← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Adapting 'Sabbath's Theater' with John Turturro and Ariel Levy
00:23:20
In Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater, a former puppet-maker is forced to confront his troubled past. Now at The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre through December 17.
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- [00:00]
McDonald's Customer
I' ma put you on, nephew.
- [00:01]
Aria Levy
All right, unc.
- [00:02]
Alison Stewart
Welcome to McDonald's.
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Aria Levy
Can I take your order, miss?
- [00:04]
McDonald's Customer
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
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Aria Levy
New markdowns up to 70% off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now.
- [00:20]
Alison Stewart
Why do I rack all the dresses?
- [00:23]
Aria Levy
Because fall equals sweaters. Because I always find something amazing. Plus, join the NordicLub at Nordstrom Rack to unlock exclusive discounts on your favorite brands.
- [00:34]
McDonald's Customer
Get an extra 5% off every rack.
- [00:37]
Aria Levy
Purchase with your Nordstrom credit card and more. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.
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John Turturro
Listener supported WNYC Studios.
- [01:01]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. There's a note on the program for the play Sabbath Theater that says in part, quote, please note this production contains nudity, sexual situations, strong and graphic language and discussions of suicide. The play, based on Philip Roth's novel of the same name is not for the pearl clutching set. It starts with two people having sex. Loudly. The more appropriate description would be the F word that we can't say because of FCC rules. This couple, Dranka and Mickey, have been having fair for more than a decade. They may be each other's carnal soulmates. When Dranka dies, it sends Mickey into a tailspin. Not that he needs much help turning and churning up his life. Once a puppeteer, this multiply married Mickey Sabbath is. He can be wildly inappropriate, sexually minded and can be stimulated almost anywhere. Played with gusto by our next guest, John Turturro. We watch as Mickey contemplates life, death and loss. The loss of his lover, his family and his sense of purpose. The work was adapted by Turturro and New Yorker staff writer Aria Levy. The new group's production of Sabbath's Theater is now running at the Pershing Square Signature center at 480 W. 42nd St. And it has been extended until Dec. 17 with several talk back opportunities with the cast and creatives. And John and Ariel are in studio. So nice to see you again, John.
- [02:23]
John Turturro
Nice to see you, Alison.
- [02:24]
Alison Stewart
And nice to meet you, Ariel.
- [02:25]
Aria Levy
Nice to meet you too.
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Alison Stewart
So John, you and Philip Roth were friends?
- [02:29]
John Turturro
Yes, yes. I mean he. I guess he selected me many years ago to. Or he asked me to do a one man show of Portnoy's Complaint after he saw me in Quiz show and then we worked on it. I did a stage reading and then I worked alone in his studio with him, which was quite intimidating. And we never did it because we couldn't decide on the director. And I was, you know, doing various projects. And he was actually very helpful because he had interviewed Primo Levi. And I was working on this Primo Levi film for about five years. I worked on it called LA the Truce, about his return from Auschwitz home, the 10 month odyssey that he had. And I did it a couple years after that. But Philip was very helpful with me, so that kind of connected us. And then, even though we didn't do it, and then he decided he didn't want to do do that book anymore, we kept talking. And I always thought that theater would be a great expression because you can use the author's language, whereas in a film they usually rewrite it and dilute it.
- [03:43]
Alison Stewart
Did he speak the way he writes?
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John Turturro
No, he was very. I would describe him as sort of a human vacuum cleaner. He would want to know everything about you. And he was very funny and he could imitate people really well. So, no, he was really quite erudite in many ways.
- [04:08]
Alison Stewart
Ariel, what was your first interaction with Sabbath Theatre?
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Aria Levy
Well, I had always loved the book because I think that the emphasis on the venal urge, the sexual urge, the nasty side of existence, as Roth writes, as an urgent, as a kind of not the antidote to death, but the thing that keeps you alive, you know, that's some of the life force. It just always seemed spot on to me. It just always rang true. And as John has said, as we've been working on this, both of us have had the deaths of people close to us and the book, and we hope the play, you know, our hope is that the play also will really pass the smell test of what it means to grieve, what it means to be a human being and experience loss.
- [04:55]
Alison Stewart
This is your first adaptation of play. Well, what made you say yes to the project?
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Aria Levy
Well, if one of your favorite actors says, do you want to collaborate on adapting the work of one of your favorite writers? Like, you kind of say yes. So I did. It wasn't like much of a dilemma.
- [05:11]
Alison Stewart
You really didn't. You didn't think it. You didn't think it over?
- [05:13]
Aria Levy
No, I know I sound like Sarah Palin when John McCain asked her to. And she was like, you remember? I remember. She was like, you can't blink. And I really took that to heart. No, I'm kidding. But no, I didn't think twice. I thought, of course I want to try to do this.
- [05:29]
John Turturro
Yeah. Well, it was Hilton Als who recommended Ari, and he's the sort of the yenta who brought us together.
- [05:37]
Aria Levy
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
John, why did you think this book would be good theater?
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John Turturro
Well, I went to Phillips Memorial, and then I had lunch with Andrew Wylie. And Andrew knew I was a big reader of Roth, and I'm just a reader. Not as big a reader as you are, Alison. I've seen your bag of books. But he gave me the book, and he said, have you ever read this one? I said, no. He said, maybe you would like it. And I read it, and some of it, I was just like, oh, my God, I can't believe he's saying all these things. And I have since recorded it this summer as sort of a. They wanted to do a new audio version. And I did it, but. But then there were things in it that made me laugh and laugh. And I thought the depth of it was an interesting balance with all the nastiness and all the sex. And I don't think I would have wanted to adapt it if there wasn't this great love story and that this man who's this failure is still capable of loving another human being. And I thought, wow, that really kind of makes us look at it differently, you know, instead of the typical, you know, kind of relationship that is sort of, you know, rendered. And so that's what attracted me. And I can't speak for Ari.
- [07:03]
Aria Levy
Oh, yes, you can.
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John Turturro
Well, it seemed to attract her, too. We had a meeting of the same minds.
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Alison Stewart
We would highlight.
- [07:11]
Aria Levy
We would, you know, go our separate ways and highlight the stuff we thought we wanted to use. And then we would look and we would have highlighted the same things it was. We both had the same idea of this love story is what is gonna propel us through the. And it's what propels you through the book, too, or what propelled us through the book.
- [07:26]
John Turturro
Right.
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Alison Stewart
What skills, as a journalist were you able to apply to this, if any?
- [07:30]
Aria Levy
Well, the thing that I kind of learned through this process, to my surprise, is that, you know, the laws of narrative are sort of stable. You tell a story. Telling a story requires the same sense of narrative arc and propulsive motion and economy and whatever the form is that you're using. So I think all the skills transferred. Except I didn't have to interview anyone, but I had. Sometimes I had to talk to you.
- [08:03]
John Turturro
Yeah, well, we read it out loud to each other. She read Sabbath. I read Drenko. We would switch back and forth, and, you know, it was really a delightful sort of collaboration.
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Aria Levy
It's a good time.
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John Turturro
Yeah. We really got along really well. And it was just A nice feeling that we had. And then we did a reading of it and continued to work on it for the last couple years.
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Aria Levy
And it was like a funny thing because sometimes I remember once being on the train to go somewhere, and John called me. And so my phone yells out, like, john Turturro. And then he's saying the filthiest stuff you've ever heard. Do you think we should say this or this? And so I'm saying, on the thing, John, I think we should say this.
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John Turturro
I remember that.
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Aria Levy
Do you remember?
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John Turturro
I remember that. I just had to share that with you.
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Aria Levy
You gotta decide which way we're gonna.
- [08:53]
John Turturro
Yeah. I mean, we did take a lot of stuff out our first reading. People were just like, whoa. You know, and, you know, and I also think it was. It's a good antidote right now because you're showing the human animal right out there. You're not trying to hide from it. And you're saying, but then this person is still a human being, you know what I mean? Who has all these wounds, like a wounded, you know, animal.
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Aria Levy
An animal. That's a key word, I think, because there's a lot about sex, but there's a lot about other things that have to do with the human animal body. There's a lot about, you know, the way a body rots and what keeps a body going and the humiliations of aging and the pain of losing not just other people, but parts of yourself, you know?
- [09:42]
John Turturro
Right.
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Alison Stewart
My guests are John Turturro and Aria Levy. We're talking about Sabbath Theater, which is at Pershing Square Signature Center. It has been extended until 17th. What's something that both of you understand about Philip Roth's writing now or understand better having worked on this project?
- [10:00]
Aria Levy
Hmm.
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John Turturro
I think the sense of loss, the depth of it, the haunting, you know, the gold standard of losing a brother who was 20 years old and never seeing his body, you know, and what that did to his family and what it did to him. I think he really. Having lost a lot of people and being of a certain age, it really resonates with me. I don't even have to reach for it. Sometimes I have to push it away. It's so strong. And so that, I think, is something he was in touch with when he was writing it.
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Aria Levy
Just hearing you say that makes me. The other day, I was looking at my phone and seeing how many voicemails I have from different dead people at this point that, you know, I'll never be able to delete. And just the way losses accumulate as you go through life, and in this play for Sabbath, the dead are much more real than the living most of the time. And that, I think, is the vivid experience of grief that everybody has at some point.
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Alison Stewart
This takes place in 1994. What did you have to remind yourself about 1994?
- [11:13]
John Turturro
No cell phones, you know, answering machines. I mean, in some ways, he's. He was kind of ahead of the loop, you know. I mean, you know, he is disgraced and canceled, you know, and he's rages against that and everything like that. I mean, you know, it's not really unfair. You know, he just gets caught and. But what attracted me was that he was powerless, basically. He wasn't a man who was. Had power, you know, and so I like that it was the opposite of Roth. In his next book, American Pastoral, he writes the Swede, who's this really responsible, lovely man who life crushes. So this is the opposite of that. But I just was attracted to the freedom of the book, that he didn't seem to care if he only had 30 readers read it. He's so free, and he jumps from, you know, 30 years back in, like, a sentence. And I was like, wow, there's something kind of miraculously also theatrical about it.
- [12:19]
Alison Stewart
So the character of Mickey, you know, the official New York times review in 95 was a bit of an outlier. Didn't like the book, you know, even though it won a National Book Award.
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John Turturro
Yeah. But the New York Times Book Review loved it. Yes, it was hilarious.
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Alison Stewart
It was interesting. There are two very conflicting reviews in the Times that.
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John Turturro
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Alison Stewart
Which is which? It gets to the character a little bit, you know. You know, Mickey does some really horrible things.
- [12:42]
John Turturro
Oh, yeah.
- [12:43]
Alison Stewart
You can. You can understand. It can be a explanation, not an excuse for his behavior in certain ways. Do you find him likable or unlikable, or does that not even really matter?
- [12:54]
John Turturro
Well, you know, I think he's a human. He's a human animal. He's a human being. And I think Ari and I, our adaptation kind of gets to the core of it. There are things in the book that, you know, when I recorded it, I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe, like, I'm saying this, you know, but it's a story, you know, And I think we had to kind of just find the kernel of that or the heart of that. So for me, you know, the child that he is is still there. And, yes, there are things that I would go, well, I'm not like that, you know, but that I could give and be fearless and do something like that and show that and also maybe involve you in it in whatever way you're involved in it is a big challenge. And especially when there's a real strong intelligence behind it. And I don't usually get a chance to do that. You know, I don't get a chance to say, you know, to get where you have to go, the extent of the mistakes you're required to make. I mean, there are some beautiful, beautiful passages. And it just pierces your heart when you share that with an audience because you, too, have those experiences, you know, and so I don't know if that was an answer to your question.
- [14:21]
Aria Levy
There was an amazing essay that John and I both love by the writer, the fiction writer Garth Greenwell, about the book and about how his students, when he's teaching it, will say, you know, this is horrifying. This is immoral. And his point is that the morality of the book is showing us that all human beings are more than their worst action. There's a whole human existence. There's a who. Complex character there. And that's part of the function, I would think, of literature and of art and of theater, is to bring you into other realities. And they don't have to be the real. You know, it doesn't have. Everybody doesn't have to be the Swede. Everybody doesn't have to be a moral example of who you want to be when you grow up.
- [15:02]
John Turturro
Right. And I also like that there is really no violence.
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Aria Levy
There's no violence.
- [15:06]
John Turturro
And I think that that's, you know, we live in a puritanical country. I think I always think of it as junior high school. Like a stunted sexuality in this country. And sometimes the more honest the conversation is, the more interesting it is. And it's healthy in many ways to say, okay, well, I wouldn't do that, but I can understand, you know, why someone would maybe do that, you know, and that interests me, that people can actually, you know, connect with each other. I think that's a miracle.
- [15:39]
Aria Levy
And it's a love story and a story about carnality between two equal sexual adventurers, two collaborators. You know, he loses. When he loses the love of his life, he loses his collaborator in dirtiness. And that's a relationship based on equality. It's not a relationship based on exploitation.
- [15:59]
Alison Stewart
No, they're carnal soulmates.
- [16:00]
Aria Levy
That's what I kept thinking about, carnal soulmates.
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Alison Stewart
I'm gonna talk about you like you're not here for a second, John. So someone asked me, should I see this play. And I said, you know. Yes, because John Turturro's charisma brings this to stage. Like, I won't say what actor. I said, if they were playing the role, I wouldn't go see this play. But it's partly because of John. I think it's part of the reason this succeeds. What did he bring out, in the words that you think makes a success? Because I think part of his talent and charisma as an actor is why we can think about Mickey's humanity.
- [16:35]
Aria Levy
I think that's exactly right. In the play, Mickey says about a woman who he gets interested in. There was stature in this woman. Mockery play. Well, there's stature in John Turturro and mockery and play. He has the intelligence and the depth and the sensitivity, along with a little bit of the devil in him. Right. You know, and you need all. You need all of that. You need a passionate fellow. And we got one.
- [17:04]
John Turturro
Well, I credit my mother. I do. My mother, you know, she never inhibited me. And so maybe that's what Philip, you know, saw in me.
- [17:17]
Aria Levy
Absolutely.
- [17:18]
John Turturro
I don't know that sometimes there's a ying and a yang, you know, you can, like, get underneath someone else's, you know, intellectual, you know, mind. So I've always liked doing challenging things, and I feel like it challenges me and challenges the audience. And I know I like to see that stuff sometimes because I go, oh, wow, I would never do that. But that's really. I understand that now better. So that's part of storytelling, I guess.
- [17:50]
Alison Stewart
So we're talking about Sabbath Theater, which is at the Pershing Square signature Center until December 17th. Recently extended. I'm talking to John Turturro and co writer Ariel Levy. So there are two other cast mates. We should shout them out. Excellent. Seasoned actors Elizabeth Marvel and Jason Kravitz. And they play all the other roles. Is it 16?
- [18:10]
Aria Levy
If you say so.
- [18:11]
Alison Stewart
Okay. I believe it is. So Elizabeth plays your wife, your lover, a lady you bother on the train, a cemetery plot keeper. Why have the actors play multiple roles?
- [18:25]
John Turturro
Well, go ahead.
- [18:26]
Aria Levy
Well, for the women in particular, you know, I think we thought it would amplify the sense that's very much pervasive through the book that in your life you kind of come across different versions of the same thing. Like, you know, and sometimes it can be eerie where you think, wait, who am I having this conversation with you, who I'm looking at, or the person you remind me of? And so we thought that having, you know, one, particularly for the female Roles that having one actor, one actress perform all those roles would amplify that sense of echo.
- [19:00]
John Turturro
Right. And Elizabeth is incredible, marvelous that way. And, yeah, it's kind of scary sometimes to see her and all these different people, I'm looking at them think, I think I know her. You know, I know her somewhere. And so we thought that was innately theatrical and also economical.
- [19:20]
Aria Levy
And seeing her, you get to see her. I don't think Jason has to change characters in real time. Beth does. You see her change characters on stage, and it's remarkable.
- [19:33]
Alison Stewart
There's an incredible tenderness between Mickey and his 100-year-old relative. It's just that. That is like one of the. It's the sweetest to me part of the story. How does that moment help us understand.
- [19:49]
Aria Levy
Mickey Moore?
- [19:50]
John Turturro
Well, he sees someone who he's related to, who knows his whole family. You know, when Mickey dies, all those people die, all the memory of them die, and he says, you know, to have someone say, you know, I was there. You know, I swear we all were alive to hear him say that. And I know that feeling. I know that feeling. And I think it's a beautiful scene, that scene into the scene, you know, with Drenka, you know, when she's in the hospital. Those were two of Roth's favorite things that he. That he had ever written. He said, you know, he'd hold that up as some of his best writing. And then it just resonates with you when you. When you do it. You just, you know, he says, I don't recognize you. He said, that's okay. I was a kid, and, you know, we all have that inside of us. And to see him get unmasked that way, I was like, wow, this is beyond his sexuality. This is his essence of who he is.
- [20:46]
Alison Stewart
You were gathering information as you were workshopping this way back into January, right? You've been doing this for a bit. What were some of the changes that came out of the workshop? What were some of the things that you're laughing. Developed out of the workshop, period?
- [21:01]
Aria Levy
Well, look, I mean, first we had to get the basic architecture down, and we had to get a story that you could really track from beginning to end. Then we had. Then we. Once that was clear, we could really refine a lot of the characters who aren't Mickey. You know, we did a lot of work making Michelle, who's one of the other women he gets interested in, more of an interesting, full developed person after that. So we basically, you know, we did the heavy lifting, and then we were able to get into other things that were just as interesting, but just. We couldn't mess with them until the scaffolding was there. So I think that.
- [21:43]
John Turturro
Yeah, and we wanted to be, you know, have a fidelity to his language, you know, and not dilute it. So we, you know, we changed first person to third person and things like that. But, you know, we really wanted to not try to rewrite him because I've seen that happen, and it's been a failure, so. And other writers, too. I've worked on lots of adaptations, usually in cinema. And you're just very depressed because you go like, this is the thing I love the most about the book. And they don't. They just erase it.
- [22:14]
Alison Stewart
They make it go away.
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John Turturro
Yeah, they make it go away.
- [22:16]
Alison Stewart
What have the talkbacks been like? Have you.
- [22:18]
John Turturro
Fabulous.
- [22:19]
Aria Levy
Yeah. Really interesting.
- [22:20]
Alison Stewart
What do people want to know?
- [22:23]
John Turturro
It's interesting. A lot of older people, ladies and men, they feel really invigorated by it. I don't know. They're like. One lady said to me, she. I just. I feel like I'm alive again. You just, you know, brought me alive. And I was. It's been really. And some people say, you know, we all have a little bit of that inside of us. Not all of it, but some of it. All of it. But it's been very, very interesting. Some people know the book, some people don't. Some people like this better than the book because it's not as robust, I guess, or something, or it can be exhausting sometimes. You know, Mickey can be, you know, a handful. A handful, you know, and, you know, he's on the precipice of someone who's like, you know, with a mental problem. You know, he is. He's on that precipice. And so it's been very. It's been really interesting. I've wanted to talk to people because I want to hear what they have to say, because that's why we're doing it. So. But it's been. It. There hasn't been a lot of haters. There's been a few people who've been. It's not for me. You know, they were upset a little bit about it. I was like, all right, okay.
- [23:41]
Aria Levy
But nobody's thrown, like, tomatoes at you.
- [23:43]
McDonald's Customer
No.
- [23:43]
Aria Levy
Which I think we thought might happen.
- [23:45]
John Turturro
Well, maybe in our original version.
- [23:47]
Aria Levy
Yeah, right.
- [23:49]
John Turturro
I thought I'd need a garbage pail cover, you know, or something.
- [23:52]
Aria Levy
Yeah.
- [23:53]
John Turturro
But, you know, I think that's something exciting about theater that you're having this interaction.
- [23:57]
Alison Stewart
We got a text, John, as a national treasure. Just thought you should know that.
- [24:01]
John Turturro
Oh, well, thank you.
- [24:03]
Alison Stewart
Sabbath Theatre is playing at Pershing Square signature Center until December 17th. John Turturro and Aria Levy, thank you for coming to the studio.
- [24:09]
Aria Levy
Thanks for having us.
- [24:10]
John Turturro
Thanks for having us.
- [24:11]
Alison Stewart
There's more. All of it after the news.
- [24:13]
McDonald's Customer
I'm gonna put you on, nephew.
- [24:14]
Aria Levy
All right, unk.
- [24:15]
Alison Stewart
Welcome to McDonald's.
- [24:16]
Aria Levy
Can I take your order, miss?
- [24:17]
McDonald's Customer
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
- [24:28]
Aria Levy
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