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[0:07] John Schwab: Hi, John Schwab here from Curtain Call, and welcome to episode 82 of the Curtain Call Theatre Podcast, the podcast that brings you backstage as close as you possibly can be, often while the shows are happening, to meet the people that make theatre happen.

[0:19] John Schwab: You can find all our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and other fine podcast streaming services. So go back and fill your boots. And if you have a spare 30 seconds, rate and review this podcast to help us become more discoverable to listeners who haven't heard about us yet. We'd really appreciate it.

[0:34] John Schwab: And now for this week's podcast. Last week we brought you the cast from Long Day's Journey into Night, which just closed at the Windhams Theatre, having transferred from the Bristol Old Vic. And this week is another transfer in the shape of a new musical.

[0:49] John Schwab: We had the pleasure of making a show visit to The Grinning Man, currently playing at the Trafalgar Studios, based on the novel The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. I won't do the French title because I will do it a disservice. The Grinning Man was created by Warhorse Director Tom Morris at the Bristol Old Vic. He brought together Tim Phillips and Mark Titler, a book by Carl Gross, and all four of them collaborated on the lyrics.

[1:13] John Schwab: The company of actor musician puppeteers was outstanding. And I was fully expecting this production to be in the mix for Best New Musical at this year's Olivier Awards, and its omission, in my humble opinion, was a travesty. It really is one of the most original musicals I have seen in London. Have a listen.

[1:57] John Schwab: A little bit different from Jesus Christ Superstar this. Just a bit. It's much less of a kind of pop, you know, uh conventional music, conventional even or rock opera or anything like that. It's definitely um in the style of like Sharkheaded Peter, even though they had you know uh songs in it, but this is more kind of uh a Sondheim, you know, you know, Sweeney Todd feel.

[2:23] John Schwab: What I love is listening to people try to describe it. Yeah, and you're the classic example because you can see people rubbing their heads, and when people come and see it, um ever since we first did it in Bristol, I've and they've come and said, Oh my god, that was amazing. You know, I've always said to people, I now I challenge you to go and try and describe it to someone else and get them because it's impossible.

[2:43] John Schwab: Yeah, it's genre-changing stuff this, which is why I fell in love with it in the first place. There's nothing like it. And I you can imagine the amount of interviews I have to do. Um I've sat there on a BBC trying to explain it, you know, and it's almost impossible because it breaks all the rules. It it's almost well I I mean, I I'd say it's like a two fingers up to musical theatre, but it's not uh it it's not that harsh.

[3:07] John Schwab: Um but it does set out to break all the rules and push the boundaries, and that is what new theatre should do. I I never wanted to be in a Hamilton or anything that kind of got rave reviews across the board. Yeah, because that's not that's for me is not progressive theatre. Progressive theatre is someone like Sondheim, yeah, who upset everybody. Yeah, of course.

[3:26] John Schwab: Uh uh when West Side Story came out, half of the people hated it. Yeah, because it was so different. Rocky Horror Show on the other end of the scale. You know, you can imagine what people were like when they first saw the Rocky Horror Show. What the hell is this crap? You know, yeah. And yet, look at it now. And that's what progressive theatre should do. It should break the rules, break the boundaries, and it should have half of the audience going, I don't get this. And that's what our show does to a degree.

[3:50] John Schwab: Absolutely. I I found that it takes storytelling in theatrical. And I had to tweet about it last night. I came out and said, you know, this was brilliant. It was theatre in every sense of the word. Yeah. Like that's how storytelling is. It's the it's the makeup, it's the using puppetry, it's the singing, it's the staging, it's the dancing, it's the it's comedy, it's breaking the fourth wall.

[4:08] John Schwab: There's a lot of kind of music hall feel to some of it. Well, I'll tell you what it is. Uh I mean, I don't know if they set out intentionally to do it, but uh uh uh what I when I studied my main area of focus of my degree was um Commedia dell'Arte, right? This is very much within the Commedia dell'Arte rules, yeah, in so much that you've got the three the family characters, myself, Grimpaine and Deia, who very much take on the tragedy, and we're not allowed to break that fourth wall or yeah what all we have to do is allow that mayhem and comedy to go on around us, very much like Commedia dell'Arte, you know, yeah.

[4:43] John Schwab: That's good stuff. So you were here you you come from Bristol, you you were in the original production. Is there any difference coming into uh into the Trafalgar Studios? I mean it's I I've just had a little tour backstage, it's really tight. Was it the same in Bristol?

[4:56] Sean Kingsley: It's bizarre, it's smaller than Bristol and Bristol on the touring circuit is one of the smallest theatres, yeah. But you manage to squeeze it in.

[5:05] Sean Kingsley: Well, well, John Bowser, our designer managed to squeeze it and he's done a phenomenal job with perspective. He is a genius. He's incredible, yeah. Um and you don't get it until you actually go and stand on the stage. You realize how small it is.

[5:20] Sean Kingsley: Uh but it looks bigger off stage because of what he's done with the perspective and you know the kind of immersive nature of the set that kind of wraps around you, you know. You know, um which is incredibly important for this show. You need to feel like you're in this dark fairground.

[5:34] John Schwab: Yeah.

[5:34] Sean Kingsley: When you do that, you achieve it with the VOM use and also with the side entrances as well. So the people are surrounded.

[5:41] John Schwab: Yeah.

[5:41] Sean Kingsley: Audience members are surrounded by what's going on. Yeah, I mean I don't I uh I hate to say it's uh um it breaks off water to to some people because they a lot of people are very uncomfortable with so it we don't do that. What we're gonna do is participation, but you're immersive.

[5:57] John Schwab: Oh yeah, it's immersive and you're asking people to lean in.

[5:59] Sean Kingsley: Exactly. That's it's there's a big difference between breaking the wall, like you're gonna look me in the eye, yeah and breaking the fourth wall, we're gonna drag your ass up on stage.

[6:06] John Schwab: Exactly.

[6:07] Sean Kingsley: Yeah, that which doesn't happen. Excellent, Sean, thank you so much, man. I just want to talk about your experience on the show. Now this is something like I have never seen before.

[6:16] Sean Kingsley: I know.

[6:17] Sean Kingsley: Yeah, it's amazing to be a part of that. And you guys have been going for a while?

[6:21] Sean Kingsley: Yeah, since the beginning of December.

[6:23] Sean Kingsley: Some people have done it before in Bristol, but I've been new to a cast uh transfer into London.

[6:28] John Schwab: Okay, cool. Did you know about that? I mean, because it's it is new. Did you have any?

[6:31] Sean Kingsley: No, because I was in a show at the time, so I didn't catch it in Bristol, but I remember getting the material through for the auditions.

[6:39] Sean Kingsley: And I I played one of the songs, recordings from Bristol, and I was like, I want to do this. And I haven't felt like that with an audition coming in for a long time.

[6:47] John Schwab: Yeah.

[6:48] Sean Kingsley: So it was straight away like, oh, this is really different. This is cool.

[6:51] Sean Kingsley: Yeah, no, it was great. Um and it's I mean, and this is a busy show. There's not it's not just like coming on in a costume and singing something. There are complete transformations in between it.

[7:02] Sean Kingsley: So there's it's busy and it's tight backstage. There's no room backstage. So there's lots of different entrances that you guys employ.

[7:08] John Schwab: And um, so how is it getting used to this space?

[7:13] Sean Kingsley: Like in and um kind of with as much happening in the show? I mean, that's uh it's been it's been things like you know, the wolf is quite big, and quite frankly, sometimes they just was like, we have no room to sort of go.

[7:25] Sean Kingsley: So, you know, it was challenging. I think the way you know set John Bowser's set and the way Tom has used the space, and the fact that it's quite intimate, it's sort of only added, I think, to the atmosphere and to the show.

[7:37] John Schwab: It's all right, definitely.

[7:38] Sean Kingsley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And did you have you had any kind of puppetry experience before?

[7:43] Louis Maskell: No, um, I did work with Toby Olier, who's um part of the puppetry company, and um, but not I wasn't like no, it was like walking over with one puppet, but like no, I didn't, and it was um challenging at the start to say the least, but um I was like, I I'm not sure how I'm gonna do this.

[8:01] John Schwab: Is that because like you don't you can't it's like doing something you can't draw attention to yourself when you're playing the puppet?

[8:09] Louis Maskell: Yeah, well, and also like there's I think this brilliant, really simple idea that the puppets of my younger self and Grimpain's younger self play with puppets.

[8:19] Louis Maskell: Yeah, so then it's literally for me as a puppeteer, I need to look at my puppet, but I'm also blind.

[8:25] Louis Maskell: Come in, so I can't properly look at the puppet. And then the puppet that I'm playing with needs to hello, come in.

[8:33] Louis Maskell: Uh the puppet that I'm playing with is looking hi and the other puppet.

[8:39] Louis Maskell: So um, so you know, it's really easy for me as an extra to look at the little puppets she's playing with.

[8:45] Louis Maskell: So that was in the beginning of sort of mind fuck, but really cool once you manage it. It's sort of really rewarding.

[8:52] John Schwab: Excellent. And the approach to music, it is very much, it's not like a lot of contemporary musicals actually that kind of have that hops edge to it. It's much more of the I think I'd like it.

[9:05] Louis Maskell: It really is like Sweeney Todd. Kind of felt like a lot of it that Sondheim, which is much more about storytelling.

[9:12] Louis Maskell: And it's where the story is key.

[9:14] John Schwab: Yeah.

[9:14] Louis Maskell: And it's not. I mean, there are great melodies, but it what you come away is what you come away with.

[9:19] Louis Maskell: It really sort of works together instead of a now I'm gonna sing a song, which it sometimes is the case with other shows.

[9:27] John Schwab: I'm not saying anything.

[9:29] Louis Maskell: I'm not saying anything, but I think no, I said like I think that is good. Maybe they use this bit.

[9:35] John Schwab: Yeah.

[9:36] Louis Maskell: Do you want to tell you twice that?

[9:38] John Schwab: No, not at all.

[9:41] John Schwab: Um so one more thing. Um, what is it like coming into you? You just just talked about it. You know, there were people who come in who established these characters in this show.

[9:52] Louis Maskell: So what what was it like coming into that company?

[9:55] Louis Maskell: And because this is so stylist, because it is a way to tell the story. Come in. I'm not sure if you still think yeah, it was a bit more like I remember the first read through, and then Tom was like, Well, we're gonna read through, and Tom Radar X was like, Do you also want to sing?

[10:12] Louis Maskell: And I heard like Louie and everybody who'd done it before in Bristol, and I literally was like, I don't think I want to sing my song anymore.

[10:19] Louis Maskell: And I never really had that, but I was literally so blown away by hearing all of the music and and and just already the work that you know Julian and Louie and Sean had been doing was just so cool.

[10:31] Louis Maskell: So yeah, it was really exciting. For me, um, the music is very much in this vein for me, it's very much in the vein of like Sondheim, like I said, it's kind of like I feel it's a Sweeney Todd-ish kind of feel.

[10:45] Louis Maskell: And you there are lovely melodies that go through, but there isn't like a pop song that you come out singing, it's like whistle down the wind or something, is not conventional music.

[10:54] Louis Maskell: But what you get is a story, like this story comes out, and at every point, like it's so economical in its storytelling, and it's and it's music and musicianship.

[11:06] Louis Maskell: That's so refreshing.

[11:07] John Schwab: Yeah, so refreshing. And I think I think like you know, unfortunately nowadays, um, you know, especially the West End, yeah, I think audiences are conditioned to not I guess not be tested enough.

[11:21] Louis Maskell: You know, I think a lot of shows, at the moment anyway, are kind of they're good, yeah. And but they could be better, yeah. And I think the music could be tougher and more complex and sort of actually treat the audience as if they're, you know, give them a challenge as opposed to feeding them stuff. But you know, the thing is that sells. Yeah, and you know, for every sort of Grinning Man, there's ten other things which are less interesting. It's a shame that Victor Hugo didn't have a pop career, so they can't. I remember Dukebox music a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. You did this in Bristol, yeah, did you? And along with Julian who plays Barker Federal, Sean who plays Ursus, and Ewan who plays The Hanged Man.

That's right. So it's a new group of people. Did it change much kind of cells? Uh, yeah, it did actually. I mean, the kind of the nucleus of it didn't change, yeah. The story didn't change. But in terms of how we got to the end, it changed a lot. Like we had quite a lot of very good material in Bristol, but it was packed for it. And it was quite a long show. So we had to strip it down and just really focus on, you know, the story as opposed to everything else. Because in Bristol, I guess I think Grinning Man's story wasn't as clear as it could have been because at the end of the day, it's his story and how he sort of affects other people. So coming to London, that was one thing I think they were desperate to kind of hone in on.

And generally, I think, yeah, just sort of having that chance to kind of have a tryout, but you know, get on its feet and sort of see what works and see what doesn't work was a real blessing because then, you know, coming to London, we could just choose what worked.

[13:34] Sean Kingsley: Did the London references go down well? Trafalgar Fair and we didn't, we didn't, we didn't, we based it Bristol, we did like Stokes Croft Fair and Bristol and all that kind of thing, honestly, yeah, yeah. It's, we, and they were at one point gonna set it in Bristol, but then obviously we've got, you know, this is you're perfectly placed between the, you know, exactly. In regards to the singing and the musicality, it's packed, but is it kind of, I want to say because it's really ensemble singing. It's, you know, that's something I felt was new to me as well. So you had a whole new crew come in. Yeah, like how quickly did that gel though? I mean, talking to the girls, and then a lot of them are, you know, side readers or active musicians or whatever, did it come together quite quickly there?

Um, it did actually because the creative team treated the process like it was a new production. So I think for the new members of the company, it felt to them as if it was their production, so they had time to learn all the stuff, and to be honest, because we were cutting stuff and putting new stuff in, we were all collectively sort of learning stuff afresh anyway. Yeah, um it didn't feel to me as if we were holding on to anything from Bristol. Everything was up for grabs, and I think in that sense, it didn't feel like, oh, by the way, you know, so and so did that, so could you do that? Oh yeah. It was a really organic process actually.

[15:26] Louis Maskell: Yeah, and one I was really, I guess surprised with because I've never been a part of a transfer before. I expected probably, you know, that kind of, oh, so what did she do? Can you go that? It wasn't that at all and I'm not, now looking back in hindsight, like why I don't know why I thought that because Tom Morris, our director is so not like that at all.

[15:48] Sean Kingsley: I suppose if you haven't done a transfer, that's kind of what it feels like, you know, it gets hard when you, I mean, when I was in Reduce Shakespeare company, we had five or six people rotating and doing all the roles. We all knew multiple roles, so you know, we all did our own way, but also you kind of went, oh, he does it like that, and you think you can't because he did it like that. I think he's got that in him.

[16:12] Louis Maskell: A couple more questions, that's cool. Yeah, um being about, well, the last kind of just really being about technically, was it any different, and how do you, are yeah, obviously Mike Tier and technically I don't know the space in Bristol, but if it was any different, but it's quite a tough sing this man.

[16:35] Sean Kingsley: Yeah, um but congratulations. I fucking love your voice, man. It is insane. I love it. It's brilliant. From it's as soon as you start, I was like, oh brilliant, here we go. Strap in, put the C bomb on, here we go. Um, you know, how do you, you know, was it different? Did you have to change your performance? Because we're transfer, each house plays a different way.

[16:57] Louis Maskell: Yeah, um I don't think so. I maybe I think in Bristol, the way it's built, and because you know it's an old and very old building with a lot of wood. I think the acoustics are a lot better naturally there than opposed to here. Um but in terms of actually a huge difference, I didn't notice it, but also it was a year after we finished in Bristol.

[17:27] Sean Kingsley: So I couldn't really hold on to the, I didn't know it was that long.

[17:31] Louis Maskell: Yeah. And to returning to a character though, that's just brilliant with the gift of a role, yeah. To be able to come back to that. And actually, it was probably quite a good thing for me to have that amount of time to fester on it, I guess, because the way I'm doing it is so different to how we did it in Bristol. And I had a lot of time to think about, oh, like if we do transfer, I wonder I could do this and I could do that. Um so in that sense actually it was quite good for me to kind of go right, that was Bristol, yeah. Let's now do this.

[18:09] Sean Kingsley: Last one, just your, because your voice is so, you know, important. I mean, what do you, how do you keep it going? Because it is, like I said, it's kind of dry air and um cut the thing is, but what do you, what do you do to keep your own?

[18:25] Louis Maskell: So basically, when I graduated from drama school, I was finding that I was not getting many jobs, so I thought, right, I need to change my kind of approach. Um sounds kind of a bit cheesy, but I thought I basically thought of myself as an athlete.

[18:44] Sean Kingsley: Yeah.

[18:45] Louis Maskell: That's not cheesy at all, man. I wish more people listen, people have to if you're in this crowd, man. It's so important. And I take it very seriously, and I would do, I did about in terms of just technique, singing technique, probably three to four hours of that a day.

[19:03] Sean Kingsley: Amazing.

[19:04] Louis Maskell: And I would begin by just actually just warming up my spoken voice, working on my diaphragm, and then gradually build up to doing notes and stuff like that. And that gave me a real cast iron kind of base, yeah, to which I could then manipulate. But on the flip side, because I did so much work, I became quite rigid.

[19:29] Sean Kingsley: Right.

[19:30] Louis Maskell: So then I had to almost get rid of it, knowing it was still there. But then just sort of let it be and just go, I trust myself it's gonna happen. And that took quite a few years of battling, doing shows going, it's fine, I don't have to warm up.

[19:45] Sean Kingsley: Yeah.

[19:46] Louis Maskell: Now, especially with this show because it's incredibly freeing this show, like the puppetry allows me to get into it and I can just, you know, there's nothing there. I think along with just keeping your voice healthy, like you know, being sensible, like not drinking and not doing this and not doing that and steaming and um and also what's weird is the juxtaposition is you've got to be sensible, but you've also got to relax.

[20:13] Sean Kingsley: Yeah.

[20:14] Louis Maskell: So you've got to, it's finding a way of going, I'm not gonna have a drink, but I might stay up until three.

[20:19] Sean Kingsley: Yeah.

[20:19] Louis Maskell: Playing a game or something. That kind of stuff. Standard vinyl.

[20:23] Sean Kingsley: Exactly.

[20:24] Louis Maskell: So yeah, and so I tend to actually focus less on warming up now. I do warm up with the company, but I used to do very, you know, I used to be obsessed with kind of going to my room and like doing stuff, and that would make you really tired.

[20:40] Sean Kingsley: Right, yeah.

[20:41] Louis Maskell: So now I just sort of do it and see what happens. I just think it's absolutely brilliant. Like in that moment, people should just listen to that and do it. Brilliant.

[20:51] Sean Kingsley: Listen, I've taken that far too much of your time. Now before we wrap up, if you are a theater professional, you need to head on over to curtaincallonline.com and sign up for a free profile page. All you have to do is create an account with an email address, make up a cool password, and away you go. Publish your profile and start connecting to the theater industry. You can follow us on all the socials, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Curtain Call. We'd love to hear from you if you have any suggestions or feedback for the podcast. Get in touch with me via any of the social media platforms I just mentioned or write to me at John at curtaincallonline.com. It just leaves me to say a huge thank you to Sean Kingsley, Sanne Den Besten, Louis Maskell, Company Manager Sheena Linden for helping us out, the producers, and the entire company of The Grinning Man, which you can see at the Trafalgar Studios until the 5th of May.

Do yourself a favor. You have just over a week and a half to catch one of the most brilliant original, funny, visually stunning musicals ever to have graced the West End. And I know I speak in superlatives all the time, but I really do mean it here. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Curtain Call Theatre Podcast and I will catch you all next week.