by It’s late in the morning and a big star is kicking out. “Turn on the lights, for fuck’s sake!” she rages on stage. Her fists are clenched, her tanned, tattooed hands sticking out of a sleeveless royal blue dress, and her locks are dyed a burnt brunette. When her demand is fulfilled, the star passes in front of the wide, high-ceilinged room and moves to a more refined program. “Humilia-hitting!” she trilled, making the last syllable ring like a bell. As laughter fills the air, she slips out of character, her body visibly relaxing. This woman is no longer Myrtle Gordon, the sozzled Broadway legend getting worse on the eve of her latest show, but Sheridan Smith, the double Olivier-winning star of the musical Legally Blonde, who left her own troubles recently she felt she has something to do. create.
The new musical – called Opening Night and adapted by Ivo van Hove and Rufus Wainwright from John Cassavetes’ blistering 1977 film – may be just the ticket. “It’s so close to the bone,” says the 42-year-old, taking a break from rehearsals in this London studio. “The curtain has really been brought down on me. I’ve been through that kind of crisis.” Myrtle – played fiercely and fearlessly onscreen by Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes’ wife – stars in The Second Woman, a melodrama that is going through out-of-town previews before its spectacular New York premiere. Myrtle fears that she has lost her youth, her grip on the role, and her mind more than ever. Her sanity becomes even more precarious after a fan is beaten and killed outside the theater. Soon she sees the dead girl everywhere.
There was no support team back then. It was just: ‘Get on stage!’
Now regarded as a masterpiece, Opening Night was set upon when it was first released in the US, playing to a handful of nearly empty cinemas. But he is a subject of lasting interest because of his wit and wit. Van Hove previously staged a non-musical version in 2008, Isabelle Adjani played Myrtle in a 2019 comeback production, and Ruth Wilson (opposite 100 consecutive male co-stars) gave a 24-hour play based on a single scene from Opening Night. to the Young Vic in London last year.
Maybe Opening Night has become relevant to us all, not just actors, as our public and private selves have blurred in the age of social media. Smith’s own crisis is well documented. Struggling with self-doubt, anxiety and alcohol, as well as grief over her father’s cancer diagnosis and eventual death, she came out publicly playing Fanny Brice in Funny Girl in 2016. “Getting the script was a sign for Opening Night,” she says. “I knew I had to do the play as a way to gain control over what I went through. I felt so ashamed by then. I have to prove that I am not that person. It was very cathartic.”
She worried that aspects of Myrtle’s story might be offensive. “But there are therapists here that you can talk to,” she says. “It’s very different to when I had the disaster eight years ago. There was no support staff there. It was just, ‘Go on stage!'” That’s what happens to Myrtle on Opening Night, when she arrives at work that’s practically imperceptible, only to be put in front of an audience with nothing but black coffee to tide her over. keep safe. “Life imitates art,” says Smith. “I’m in a stronger place now. We find the truth about a scene, then shake it off and go home. Ivo doesn’t bother you in your life.”
Watching the 65-year-old director – fresh from a recent production of Jesus Christ Superstar in Amsterdam, as well as last year’s sold-out run of A Little Life in London – it’s easy to believe he’s a stabilizing presence. Thin as a swimming pool tip, hair the color of chalk dust, Smith walks calmly between scenes, palms pressed together or one hand thoughtfully raised to her chin. He has sages, priests – if he wasn’t giving guidance, he could be taking confessions.
Meanwhile, sitting behind a trestle table with the script open in front of him is 50-year-old Wainwright, dressed in a salmon hoodie and sporting a badger-like beard. Judy Garland’s sonnet-turning, musical-writing musical politics has long been emulating Opening Night: he even starred as Myrtle in the video for her 2012 single Out of the Game. “It’s a film I’ve seen many times,” he says. “It changed my life every time I watched it again, because I realize that I am involved in new aspects that take maturity to understand.”
Like Smith, Opening Night represents a form of personal redemption for Wainwright. “Before this, I was very depressed. I was in Australia and I said, ‘I need something to get me through the day: a song, a poem, a phone call.’ Opening Night came to mind: the film – and Gena Rowlands’ performance. It was really almost a matter of life and death. I wasn’t going to kill myself but I was at a very tough point. I then came home and Ivo suggested we do an Open Night.” How exactly did the film pull him through? “That hairdo was a lot of it,” he laughs. “And that stare of hers. The world is so dark and she’s trying to get through it.”
Van Hove has adapted Cassavetes several times before, including a performance of Faces in which audience members watched on the beds, but he does not consult the film versions of any of his adaptations . In fact, he hasn’t seen Opening Night yet. “I have to feel that we can create something unique,” he says. The introduction of music has changed its entire dynamic. “There is unity. You don’t have scenes followed by songs. One blends into the other, so it feels normal when people start singing.”
Myrtle flees to her mirror with a light bulb – and the ghost of her dead fan takes her place on stage
That is clear from the article being practiced today. It begins with Myrtle going off script and flying into a frenzy as the ghost of her dead fan Nancy looks on, dressed in a ripped denim jacket, white lace dress and black Chelsea boots, twirling a rose in her hand. When Myrtle escapes to her dressing room and sits at her mirror with a light bulb, Nancy – played by Shira Haas – takes her place on stage, screaming at the feet of Myrtle’s unsightly co-star. It’s not just song and dialogue that blow into each other here: all the boundaries are porous, from the divisions between stage and backstage to the line that separates the spiritual from the corporeal.
Those focused on Van Hove’s work will not be surprised to find that the video features prominently, with a crew on stage filming Myrtle for a behind-the-scenes documentary, the images from their projected live feed behind the actors. “You have to make choices as an audience,” the director explains. “You have to look actively.”
By the end of the passage, Wainwright has advised the musicians in the corner about one of the guitar cues – “Make it dissonant and ugly” – and led the company in singing the show’s ethereal refrain-cum-overture. Manny, the director of the play-within-a-play, gives a rousing address, sliding between speech and song, cheering on the troops with the words: “We get paid to express ourselves on stage – and part of it is pain that.”
Van Hove steps in to emphasize this point. Yes, he explains, it’s a pep talk, but it’s not just that: it comes from Manny’s heart, just as Mark Antony’s speech in Julius Caesar comes from his. “Outside is Gaza, outside is Ukraine. But here, Manny is saying, ‘We’re creating something meaningful that could affect the world out there.’” Hadley Fraser, who plays Manny, is broken by the respectful tone that has descended on the room. “Now, Ivo,” he says, “if you can sing that…”
When I next see Van Hove, he is smearing antiseptic gel over one of his palms. “I put my pencil in my hand,” he says with a wince. “It was very emotional.” Well, Manny said that pain is part of the theater. The main image from the morning’s exercises, however, is Van Hove watching over his company like a proud father as their voices rise together. “It’s called a play about a theater family,” he says. “Families and how they function play a big part in what I do.”
That will apply more than ever to his upcoming adaptation of The Shining, which is set to hit the stage next year with Ben Stiller as Jack Torrance, the ultimate flawed patriarch that Jack Nicholson immortalized on screen. “Everyone thinks of the Kubrick film, which for me is a masterpiece,” says Van Hove, before mentioning its author. “But Stephen King hated it. When I reread the book, I could understand why. The first 100 pages are gone. And that’s when you see that the father has his problems. That’s why they go to the hotel so he can be alone and write. What I have done is go back to the book. It will be very different from Kubrick.”
And its ghosts, unstable creative types and harrowing mental breakdown, however, not so different from Opening Night.
• There is an Open Night at the Gielgud Theatre, London, from 6 March to 27 July
