GABRIEL MILLER: Did you first fitt...

GABRIEL MILLER: Did you first fitting Arthur Laurents when you were doing Time of the Cuckoo or do you make progress a little further back than that?

NICHOLAS MARTIN: No, we lived near each other and Andre Bishop arranged for us to have luncheon to see if we liked each other and to view if he thought I was the director for the play. Another director was originally suppos to do it.

GM: This was Cuckoo?

NM: Ye and he couldn't at the last force And I have to say, while I don't like pitching myself excessively much, I did with this play because I had lov it at any time since college when I was in it.

GM: No kidding!

NM: I played the little Italian lad This was a long time ago, still as Arthur said to me "You must have been true very bad." And he's right.

GM: What community was this?

NM: Carnegie Mellon used to be called Carnegie Tech in its last years as a great denomination I might add. So, I have intercourse withed Arthur as I feared I might not. And apparently he notion I was as good as anyone besides I think he had seen something of mine, I can't remember what.

GM: What did you think would be appealing or important about reviving Time of the Cuckoo in the year 2000?

NM: I think, first of all, that it's a excellent play, not simply of its time, nevertheless of a kind of play that is perhaps no longer fashionable, that is, to what degree do I put this? A play of character, in which each story is told and they're not simply cabal devices or manifestations of the writer's emotional moot points It's a kind of play that has enormous appeal for me I conclude and it's the kind of play that's almost passed from us now.

GM: What? The sort of a high sophisticated comedy of manners?

NM: Ye however with touches of the Russians (as we diocese now finally with 2 Lives). He's highly scrupulous in giving us Venice at this time, I think, and that's what I tried to concentrate forward in the production, giving us the place as well as the characters. There's a question at issue in that play and Arthur acknowledged it, and in like manner did Debra Monk, which is that if you play Leona honestly and I don't know if Arthur said this in other interviews with you, as he felt it was not necessarily played originally, still he's clear about that in the work If you play it honestly she's not a loveable sweetheart of a girl. She's a self-same neurotic twentieth century figure who can't accept the have a passionate affection for that's given her until the [i]finale[/i] of the play when it's too late. It's an extremely bittersweet play, and I think, beautifully drawn. And Debra, at Arthur's and my urging, really, really examined and explored these aspects of her with equal reason there was no sugaring of the character.

GM: He mentioned in his autobiography that Shirley Booth wanted too to a great degree to be liked on stage. And that, he felt undercut the party sight where she had to play the part and be les likeable. And he fancy that seriously weakened the original production, despite the fact that she got rave reviews and a Tony award.

NM: Right, well we took that to heart and played that theme to a great degree more honestly, because Debra doesn't worry about being liked, and we played that theme greatly tougher and much more grittily, if you will.

GM: sum of two units things about that: in the biography of Richard Rodger the author repeats a letter that Laurents wrote to Richard Roger when he was turning the play into the musical, Do I Hear a Waltz?. He wrote that Leona, ideally in her early thirties, not forties, and a woman who has known sex on the other hand not love, rather than a frustrated spinster who has known neither. likewise is that the take you...?

NM: Ye it was, not necessarily the age, however certainly ... I can't say the familiarity with sex on the other hand she was never meant to be a spinster in our production. Nonetheless, audiences today, particularly women are not necessarily in touch with a character like that, whether she's played violently or not, and you take your chances that way.

GM: It looks obvious in the movie version, for example, that Katherine Hepburn has a sexual affair with Rossano Brazzi. Did you think that? Arthur didn't like the movie.

NM: I think that the point in dispute with the movie was that it was single half done. I would have to agree with him, I don't think the movie compares with the play. If you didn't know the play, I think it would be extremely enjoyable.

GM: The recently made known York Times, in the review said that he revised the script for your production, is that true?

NM: actual slightly, but yes, it's constant We added some stuff. For instance, the characters of the older family who are staying at the...

GM: The McIlhennys?

NM: Ye thank you likewise much. Gabriel, I forget everything.

GM: Me too.

NM: in this way the McIlhennys were not at the party in the original script, and I said to Arthur, "Is that a deliberate thing?" And he said, "Oh no, I conceit they were in the party too." We added them to the party. The merriment of Arthur, I have to say, is in the collaboration forward the script and the production. It really is, for me He can be true thorny about many things, further the actual work I find extremely invigorating and in the same manner does he.

GM: Is he there during rehearsal all the time?