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Interviews
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Dan Wackerman - A throwback to a better era? Philip Fisher meets the artistic director of New York's Peccadillo Theater Company. Everyone imagines that the world is racing forwards and its citizens are obliged to stay ahead of the game. For the most part, new is desirable in all fields. It is therefore refreshing to find someone in faster-than-ever New York City who prides himself on his company's efforts to resurrect the past with its very different values. Dan Wackerman is the artistic director of the Peccadillo Theater Company based at Bank Street in the city's arty West Village. His chosen mission in life is to rediscover forgotten comedy and drama by American playwrights from around the middle of the last century. This great believer in a better time can sound rather like his English counterpart, Sam Walters at the Orange Tree in Richmond, as he enthuses about the product. "Generally, Peccadillo concentrates on those American plays that we think need attention, that haven't been produced here in New York much, if at all, since their original productions. Our period is from 1920-1960, the era of the so-called well-made play, which was so fruitful". Peccadillo goes for big productions and only survives because it is designated a not-for-profit organisation. "We don't pay taxes and people who donate to the theatre take a tax deduction on their donations". However, life moves on. "Many not-for-profit groups have found that they can subsidise their mission by entering into partnerships with commercial producers and ploughing the money back into the mission of the not-fo- profit. That stretches from the Lincoln Center and Roundabout taking plays to Broadway to Peccadillo moving Off-Broadway". The company's current hit has done exactly that. Room Service is a 1930s comedy by John Murray and Alan Boretz that is now best known as possibly the Marx Brothers' least successful film. Goodness knows why? Wackerman has managed to work wonders with the material, is filling the Soho Playhouse theatre every night, and has no doubt about the reason why. "Room Service is, in my opinion, the finest screwball comedy. You could call it a farce but Americans don't go for farces". The business side of taking a large cast play from Off-Off Broadway up a level to a larger theatre is instructive. "We began as an equity showcase paying the actors a stipend, a few hundred dollars for weeks of work. This was at Bank Street Theatre, Off-Off-Broadway. "The show was very well received and we were able to raise the money from commercial producers to transfer Off-Broadway to the Soho Playhouse in November". This is an ambitious venture because the team is so large. As Wackerman explains, "Twelve actors and equity salaries for sixteen people. You don't see shows of this size Off-Broadway any more and 175 seats is not a big house. It's an extremely unusual move: not many people would dare it". He does not even consider the possibility of a move to a larger Off-Broadway Theatre or to Broadway itself at the moment. He sadly accepts that "to move somewhere larger, producers would want name performers" and that would require a whole new venture. The powers that be have recognised the contribution that the company is making to the diversity of theatrical life in the city with a host of awards as Wackerman is proud to explain. "Elmer Rice's Councillor at Law from the '30s, starring John Rubinstein, was very good to us. We were awarded the Lucille Lortel and I was awarded the Obie as best director. People are so happy to see theatre with large casts. They so rarely see these rich panoramas any more. Over the last ten years, we've done plays - not musicals - with casts of 25 and 30 actors". Looking over the company's history, its director rebuts the suggestion that Peccadillo exclusively specialises in the unknown and starts with a famous name. "We do O'Neill frequently who is well-known: he's the first great American playwright but then we've done more obscure playwrights such as John Colton. We did Shanghai Gesture, which takes place in a brothel in Shanghai in the '20s, a scandalous play that was was made into a film by Josef von Sternberg starring Gene Tierney. "We also did a world premiere of a John O'Hara play, Veronique. Most people know him as the novelist - Butterfield 8; Jigsaw by Dawn Powell, a novelist who was a fine playwright too; and SJ Perelman's The Beauty Part from 1961". Wackerman rarely runs out of ideas for what to do next, and his future plans should make the mouths of any theatre lovers water. The company is currently looking to do a Lillian Hellman play, Another Part of the Forest. "It is the prequel to The Little Foxes. A superb melodrama every bit as good as The Little Foxes and it hasn't been seen in New York in decades. There are often problems with rights though. We would also like to see William Inge's Come Back Little Sheba". Discussing the company brings out the director's enthusiasm for old-time American plays and his fear for their future. "The whole world should know about these plays but in this country we have a little problem with cultural amnesia. We don't have the theatre tradition that the English have: we are much more a film and video and television culture. You have an entire generation now who doesn't know Lillian Hellman. We're trying to keep the tradition alive." Looking to Broadway, Wackerman is pessimistic. "There does seem to be an element of cultural inferiority," he says. "If it has that British imprimatur, our producers are more willing to take a chance but the reverse almost seems to be true in London. American plays and musicals especially are very popular of late. I know Edward Albee's The Lady from Dubuque is being done this spring with Maggie Smith and it's not likely that would have been done on Broadway any time soon. "It would be gratifying to see American producers taking a chance on some of these great, older American plays and for that matter original American plays. The Public under Oscar Eustace is taking a chance on younger unknown playwrights and that's as it should be but it does seem a shame that this great cultural heritage is not seen more on Broadway". And so say all of us. Keep an eye out though. Once the world discovers what a great play Room Service is, Wackerman's production may go on to even greater things or some other director might spot an opportunity to cash in. For example, if Nicholas Hytner happens to be reading this article, "the finest screwball comedy" could fit perfectly into the National Theatre's repertoire as a follow-up to His Girl Friday and Once In a Lifetime.
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