Directors you respect

I think that it's time we respect the DIRECTORS of these spectacular productions. They deserve just as much credit as the actors, probably more. My two personal favs are Hal Prince (Sondheim Prince collaboratio nthroughout the 70's) and Tommy Tune (the man is a genius. nothing else to be said.)

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*thinks* Jerry Zaks...and maybe Susan Stroman.

Joe Mantello for his work in Assassins

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Julie Taymor, Joe Mantello, and George C. Wolfe

"As much as people hate the song "Bobby Baby" any man who can direct that and make it work, as Hal Prince did, deserves applause."

AGAIN, "Bobby Baby" is not the name of the song.

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Trevor Nunn
David Leveaux
George C. Wolfe
Harold Prince
Joe Mantello
James Lapine
Jack O'Brien
Jerry Zaks

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"Also, I'm not going to say anything bad (destruction of Little Shop of Horrors), but why do so many of you like Jerry Zaks. Just curious."

Oh, here are just a few reasons:

Anything Goes
Lend Me a Tenor
Six Degrees of Separation
Guys and Dolls
Laughter on the 23rd Floor
Smokey Joe's Cafe
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
The House of Blue Leaves

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Michael Bennett (and others) would have been on my list if I had thought we were including directors that have passed on.

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"Current" Michael Mayer is an excellent choice. I also want to include Hal Prince and Tommy Tune among my list. Another show I loved, but I must give credit to the team, not just the director, was Ragtime, directed by Frank Galati and choreographed by Graciela Daniele, who is a great director in her own right. And I am very interested to see where Jeff Calhoun takes us as his career continues to grow.

"Deceased" the obvious ones: Jerome Robbins, MIchael Bennett, Bob Fosse ...and George Abbott.

Updated On: 11/2/04 at 11:38 AM

Mike Nichols. No one handles actors better.

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I love your list Margo! With one exception: Anne Bogart. Viewpoints is valuable as a learning tool but I have yet to see a persuasive production based on it. It's kind of like Suzuki to me. It's incredibly valuable in your process as an actor, but, as in opera, if they SEE your technique, the illusion of spontaneity is gone. Learn it, get it in your body, then forget your doing it. Wow. REALLY tangential, sorry.
I would add Sam Mendes to your list, too.

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Duly noted. My exclusion of her was based on my experience with her theories. Now I wish I'd seen The Baltimore Waltz.
Has Julie Taymor directed anything small-scale and intimate? She seems very spectacle-oriented to me. Anyone know?

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I might also add Michael Blakemore, who's work has been very impressive over the years. My only hesitation in that he continually gets these absolutely stellar actors to cast in his shows so I'm not sure just how much the final product has to do with anything that he's done (Robert Falls is the same way -- once you've cast Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dehehey, PS Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard in Long Days, how much work is really left for a director to do, other than just get the hell out of the way and let the actors do their jobs). There's an old saying that 90% of direction is casting, but sometimes a director gets just an embarassment of riches.

That aside, Blakemore's work with Michael Frayn -- the original Noises Off (brilliant farce direction), Benefactors, Copenhagen (took a complex work and made it as lucid as anyone could have) and the upcoming Democracy -- has been so consistently superior he probably belongs on my list.

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