The remarkable late blooming of John Doyle’s career has taken everyone, not least the demure director himself, by surprise. Bizarrely, he might have Margaret Thatcher to thank. Back in the dark days of the early 1990s, when arts budgets for regional theatre were so straitened, Doyle decided to stage Leonard Bernstein’s Candide at the Liverpool Everyman. Not having the money for a large cast and orchestra, he hit on the idea of amalgamating the two. Thus was born his trademark use of the “actor-musician”.
Financial necessity became an aesthetic virtue, and today, the 53-year-old finds himself courted by some of the most powerful producers in transatlantic theatre. His fortunes turned on a bald re-imagining of Stephen Sondheim’s bloodied gem of a musical, Sweeney Todd. Originally rehearsed in a fish and chip shop in Newbury and given its premiere in the tiny Watermill Theatre in Berkshire, it transferred first to the West End and then to Broadway. It also earned Doyle a crop of awards, including, in June, the Tony for Best Director.
But the Scottish-born Doyle is not getting carried away by all the “silly hooplah . . . Don’t get me wrong,” he says, “I’ve loved every last gin martini of the Broadway experience, but it hasn’t changed me or my work. Look at where we are now. It’s wonderful, but it’s hardly glamorous.” He has a point. We’re in the gloriously decaying Wilton’s Music Hall in East London, where Doyle is readying a really rather modest production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus.
It feels as though the actor-musician concept might be stretched a little far here. Finding the actor who can play not only the role but the music of Mozart is, surely, something of an outlandish ask. “It does present some challenges,” Doyle concedes, “but it also allows you to make very interesting choices.” Jonathan Broadbent plays the lead role. He is a talented pianist who, Doyle admits, “is not Mozart. But he does very well, bless him. It’s not a full orchestration, we only ever hint at the music, which people anyway know so well.”
The star pull of the production is Matthew Kelly, who plays Salieri, though, disappointingly, nothing else. “Out of choice Matthew is the only actor who doesn’t pick up an instrument at all.” Doyle wanted to visualise the haunting barrenness of the narrator and his jealousy of Mozart’s musicality. “And this incredible, echoing space is perfect for the play. The building itself is almost like an old man, looking back.”
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If past productions are anything to go by, a West End run for Amadeus is likely. But the danger, of which Doyle is only too aware, is that his actor-musician formula may become formulaic. “I made a decision that it was better to be known for doing one type of theatre than not to be known at all. And I like the aesthetic of the actor-musician. It’s a way of giving theatre back to the storyteller, and because it’s deliberately non-naturalistic it’s a way of forcing the audience to engage their imaginations.”
Immediately after Amadeus opens, Doyle will be back on a plane to oversee the transfer of his Cincinnati production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company to Broadway. “But I can do other things,” he says, “and I like to do other things, which is why it’s so exciting that I’ve been asked to direct two operas.” The Brecht-Weill opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Los Angeles and Lucia di Lammermoor for Scottish Opera will both open next year.
When reeling off these epic projects, Doyle’s Presbyterian eyebrows still raise in bemused disbelief. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I do occasionally think, well how did this happen? From a council house in Inverness to the red carpets of Broadway and collaborations with Stephen Sondheim. The odd thing is that for most of my career I was considered a safe pair of hands. I ran four regional theatres and I’ve directed over 200 plays in my time, and people would say, ‘Oh, book John, he knows how to get a show together.’ And now suddenly in New York, at the age of 53, I’m considered this enfant terrible of European theatre.”
Doyle briefly thought about being a priest and also trained as a teacher. Both seem entirely possible when you meet him. If you make a mistake, he corrects you quietly but insistently. And when he speaks about revolutionising the “empty pyrotechnics” of modern musical theatre, there is also something of the missionary about him. An enfant terrible he is not. Instead he is proud to be a role model for the rewards of persistence: “I’m glad it’s taken me so long to find this kind of success, because I like being the living proof that it is never too late. For everybody out there who keeps knocking on closed doors I say keep on knocking. You just never know when the door will open.”