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We need to talk about Jamie Lloyd | Mickey-Jo's thoughts on the news about his West End and Broadway projects
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Mickey Jo
Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mickey Jo. I am obsessed with all things theatre and I am a professional theatre critic, pundit and content creator here on social media. You can also find me on all of the other apps. And today we are going to be talking about British director Jamie Lloyd and asking and answering the question, is he taking over the world? Is this Jamie Lloyd's world and the rest of us are just living in it? Or is his career about to jump the shark? Are his bold and stripped back and contemporary stagings of classic works like a breath of fresh air in the theatre industry both in London and in New York? Or are they about to undergo this kind of emperor's new clothes style of backlash? Now, the reason I'm talking about this today is because within the last week we have had huge announcements of major play revivals in London and in New York to be directed by Jamie Lloyd. Truly, he seems to be in the most exciting phase of his career. But we're also going to look back a little bit and address the fact that he did not just fall out of a coconut tree. As Kamala Harris would say, this is not a director who was born yesterday. The fact that he is gaining huge mainstream attention within like the musical theater world has kind of blinded a lot of people to the entire exciting career he has been forging prior to this. So we're going to do a little bit of Jamie Lloyd history and we're also going to talk about these very exciting new revivals and what we can expect from these productions. Now, if you enjoyed today's analysis and you want to enjoy more videos about the theatre industry, both the West End and Broadway, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss any of my upcoming videos. Like I said, you can also find me on other social media platforms. I am ickyjoetheatre all over the Internet. And if at any point throughout this video I say something that you wildly agree or disagree with, feel free to comment down below and share your thoughts about Jamie Lloyd, these upcoming shows and any of his previous work. In the meantime, let's talk about whether or not Jamie Lloyd is theatre's most exciting director. So first of all, I do want to give a little bit of backstory here because I feel like a lot of people, especially within the musical theatre community, not to call out my peeps, have maybe only really come to be acutely aware of Jamie Lloyd within the last 12 to 18 months because of his major, substantially reinvented revival of Sunset Boulevard that played at the Savoy Theatre in the West End and starred Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond in a production that took a very bold aesthetic departure from traditional productions of the show that would usually have these grand sets and these steps, staircases and these cars and these costumes and these turbans. And he stripped all of that back. He gave it this sort of a contemporary aesthetic with a giant video screen and on stage cameras that would convey a live feed of both on stage and off stage to the screens. A choice that you can hear more of my thoughts about in my full review of Sunset Boulevard here on my YouTube channel. It's a very long video. I had lots to say, but one I think that ultimately paid off because of the nature of the narrative being so inherently cinematic, because our narrator was a screenwriter and that was the means by which he was telling the story. And it's about a woman who is trapped within her own concept of Hollywood. She is literally trapped within the screen and she can't seem to get back to this life that she had that was captured on film. And that's become her reality as she becomes increasingly divorced from the actual world around her. Now, though people were initially uncertain about what this production was going to be like, it was broadly very well received, both critically and by audiences, and it ended up winning a lot of awards. It won the award for Best Revival of a Musical at the Olivier Awards, which, if you don't know, is the most prestigious theatre awards that we have in the uk. It also won Jamie Lloyd the Olivier Award for Best Director in a category that sees directors of musicals nominated alongside directors of plays, which makes winning that award for a musical even more impressive, because London theatre loves plays more so than musicals, as do the Olivier Awards, for that matter. And the production is also set to transfer to the St James Theatre in New York, where it will play a Broadway engagement, where it will hope to replicate the same artistic and critical and financial success. But there are no guarantees it's going to be as well received over there as it was here. We saw this recently with Rebecca Frecknell's revival of Cabaret Beloved in the uk, Swept the Olivier Awards did not have the same experience when it headed to New York, because those two theatre communities do have slightly different tastes, slightly different moods, and there are a handful of other factors as well, the relative difference in ticket pricing being a huge one. That being said, a couple of US outlets have already positively reviewed the show when they made the trip to come and See it at the Savoy. And that was not the case for Cab. But the potential success of Sunset Boulevard on Broadway notwithstanding, Jamie Lloyd is already kind of, because of that, entering into an even more exciting phase of his career. That's not to say that he hasn't been having an exciting career up to this point. On the back of Sunset Boulevard, he directed Romeo and Juliet, currently playing at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End, featuring some of the most eye catching star casting that London has seen all year, because Marvel Cinematic Universe star Tom Holland has made his stage return as Romeo in a hugely anticipated theatrical experience that sold a whole bunch of tickets very quickly. However, to my mind, this was a less successful production artistically and it was not reviewed as positively as Sunset Boulevard. We'll have to wait until next March and April to find out whether it merits any Olivier Award nominations and wins. But you can also go and watch my review of that one to find out why the same techniques utilized in other Jamie Lloyd work, like in Sunset Boulevard, like in Cyrano, starring James McAvoy, were not as effective in Romeo and Juliet. The summary of that would be that that as a piece has no connection to screens and cameras, and they weren't really used effectively enough to justify their inclusion. Speaking of Cyrano, though, I do want to highlight some of the work that Jamie Lloyd had been doing in the years leading up to the pandemic, because he was having the opportunity to work with these enormous Hollywood and television stars. He worked with Amelia Clarke directing her in the Seagirl. He directed Jessica Chastain on Broadway in A Doll's House. He directed James McAvoy in that product, Cyrano. This is one of the first times that he utilized microphones, actual handheld microphones on stage. Cyrano being a play all about dueling and about poetry and the spoken word and the majesty of that. And so being able to hear James McAvoy deliver these poetic sections of script with a microphone so close to his mouth, giving you this ASMR sensation was frankly, spine tingling. The tools being only as good as the actor using them. However, I didn't really get the same impact from Tom Holland whispering into a microphone in Romeo and Julietta. Sorry to say, but this was also not the first time Jamie Lloyd had worked with celebrities. He had a handful of exciting names in his Pinter series that he directed in the West End a few years before that. He's done a lot of Pinter in his career. The man loves Pinter. Sort of inexplicably, to me, I'm not a fan, or perhaps I just haven't found the right pinter for me yet. He's also done a lot of Shakespeare and in some of the earliest years of his career, at the Donmar Warehouse, where he was an associate director at the time, he directed musicals, both new and revivals. He directed what I believe was the UK premiere of the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling be in a production that, if you look at the production images, now looks nothing like what we would associate with the Jamie Lloyd production. Similarly, just before the Pandemic, he directed Evita at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre and it had some similarities to Sunset Boulevard. It was quite a stark set, stripped back, costuming wise. But its use of color and imagery was very bold, very expressive, the likes of which we haven't really seen in his work since another UK musical premiere. You're in town at what was then the St James Theatre, which is now the Other Palace. It subsequently transferred to the West End. But this had an entire set, full costuming. It was quite bleak, it was quite grayscale, it was quite dank. And in what was also noted as a trademark of his at the time, had an extensive use of blood, like an extraordinary amount of blood. Something we still see quite consistently in his work. One more I'd love to mention is his revival of the Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman musical Assassins that were staged in Traverse at the Menier Chocolate Factory. One of the most extraordinary pieces of theatre I have ever seen in my entire life. It was sublimely well cast with the likes of Simon Lipkin and Jamie Parker and I think Andy Nyman and Kathryn Tate and Carly Borden. Just a fantastic cast. Stuart Clarke. Oh, my God. Incredible list of people. And in lieu of using actual blood, it used red confetti. There was one particular moment where it just rained from the sky as Hail to the Chief, played in the most impactful moment of the score. A masterfully staged production and again, a very expressive use of colour and puppetry and staging and all sorts of theatrical techniques that he has subsequently shied away from. A little bit, and I want to read you a little bit that will explain why. So this is in the program for Romeo and Juliet and it's a little insight into the ethos of the Jamie Lloyd Company. Until recently, he had a producing relationship with atg, but they are now, from what I can tell, independent. Now, the headline here is radical reappraisal. Dr. Catriona Fallow writes, the Jamie Lloyd Company does not only challenge outdated terms, it rips them up altogether from dispelling tired notions that to respect a text is to simply give audiences another version of what they have seen before. The company has explored multiple ways of making these familiar plays feel new. Certainly we've seen enough Romeo and Juliettes in our time to know it's a very familiar play, enabling fresh interpretations for all audiences while also actively seeking out the younger and more diverse. The company's artistically bold, intellectually complex and wildly popular work has remained committed to expanding and challenging preconceived ideas of what West End and Broadway theatres look like, how it is made and who it is for talking in February 2020, the company's artistic director, Jamie Lloyd, remarked that my role as a director is, I think, increasingly to get out of the way of the connection between an actor, an audience member. So it is simply a process of trying to get rid of anything decorative to clear away the legacy, the performance history of these plays, to try and see them anew. This marks a key step in the company's evolution. Rather than replace the traditional decorative or historical elements of a play with contemporary ones, their approach now is to remove them entirely and instead focus on ways to enhance or challenge audiences connection with its performers. Central to the realization and cohesion of these technical ambitions is Lloyd's ongoing collaborations with set and costume designer Sutra Gilmour, lighting design designer John Clark, sound designer Ben Ringham, and new video designer cinematographers Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom, all of whom have been integral to crafting the Jamie Lloyd Company's strong aesthetic sensibility alongside a huge number of creative collaborators and makers behind the scenes. So as much as I can tell you about what Jamie Lloyd Productions used to look like and how it hasn't always been microphones and a little bit of blood and monochrome costuming and no sets and ASMR style whispering and standing still when you're meant to be having a fight scene sequence. As much as I can say, that isn't how his work used to be. Things like that seem to suggest that he's very comfortable with that style and he feels at this point in his career, emboldened enough in his success to be able to do what he wants. It seems like that is what we are going to get consistently from the Jamie Lloyd Company at this time. Unless of course, some of the feedback about Romeo and Juliet is taken on board, because I do respect a tremendous amount of what is said there. However, I think at the same time there is a responsibility when you are delivering certainly a classic text and certainly in Shakespearean verse to a new audience with the notion that you want them to experience it anew. There are certain storytelling ideas that need to be conveyed with more clarity. It's all very well having a blackout and then they emerge covered in blood, but we also need to see those fight scenes. We need to understand the romance. And to downplay the emotional spectrum of a piece is not necessarily to do it a service. Again, those are just my personal feelings about this production as a critic, and you can go and watch my full review of that. But what we are principally here to talk about today is his upcoming work. So let's stay with Shakespeare then, and talk about the next major Jamie Lloyd productions in the West End. And these are going to be huge revivals of the Tempest and Much Ado About Nothing, two of my favourite Shakespeare plays. In fact, Much Ado is my very favourite at, of all places, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Now, how did that happen? Well, let me tell you. So ever since we found out that Disney's Frozen would be concluding its run at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which is this glorious and enormous West End theatre, for those of you who aren't familiar with the venue, there has been much speculation about what was going to go in there next. Subsequently, we had the announcement that Disney's Hercules would open at the theatre in 2025. But that left a sizable gap. And amidst much speculation, the answer as to what would fill that gap came in the form of Jamie Lloyd. Now, Theatre Royal Drury Lane is owned by LW Theatres and by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who presumably became close with Jamie Lloyd around, if not Sunset Boulevard, then perhaps Evita at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. But with this Sunset Re, it's definitely put him in Andrew's focus. And Andrew, while he was refurbishing Theatre Royal Drury Lane, shared an ambition that he had to put Shakespeare back into the venue. Now, for the last, however many years, this venue has been a home to huge musical productions because it does have an enormous capacity, let me tell you, it has a capacity of 2196. This makes it a very big venue and a very difficult venue to fill. And it's only those musicals, often family friendly musicals, often like huge Disney musicals that are able to fill that kind of a space. And it would be challenging, really, for any play to be able to do the same. And it's worth saying we have an awful lot of Shakespeare in London. We have not only Shakespeare's Globe, but there is consistently Shakespeare at the National Theatre, at the Donmar Warehouse, at places like the Almeida, there is constantly Shakespeare all around the country and across London. But once upon a time, there was also Shakespeare at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. In fact, a young Andrew Webber saw Shakespeare there. I believe he saw the Tempest, starring Sir John Gielgud. Subsequently, he shared the anecdote that at the final performance of this production, Gielgud was said to have snapped his staff as Prospero in declaration of the fact that Shakespeare would never again be seen at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. That it was going to be lost forever to musicals. At that time, I believe My Fair lady was coming in to replace and to honour this history of the venue when it was refurbished. And you should go and visit the venue just to see the refurbishment. It's gorgeous inside. You can actually do tours in the daytime. You don't need to be seeing a show anyway. There is a giant mural of My Fair lady and there is also artwork around the foyer honoring different Shakespearean productions that were performed there. But Lord Lloyd Webber has also been determined to prove Gielgud wrong and to bring Shakespeare back to the venue. But in order to do that in a venue with such an enormous capacity, you would need something that can sell an awful lot of tickets. Well, who in the last year has proved they can sell a huge number of tickets with Shakespeare? Jamie Lloyd. A key to which is also going to be celebrity casting, like Jamie Lloyd's Romeo and Juliet without Tom Holland would not have sold as quickly as it did. Enter Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver. Now Sigourney is going to be leading his first production there, which is going to be the Tempest. She will be playing Prospero, a role traditionally played by male actors as a male character. Though when it was directed on film, Dame Helen Mirren played the role and it was changed to Prospera. From what I understand, it's still going to be Prospero with Sigourney in the role. Increasingly, these things matter less in Shakespeare. Listen, Shakespeare was like one of the original destroyers of gender boundaries within the theater. But Sigourney, who has a history with Shakespeare and who has a history with Gielgud, has been enticed to return to the stage by Jamie Lloyd's intriguing propositions about this production. And it's probably safe for us to assume that it's going to resemble his recent work. That being said, I believe it's been confirmed there are no screens and no cameras in this production, which might be because it could be staged in the round. This is because when Theatre Royal Drury Lane was being refurbished, they were mindful of the increasing trend of adaptive playing spaces and being able to reconfigure their seating in order to create different staging options. And it is possible for the venue to be configured in the round with staging in the middle and audience on either side. Whether it's technically in the round or technically in traverse, we can argue after we've seen it. Jamie Lloyd has said it is such an honour to be invited by Andrew Lloyd Webber to be the first company to present Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal Jury Lane in decades. I could not be more thrilled to welcome three time Academy Award nominated and BAFTA and Golden Globe winning actress Sigourney Weaver, an international icon of stage and screen to London. London. Sigourney Weaver said, I'm delighted to be making my West End debut in Shakespeare's the Tempest, directed by the brilliant Jamie Lloyd, and to do so in Andrew Lloyd Webber's beautiful and historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane is an extraordinary opportunity. Come and see us. I mean all of those things together, it really, it's very difficult to say no to. Candidly. I have also heard that much of the reason that so many stars like to work with Jamie Lloyd and the reason he is able to engage so many high profile performers to do his shows is because he fosters a really creatively rewarding rehearsal atmosphere and gives them the opportunity to really play and discover. And it's a very safe and nurturing space, which is also something we should be celebrating in an industry that increasingly is filled with a lot of toxicity. Yay to Jamie Lloyd on that one. And while we're celebrating, I do want to flag for anyone listening that the Jamie Lloyd Company will also be continuing its commitment to accessibility, offering 25,000 tickets at 25 pounds across across the season, exclusively for under 30s, key workers and those receiving government benefits. These tickets will be available across the first three levels of the theatre and go on sale at a later date. Further information to be announced Watch this space. And while we're watching this space, that is not the only Shakespearean production Jamie Lloyd will be directing at Theatre Royal Drury Lane because they have announced two, the second being Much Ado About Nothing. And it will star Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Attwell, both of whom have worked with Jamie Lloyd before. So Sigourney Weaver is the huge headline name here, working with Jamie Lloyd for the first time. Tom Hiddleston and Hayley are previous collaborators. And I think it's very difficult to argue with Sigourney Weaver's casting here. And if the James McAvoy, if it all worked for me because of his exceptional presence and spoken delivery and talent. And the Nicole Scherzinger of it all worked for me because of her exceptional power and passion. I think Sigourney Weaver is going to offer much of the same reward, even in a stripped back, Jamie Lloyd style production. I think, you know, much of what he said in that Romeo and Juliet program is true. He is breaking down those barriers between audience and actor. But once you do that, they really have to deliver. That's another slight issue I have with Romeo and Juliet. But put Sigourney Weaver on that stage, and I think we're going to be back to a huge Jamie Lloyd success with Much Ado About Nothing. I think the casting is great. I do have my reservations. Just because this is a charming show, a deeply funny show, and this is material the likes of which Jamie Lloyd has worked with in the past. He's not never done comedy. He's been associated more recently with a sort of a dark and oblique comedy. But I am. I am cautiously concerned about this, you know, even farcical, comedic, Shakespearean piece and how well his style is going to lend itself to honoring that text. That has to be the bottom line of all of this. When you're reviving classic works. It has to be about honoring the material and not treating it with this kind of sanctity that he resents. But it has to. It has to have truth in it all. So Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite, and it was a lot easier for me to see Sunset Boulevard not knowing what the hell that was gonna look like because I've never been the hugest fan of the original source material. I love Much Ado About Nothing and I'm a little bit scared. And while he's directing one of my favorite plays in the West End, he's directing one of my least favorite plays over on Broadway. Let's go talk about that news. So let's head over to this other press release because it was just announced yesterday that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter would star in Jamie Lloyd's new Broadway production of Waiting for Godot. Much to unpack there immediately. Now, this isn't happening until fall 2025, so this is not even this coming Broadway season. It's going to be the Broadway season after that. And I dare say you know who Keanu Reeves is. I personally don't think I've seen that many Keanu Reeves films in my life, just because the genre that he tends to work in on screen is so separate to my own interests. As a theatre person, which I will say, taking me as a very small sample size, seems to indicate he's going to bring a lot of new people into the theatre. However, he's bringing them into the theatre to see Waiting For Godot, which I had my concerns about, but we'll get to that. If you don't know who Alex Winter is, these two have stars together on film before as Bill and Ted in Bill and Ted's Most Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Bill and Ted's Most Excellent Adventure is a classic, hilarious, brilliant, late 1980s film where they play these two, like flunking high school students who use a time machine to travel back in time and meet actual historical characters. It's very fun, it's very funny. And bringing these two back together on stage is a real coup. The likes of which Jamie Lloyd enjoys. One of his biggest things seems to be taking these celebrities and subverting their celebrity status. You had Nicole Scherzinger, who, you know is this, she's enduringly a big star, but she was a big pop star earlier in her career. And so to have her play Norma Desmond kind of spoofs that to a certain extent, taking Game of Thrones stars like Kit Harington and having him do Dr. Faustus and spoofing his own rise to celebrity. Meanwhile, reuniting Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves on stage is a brilliant nod to this chapter of their careers. Now, this is going to be opening at an ATG theater to be announced. Keanu Reeves will be playing Estragon and Alex Winter will be playing Vladimir. And this will mark Keanu Reeves Broadway debut. Alex Winter, meanwhile, last appeared on Broadway in the 1979 production of Peter Pan, where he played John Darling opposite Sandy Duncan as the title character and as Louis Leon Owens in the King and I with Yul Brynner. That's a great trivia answer there that I had no idea about. The two of them have a friendship that spans 35 years and began during the filming of the 1989 classic comedy Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Jamie Lloyd, who has spent the last month giving statements at 6 seems, says it is a real honor to be collaborating with the brilliant Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter on Samuel Beckett's sublime masterpiece, one of the greatest plays of all time. And in a joint statement, the two actors said, we're incredibly excited to be on stage together and work with the great Jamie Lloyd in one of our favorite plays, which I'm. I'm curious and skeptical about, but I'LL believe them because they said it. And I have no reason not to. The thing you should know about Waiting for Godot is that it is very slow and dry and abstract and existentialist. It's not a play where a series of exciting happen. And for audiences accustomed to Keanu Reeves performance in high paced action movies, they might struggle with this one. I, you know, I, I hope that everything goes on to be successful and rewarding and engaging and good. But of the multiple projects that we have discussed in this video, I have much higher hopes for the Shakespeare in London, particularly the Tempest, than I do for Waiting for Godot, just because of the nature of the play. And listen, if decades ago Keanu and Alex could have done Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, I think I personally probably would have enjoyed that an awful lot more. And that kind of would have continued the idea of like spoofing their Bill and Ted past by situating them as these clownish characters within the world of Hamlet. But Waiting for Godo admittedly makes more sense given that the two of them have aged. I just can't bring myself to tell you I think it's going to be fun and perhaps it will be brilliant and I dare say the two of them will give fascinating performances. But in terms of answering my earlier question about, you know, whether Jamie Lloyd is really the savior of theater or whether it's going to be this Emperor's New Clothes style thing, whether he's jumping the shark a little bit, I think it's going to continue to do exactly what it's done within the last year. It's going to ebb and flow. We are going to see big successes for Jamie Lloyd and we are also going to see things that miss, but the through line seems to be they all sell pretty well. Like he understands how to deliver commercially, even if not everything is award winning and praised and loved. And I haven't exactly heard an enormous backlash for Romeo and Juliet I think because people who spent a lot of money on tickets, especially the British, like to say to themselves, you know, well I'm glad I saw it. And they like to not feel bad about having, you know, wasted money basically. There is also the possibility people just like it more than me. I don't mean to keep dumping on that production, but I think for example, if we saw the Tempest being hugely successful, maybe that works less well in Much Ado. Or maybe Much Ado is great. Maybe Waiting for Godot is less successful. I do hope that Sunset Boulevard is received well on Broadway. I hope that you know, the New York press who have some kind of a pre existing relationship to Andrew Lloyd Webber and his work can put that aside. A pre existing idea about Jamie Lloyd and his work can put that aside. Because so much of what he does, does serves this piece very well and pays attention to this piece and to its material and the performances are powerful and staggering and the whole thing, it works, it works very well as far as I am concerned. So I do hope that Sunset is successful and that we don't just have this thing where Jamie Lloyd very praised in London and then less so much in New York because A Doll's House wasn't. It didn't go over as like the most exciting thing. And there is a little bit of fatigue within the New York theatre community about what Jamie Lloyd productions will always look like. At which point I'm very intrigued to hear your thoughts. Are you a London theatre goer or a New York theatre goer? Are you from elsewhere around the world? Have you seen any of the shows I talked about in today's video and which of the ones coming up are you most looking forward to? As we know at this point I travel the world and try and see as much theatre as possible. So I will be doing my best to see all of these shows mentioned and report on all of them with full review videos here on YouTube as well as on podcast platforms. So make sure you're following me on those subscribing to me here. Whatever you need to do to make sure you do not miss miss the upcoming theatre themed content. In the meantime, I hope that you have enjoyed this video and I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.