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Interviews
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"Isn't that what the West End's supposed to be about?" Philip Fisher interviews producer David Pugh. David Pugh is an interviewer's dream. Once you start him off, he can't stop talking but that's fine as he is highly opinionated, constantly entertaining and has a fine sense of humour. Even better and most unusually in these litigious times, he also displays a refreshing willingness to be controversial. The producer with an office above Wyndham's Theatre is currently riding high. He already has one West End hit, Kneehigh's Brief Encounter, in an unusual venue, the Cinema on Haymarket making his angels smile. He also has high hopes that a second, The God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza opening at the Gielgud the day after the Easter break will follow suit. We met in upmarket fish restaurant Sheekey's which, it became apparent, Pugh regards as his local. There, he was happy to talk about his life and career from early days in Stoke-on-Trent to his current position as one of the most important producers in the West End today. Pugh puffs out visibly as he says, "I am incredibly proud of Brief Encounter." Strangely, the project started on Mother's Day 2006 when he and director Emma Rice simultaneously discovered that this was their favourite film, purely because Pugh was packaging the DVD as a present for his mum. After a false start with the Bristol Old Vic and lukewarm responses at Birmingham Rep and West Yorkshire Playhouse, something additional was required prior to the London transfer. That something turned out to be not a couple of big-name stars (Mark Rylance was discussed for a leading role) but an untheatrical venue. Despite being offered a number of big West End theatres "it didn't feel right", so he and Emma Rice trudged around a lot of prospective venues until the project eventually found an unconventional but highly appropriate home. They literally walked past the Cinema on Haymarket and knew that it was the right place. Having enticed the proprietor up to Leeds to see the show, they concluded a contract between the matinee and evening performances and have never looked back. As always, Pugh was surprised by the show's success, since "I always lose my nerve halfway through. By the time I get to the middle of previews, I haven't a clue whether I've got anything or not." When asked what it means to be a producer, the answer is somewhat unexpected, as this old hand rails against a new breed. "It seems to me at the moment, if you write a cheque you get your name that says you are a producer, sixteen of them in some cases, I gather. That is my bugbear at this moment ". It hardly comes as a shock to discover that David Pugh's vision of a producer has little to do with the mere provision of angelic finance. "I'm very lucky, I have 84 investors who have stuck with me through thick and thin. They're with me because they hopefully make money and they come to the first nights and come to the party". He and Dafydd Rogers have been producing in tandem for eleven years and "we work brilliantly together". In trying to describe what this pair strives for, he explains, "I would love to be called a creative producer; I don't really do transfers or revivals. You are a jack of all trades and master of none. You have to have the ability to either have money, which I didn't, or the ability to raise it." He does so using an invaluable list of investors, who will back his judgement by putting anything from £500 to £20,000 into each venture - "and I value them all. Without them I'm nobody. I can't produce". With their money, he goes to great efforts to ensure that it is invested in the right projects. "You hope you have the taste that other people have: in other words, shows that they want to go and see." His success over close to two decades in the business proves that he enjoys this in abundance. Ultimately, he uses the simplest of methods for selecting shows: "it's whether I like them". Pugh accepts that an occasional foray into pure commercialism is one of the prices that an independent producer must pay to retain its independence, citing as an example Rebecca. This was the Daphne du Maurier novel that became a tremendous touring success after he commissioned Frank McGuinness to write a stage version that would star Nigel Havers. At the last count, it "was the most successful tour there's been in 25 years. We grossed £5½ million". As her latest play, The God of Carnage, is about to open in London, the conversation inevitably turns to Yasmina Reza, a lady with whom Pugh admits to having "an up-and-down relationship", having at one point publicly described her as a snob. The initial recommendation to test out Art and bring it to London came from one of his regular investors, Sir Sean Connery. The former James Bond called through to explain that he and his wife Micheline had seen and loved the play in Paris. Sir Sean insisted that David must transfer it to London, since he wanted the film rights which would not be available until there had been productions in the West End and on Broadway. Despite a language problem - "I could see they laughed, I could see they cried and there were three great parts"- the producer quickly decided that it would work in London and began to put a team together. "It was quite an obvious choice for Christopher Hampton" and Pugh then brought in director Matthew Warchus having enjoyed his work at West Yorkshire Playhouse. Interestingly, "the original cast was going to be Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Michael Gambon" but because Hampton took his time over the screenplay and Skylight transferred to New York, Ken Stott was drafted in to replace Gambon. "Art became a phenomenal success" and when the original cast came out of contract, rather than closing the show, the producers came up with a winning formula based on pure logic. As Pugh puts it, "who would not like to work for twelve weeks and earn £3,000 a week, whoever you are?" The producers, with Warchus, then brought in a team of young, exciting trainee directors who would be trained up one 13-week period and then take over for the next. Eventually, 26 productions with 26 different casts, quite a few chosen from "OK Magazine and Hello Magazine" were directed by the likes of Thea Sharrock, Rupert Goold, Rachel Kavanagh and Jennie Darnell, all of whom have gone on to major posts and great success. After a long gap, the team has been re-formed for The God of Carnage which "I think is better than Art" a statement that Pugh readily admits "will be controversial in itself". He attributes his preference for this play to the fact that it is "more accessible. I think she's writing brilliantly for women now. When I read it I loved the idea of it". That seems reason enough to go for it but "I knew we had to get a fuck-off cast and we did - Ralph Fiennes, Tamsin Greig, Janet McTeer and Ken Stott." He is now incredibly proud to be able to say, "We're on Shaftesbury Avenue doing a new play with that cast. Isn't that what the West End's supposed to be about?" Sadly, there are no other London producers who can make such a boast at the moment. David Pugh's favourite show of all of those that he has produced is The Play What I Wrote, maybe in part because he featured as a character, played by Toby Jones. What eventually turned out to be a major success might never have made it to the West End for a number of reasons. First, The Right Size (Sean Foley and Hamish MacColl) were far from enthusiastic about doing a Morecambe and Wise tribute. Then, during tryouts in Liverpool, it "died every night". Even his schoolteacher dad said "that was rubbish". If nothing else, this man believes in perseverance and, after working closely with the actors and director Kenneth Branagh, finally arrived in the West End to universal enthusiasm from audiences and more surprisingly "every review was a rave (except Germaine Greer's)". The major success of 2007 featured someone that Pugh first knew as his secretary's little baby just under two decades ago. The child who spent the first nine months of his life under mother's desk during the run of Steel Magnolias was a major film star hardly more than a decade later. Working with Thea Sharrock (though Kenneth Branagh had been the original choice), Pugh then became involved in the biggest theatrical story of last year and grins at the memory. The sensation centred on that little boy, now a rather more grown-up Daniel Radcliffe, who starred with Richard Griffiths in an award-winning revival of Equus, which is currently heading for Broadway. The psychological drama is a play that its producer had loved ever since seeing an early production with Michael Jayston during his formative years and as a result, he was passionately keen to see it revived in the West End. Rarely one to do the predictable, this adventurous producer's next project is a stage version of Calendar Girls at Chichester and then touring the UK, directed by Hamish MacColl. This mouth-watering prospect has hit written all over it and that is even before they have started casting. Before that though, David Pugh is keen to see The God of Carnage proving that new plays can still sell out Shaftesbury Avenue theatres. We must all hope that he is correct, since it would be tragic if the heart of the West End were permanently given over to musical transfers and reruns of tired old favourites.
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