FIVE QUESTIONS FOR ... #1
PLAYWRIGHT AND SCREENWRITER MARTIN SHERMAN ON "BENT," HIS SOUL, AND BARBRA STREISAND
(Above; Martin Sherman. Photograph by Walter Kurtz for Slant magazine)
One of the greatest pleasures of heading over to London is having lunches with Martin Sherman who has written over 20 plays produced in over 60 countries. He’s also just a really nice guy. I not only admire him. I also adore him. Sometimes I wish I could be him, an American writer who loved London so deeply he moved here 42 years ago. He told me at a recent lunch in Notting Hill that he didn’t want to move here, however, until he had a success. “I didn’t want to move here until I had a success in America,” he told me more specifically, “because I didn’t want to move here as a way of running away from a lack of success there.” After his production of Bent at The Royal Court, which starred Ian McKellen, transferred to the West End and then in 1979 moved to Broadway starring Richard Gere, he had a great one. He moved here four weeks after the New York reviews came in.
His film scripts have included Clothes in the Wardrobe (released in America as The Summer House), an adaptation of the Alice Thomas Ellis novel, with Jeanne Moreau, Joan Plowwright, and Julie Waters; Franco Zeffirelli’s Callas Forever with Fannie Ardant and Jeremy Irons; and Mrs. Henderson Presents with Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, and Christopher Guest. He also wrote, among other teleplays, an adaptation of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone which starred Helen Mirren, Anne Bancroft, and Olivier Martinez.
Sherman also wrote the book for the Peter Allen musical The Boy from Oz. He has had great success with the brilliant one-woman play Rose, which starred Olympia Dukakis both at the National Theatre and on Broadway. There will be a revival of the play in August and September, first in Manchester at the Hope Mill Theatre, where a streamed version on Sky Arts was produced during the lockdown, then here in London at the Park Theatre. It will star his friend, Maureen Lipman, who was also in the streamed version. Two other plays by him I have loved are A Madhouse in Goa which starred another close friend, Vanessa Redgrave, as a rather talkative, social-climbing Mississippian. No wonder I remember it so fondly. Redgrave also starred in his When She Danced. More recently, I was deeply moved by his Gently Down the Stream, which was brilliantly directed by Sean Mathias at The Public Theatre in New York and starred Harvey Fierstein and Gabriel Ebert. I have a fantasy of playing the Fierstein role somewhere when I return to acting in my 70’s.
Martin is now 83 himself. He wrote his first play when he was 12 years old. He titled it Black and Midnight, based on a descriptive line about the conjuring witches in Macbeth. I cherish our conversations when we have our lunches here which, come to think of it, are a lovelier form of conjuring themselves. I wanted my first FIVE QUESTIONS FOR … column here at SES/SUMS IT UP to be with him. He kindly agreed. Because he’s kind.
KEVIN SESSUMS: What was the Broadway of experience of Bent like? It gave you the impetus to move here. But it must have been very different than having done it here in London with your friend Ian McKellen.
MARTIN SHERMAN: The producer was Jack Schlissel who was David Merrick’s General Manager. Merrick was a famous bastard. Jack learned from the master. He did indeed. His attitude toward the play was very strange. He loved it but he was a afraid of it. He was gay but he was closeted. He had ambivalence toward everything. And, of course, he was gay in that David Merrick/Schubert Organization world which was very straight and very homophobic. Jack had the demeanor of a gangster so he could fit into that world in a way. He was complicated. He made life hell for everyone. It was ultimately a great experience because the actors were so good as was the director I had, Robert Alan Ackerman, so doing it artistically was wonderful but the producers I had were a nightmare from the very first day. I have written about all this in my yet unpublished memoir. At one point - to show you how crazy it was - during early previews, Jack called Bob Ackerman, the director, and me into a meeting at his house and he said, “Did you see tonight the standing ovation that Richard Gere got in the curtain call?” I said, “Yes! Wasn’t it great?” And he said, “No! It wasn’t as big as what Sandy Duncan is getting in Peter Pan.” So I said, “Oh, maybe we should fly him in for the curtain call.” He told me, “Don’t joke. This is serious.” That’s what we were in for - every day.
(TO READ THE REST OF THE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH OR $50 YEAR - INCLUDING A STORY ABOUT SHERMAN VISITING BARBRA STREISAND AT HER HOME WHEN SHE INVITED HIM OUT TO HOLLYWOOD AND THEN TURNING HER DOWN TWICE IN 24 HOURS WHEN SHE KEPT INSISTING HE WRITE SCREENPLAYS FOR HER. WHICH ONES? READ ON. HE HAS NEVER SHARED THE STORY PUBLICLY BEFORE - UNTIL NOW. ENJOY.)