There is nothing unusual in a director starting out as an actor. But Anna Mackmin, who directs the West End revival of David Eldridge’s Under the Blue Sky, took a more scenic route than most.
She trained at Central, but ‘didn’t have the self-belief or talent’ and jobs were hard to come by. But she didn’t immediately swap acting for telling actors what to do. Instead she worked with her sister who had set up a design company making women’s wear. Mackmin thrived on the adrenalin of running a business so much that she turned down such acting jobs as percolated through to her. She discovered she wasn’t an actress when she read the first play of Charlotte Jones.
‘I read it and literally sat up in bed and thought, I know how to direct it.’ Sure enough, in 1997 Mackmin directed Airswimming at the Battersea Arts Centre, then took the unusual step of commissioning Jones’s next two plays. ‘We set up a company, raised enough money to pay her for In Flame, then out of my own pocket I paid for Humble Boy.’ The first went from the Bush to the West End, the second was mounted in the Cottesloe.
Mackmin directed Orlando Bloom in a revival of David Storey’s In Celebration in the West End. ‘He came to me and said, ‘I’m 30 this year, I’ve spent the last decade being an elf and a pirate and I need to grow into myself as an actor and the only way to do that is to feel the fear.’ That’s an extraordinary starting place for somebody who has absolutely no need to put himself though the strain of working onstage for the first time. His profile allowed me to choose a play that I’ve always loved.’
Mackmin returns to the West End with Under the Blue Sky, another favourite play first seen at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 2000 which gets its chance in the limelight thanks to a cast led by Catherine Tate and Francesca Annis.
‘I love the play,’ says Tate. ‘I have been a fan of David’s for a long time and was also very keen to work with Anna, so when the opportunity arose to work with them both I was delighted.’
The play’s structure calls for tight directorial control, as there are three scenes, each featuring a pair of characters – all of them teachers – whose stories of failed love are intriguingly interwoven.
Guest Blogger: Barry Grant, Ambassador Theatre Group
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