Directors tropes, gimmicks and trademarks

Could have named the thread One Trick Ponies 🐎

Well Yael Farber is the mistress of gimmicks. Some of the most noticeable are the character who walks around the stage for the entire play and the women singing/wailing at random moments

Laurence Connor's trademark is being derivative and creating low budget versions of the work of better directors

Rock and a hard place a bit for Larry I think. He's Cameron and Andy's "boy", over whom they would appear to leverage absolute control.

I think it's definitely true that some of the blocking and pacing problems in Cinderella would've been squashed by a better director, but the piece was too far gone to cure with shuffling bodies on stage around. It needed a whole new book and some new songs before even looking at how the story got told. Not even Grandage or Prince could've made a hit of that mess - the state of it.

School of Rock was okay if unspectacular - certainly competent. Miss Saigon was excellent until the cast change, which I doubt he helped cast or put into the show (and killed the run).

Everything else has been copy-pasted, budget trash.

Wallpaper??

Another couple - Michael Grandage loves boxes and rearranging of said boxes by cast in "live" scene changes. David Thacker up at the Bolton Octagon seemed obsessed with practical props - this one did make some sense, as the smallish venue is in the round and you're rather close. It did seem limited however to mundane home appliances... Irons, microwaves, kettles...

Cheating a bit in my own thread, because it was when he's acting, but I've seen Branagh spit on the floor in three separate plays to show fury/desperation (Ivanov, Richard III, The Entertainer). I'd add Kerry Ellis tucking her hair behind her ears, Jérôme Pradon sticking his chin out when holding a long note and Biggins mugging like the genie from Extras in absolutely everything.

If we’re going there I’m throwing in Alexandra Burke sticking her finger in her ear when she needs to hit a difficult note! 😄

Good luck! I had something similar with Welsh National Opera. I started seeing them in 2004 when I went to university in Bristol, one of their tour venues, and even after I finished uni in 2007 I went back twice a year for several years to see their productions, most of which were fairly traditional. Then in 2012 there was a change in artistic director & the general production style likewise changed to something much less traditional. Since then I've only seen a couple of their productions, & those were ones dating from before the AD change that were being revived.

A number of things frustrate me about certain contemporary directors:

1 - They don't trust the source material

If you don't fully love a play or musical for what the authors intended then don't direct it.

Don't seek to 'improve' or 'reimagine' so that you can tell your own story.

If you want to tell that story, find a writer, commission a script and then stage it.

2 - Their work needs explanation

If, as a theatregoer, you need to read an article in the programme to understand what the director is trying to achieve, then the director has failed.

The work must be comprehensible from the auditorium without further explanation or clarification.

3 - They think they are more important than the actors or the writer(s).

The director is there to serve the audience and the text by collaborating with the actors and the creatives to deliver a satisfying piece of theatre.

Directors are not there to show off or make it all about them. That is just arrogance.

A good director can have tropes or gimmicks as much as they like as long as they are deployed to serve the piece they are directing.

What I want from a director is someone who has clearly thought about and researched the script. Someone who approaches things with an open mind and not closed ideas. Someone who allows the actors and the script to shine. Someone who doesn't impose themselves on the text or the audience.

The best direction is probably where the audience doesn't even notice the hand of the director. The piece just works seamlessly from start to finish. Only later do you appreciate the work that went into creating it.

One show that exemplifies that for me is the original run of Jerusalem. At no point were you taken out of the world of the play. Everything flowed from page to stage. And the audiences reacted with huge enthusiasm.

The work that Ian Rickson did was not 'in your face' directing. He brought together the talents in the cast and crew and clearly created working relationships that delivered excellence. I haven't seen the current revival but I imagine that they have built on that original work to achieve new insights.

Not showy. Just great.

Emma Rice loves a neon sign

Rebecca Frecknall loves wooden chairs.

Lots of directors share this love, especially when said chairs can be knocked over to indicate moderate emotion & thrown across the stage to indicate strong emotion!


Sounds rather like improv!

I do miss a good, proper set with rooms and staircases and furniture. Last year’s Blithe Spirit wasn’t that great but ooh it had a lovely set. I can forgive a lot if there’s a lovely set.

Robert Icke: revolutionising British theatre or what you’d get if you bought Ivo van Hove on Wish? Don’t know but quite liked the wind tunnel effect in Oresteia.

I don’t go to the opera much and hardly ever outside of London but whenever I do it’s always… interesting? I saw a wonderfully bonkers Merry Widow in Stockholm where the widow was a famed soprano and the three men courting her the artistic directors of three leading Scandinavian opera houses, and at one point a character who was supposed to be a British “enfant terrible” director directed a play within the opera that was literally that terrible NT Macbeth with all the black rubbish sacks. Didn’t understand a thing but great fun! Though it opened with Brunnhilde greeting the sun so I spent the first 15 mins panicking that I was in the wrong opera house.

Paris Opera Les Troyens but set in a mental institute with a key aria performed while the leads were playing ping pong was a low light.

Had never heard of Regietheater before (so thank you for contributing to my theatre education!) but googling it brings up this delightfully bitchy article
www.city-journal.org/html/abduction-opera-13034.html

Cheek by Jowl have been masters of wooden chair staging since the early 1980s - characters unstacking them, moving them around, sitting on them while they are not in the scene and so on. This has influenced many other directors, like Rebecca Frecknall mentioned above.

Katie Mitchell can be a bit of a chair merchant too but of course her trademarks are slow-motion, speed-up motion, long pauses, and reverse motion.

Philip Prowse used to dress every single character in black.

RSC house style, all directors, is to provide a helpful obscene mime when there is any sexual reference in the text. The hug and mutual back-pat must also always be deployed when two soldiers meet.

It is mandatory in a Richard Jones production that the set should be off-kilter and primary colours - preferably day-glo - should be used.