View from the Bridge

Tinseltown teams up with the finest talents of the British stage
in a daring double bill at London's Old Vic

It has been comparatively rare to see British and American actors together on stage either in London or New York. Whereas performers are regularly cast together on screen, the understandable, if sometimes inflexible, desire of British and American actors' unions to safeguard their members' jobs on home turf has made international casting something of a thorny issue.

For an American actor to star in the West End and for his British counterpart to headline on Broadway has led in the past to some rather undignified horse-trading between the two versions of Equity.
The Bridge Project, which until August 15 is staging productions of The Cherry Orchard and The Winter's Tale at London's Old Vic, aims to unite the two theatre communities in one company. And who better than Sam Mendes, returning to the London stage for the first time since stepping down from running the Donmar Warehouse, to lead this transatlantic venture? After all, his career in theatre and cinema stands as a handy symbol for the close ties within Anglo-American cultural circles.

Mendes followed the classic British stage route from Cambridge to freelancing at the RSC and National Theatre, but he has long been an honorary nephew of Uncle Sam. His film career, from his Oscar-winning debut in American Beauty to Revolutionary Road, reflects his fascination with America and he is now largely based in New York.

There are three components in the Bridge Project: Neal Street Productions, which Mendes runs with his long-time associate, Caro Newling; the Brooklyn Academy of Music, known as BAM; and the Old Vic, now the responsibility of Kevin Spacey, the Academy Award-winning star of American Beauty. In addition, the project has toured extensively to cities including Madrid, Auckland and Singapore and each of the receiving theatres has contributed to the funding of its productions.

The 18-strong company reflects the cultural mix as Tinseltown rubs shoulders with the cream of the British stage. So we have Simon Russell Beale, the acclaimed Shakespearean actor, matched with Ethan Hawke, Hollywood star but also New York stage actor and published author. Sinead Cusack, a member of Ireland's premier acting dynasty, is joined by Rebecca Hall, daughter of Sir Peter Hall, and most recently seen on screen in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Arguably, the Bridge is a further development of the leaving present that Mendes gave to himself on his departure from the Donmar. Then, as now, he brought Chekhov and Shakespeare together and Russell Beale combined the title role in Uncle Vanya with Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

"I tend to say yes whenever Sam rings me with an idea," he reveals. "He was quite open about it. He wanted to work with the actors he knew from London and from New York. Was there a way, he wondered, that he could mix and match? And so it started."

Had there been any noticeable national differences in the rehearsal room? Did the Brits and the Yanks approach the job in a significantly different way? "I think that the main differences were nothing to do with nationality. It was more a case of those who were more experienced and those who were less experienced. When we were working on The Winter's Tale, we, the Brits, were challenged from day one: it wasn't a case of Simon Russell Beale having all the answers because of all my Shakespeare work. Ethan hadn't done as much Shakespeare as some of us and you could say that he tended to use a more Method-based approach when he was working on the construction of his characterisation. We've been together for so long, and especially since we've been touring, that I don't think of the other actors as English or American or Sinead as Irish or Richard Easton as Canadian. They are just actors."

How would Russell Beale compare the two theatre cultures? "BAM has always been a safety zone for me. I love it. Audiences come prepared for what they're going to see. They work at it and in that way BAM is a bit like a subsidised theatre such as the National," he says. "Broadway has a much bigger sense of its own values than the West End does and a much clearer idea of its history and character. Yet I also get the impression that both London and New York tend to idealise each other. Several New Yorkers have told me that people in England go to the theatre every day; it's part of their daily bread, they say. I don't like to tell them that we don't."

In assembling the Bridge Project, Caro Newling compares herself to "an engineer", assembling all the pieces of what she describes as "a jigsaw". And she made one particular contribution to the enterprise.
"I had spent so much of my time crossing Waterloo Bridge to get to the Old Vic and going across Brooklyn Bridge to reach BAM that I suggested that we call it the Bridge Project."

It has, she says, been two to three years of steady forward movement. Part of the jigsaw concerned the division of responsibilities, which were allocated equally to London and New York. "The set was built in both countries," says Newling. "Sam had an English designer but an American composer. Both sets of unions embraced the idea from the get-go: it was then a matter of working out the details. But we did have to take account of the differences in the two theatre cultures. British actors are used to making long commitments, say to the RSC or a tour. But American actors and their agents were incredulous when we said what it would involve. 'Nine months?', they asked in disbelief. Yet the New York actors who came to see the productions at BAM are now thinking that it's not so outlandish."

Creatively, argues Newling, such cross-cultural casting has paid undoubted dividends. "It's difficult to put it into words, what you feel when you see the shows. Suffice it to say that there has been huge excitement generated by the bringing together of these two theatre DNAs and the result has been something very joyous."

Veteran Canadian actor Richard Easton jokes that he has had another function apart from his acting duties. "As Sinead, who's Irish, has said, she and I are the real bridges in this project, linking the Brits and the Americans."

And Easton is grateful for the presence of Hawke in the cast and the Hollywood fame he brings in his wake. "It's been useful to be seen in public with Ethan. Queuing for visas or waiting for a table in restaurants is a thing of the past. Everybody recognises him and suddenly doors are open."

The Bridge Project is an example of healthy cross-fertilisation and it may create a climate in which British and US actors are constantly passing each other on the metaphorical bridge that Mendes, Newling, Spacey and their colleagues have constructed across the Pond. It is a considerable achievement.

Al Senter