Brits back in fashion on the New York stage

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Julia Roberts and other Hollywood
stars have grabbed the limelight in New York this theater
season but critics have given a warmer welcome to another
invasion — the Brits on Broadway.

Last year’s Tony-winning musical “Monty Python’s Spamalot”
proved Americans understand British humor, and this year has
brought a crop of plays from London’s West End.

“You could be forgiven for walking down Broadway and
thinking you’re in the West End,” said Michael Riedel, theater
critic for The New York Post.

“These plays are not being done for the tourists from Omaha
who are in town to see ‘The Lion King.”‘

While Broadway’s biggest honors, the Tony Awards, are still
to play for, nominations for the Outer Critics’ Circle Awards
announced on Sunday showed a clean sweep in the Broadway play
category for productions that came by way of London.

The four nominees were “Festen,” “The History Boys,” “The
Lieutenant of Inishmore” and “Primo,” actor Antony Sher’s
one-man show about holocaust survivor Primo Levi that played a
short engagement in New York last year.

On Thursday The Drama Desk, another group of critics,
included another British play, the off-Broadway “Stuff Happens”
by David Hare, among its nominees for best play, which also
included “The History Boys” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.”

London-raised Irish writer Martin McDonagh’s “Inishmore”
was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the
bard’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon in 2001 and it won the
2003 Olivier Award for best new comedy in London in 2003.

Veteran British author Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys”
was also garlanded with awards in London and unlike some
imports it arrived with its cast of British actors unchanged.

FROM HARRY POTTER TO THE THEATER

Two actors best known to Americans from the “Harry Potter”
movies are among the Britons in New York who have outshone big
names such as Hollywood’s best paid actress, Roberts, whose
Broadway debut met with scathing reviews.

Richard Griffiths, who played Uncle Vernon in the films
about the boy wizard, brings three decades of stage experience
to play in “The History Boys” as a teacher in a boys school
preparing his pupils for university and for life.

Miriam Margolyes, who played Professor Sprout in the second
Harry Potter movie, has also won praise in Oscar Wilde’s “The
Importance of Being Earnest” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Starring in the play is Lynn Redgrave, back in town less
then a year after starring in “The Constant Wife” on Broadway.

“The way I see it is that Americans move much better than
we do, and we talk much better than they do,” Margolyes said.

“The vocal control and training is very good in England but
I don’t think the English can dance or put over a musical the
way Americans do,” she said in an interview.

The full-scale import of the British cast for “History
Boys” required special negotiations with Actors Equity which
has strict rules on foreigners on Broadway and usually requires
it to be part of a strict one-for-one exchange program.

“There were complaints by members who feel that we are
giving away jobs,” said Alan Eisenberg, executive director of
the union.

Marquee stars such as Ralph Fiennes, who opens in “Faith
Healer” on May 4, are not restricted by such rules but Riedel
said producers often have little choice but to recast the rest
of the show, often losing the “alchemy” of the original.

Riedel said Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s “Shining
City,” which opens on May 9 with an American cast, was one such
case. “I hope it doesn’t fall victim to what happened to
‘Festen,”‘ he said, referring to the dark family drama that won
only mixed reviews, failing to match its London buzz.