starting with a stunning production of Arthur Miller’s The Last Yankee. Hits such as C.P. Taylor’s Good and Peter Nichol’s Passion Play followed.

Today, aged 38, Grandage does not feel as confined as he did as an actor, and the more varied and challenging his work, the happier he is. This need for variety is partly met by the two very different spaces that he tends to work in: the cavernous Crucible theatre in Sheffield and the compact Donmar Warehouse in London (where he works alongside Oscar winner Sam Mendes). Looking at Grandage’s unlimited face, it is hard to imagine the winding path that his life has taken. While he was growing up in Cornwall, his ambitions were many and various – he wanted to be a journalist, an actor and a French horn player. (The last of these is the hardest to conjure up – Grandage is slightly built, dynamic and doesn’t sit still.)

He speaks lucidly of how his acting idefined his directing. „I knew the language of the rehearsal room, something a director straight from drama school can never know. I learned from good directors,“ he says, smiling dryly, „but mainly from bad ones – about what not to do.“ Grandage’s empathy is clearly contagious. His current production at the Donmar is Sondheim’s classic musical of the Eighties, Merrily We Roll Along, and when I walked into the rehearsal rooms to meet him a stream of actors filed out, grinning from ear to ear, and buzzing with the kind of energy Grandage exudes.

At the Crucible, Joseph Fiennes will be playing the title role in Marlowe’s Edward II. This theatrical coup means not only that Grandage will be working with an actor whom he believes is most at home on the stage („Joseph is an animal of the theatre“), but also that Sheffield’s theatrical profile will get a boost from the star’s presence. Here Grandage smiles wickedly and leans back so far in his chair that his legs leave the floor, and I can’t help wincing. „This time everyone will have to come up to see it.“ The story of how Fiennes landed the part illustrates Grandage’s pull and his integrity as a director. When Fiennes heard about the play, he flew from Europe to watch Grandage’s current production and immediately decided he wanted to work with him. But Grandage, unswayed by Fiennes’s celebrity status, still put him through the standard auditioning process. Grandage’s value is likely to appreciate further. Good, unusual, ambitious plays fire him up, as does working hard with the text and creating performances and stark sets with maximum impact. „The last period of rehearsal time is when I stand back and become the audience, watching the play as if I am not familiar with the text.“ In the end, it is this rare ability to switch roles that makes Grandage’s plays so compelling. As he leaves the interview, Grandage pauses for an instant in front of the rehearsal room door, shrugs back his shoulders and assumes the air of a director. It’s hard to imagine what he could do to make himself more versatile as an artist. Perhaps, with his talent for putting himself simultaneously into the role of actor, director and audience, he should try the odd spell of selling ice-creams in the foyer.

Merrily We Roll Along is at the Donmar Warehouse (tel: 020 7369 1732) until 3 March. Edward II is at the Crucible (tel: 0114 249 6000) from 8 March.