Interview with Nagle Jackson, Part II

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Talking still on A Hotel on Marvin Gardens ... the term of the "long kiss goodbye" [to drawing room comedies]. Is that a term of yours or something Chris [Wiger, DCTC Publicist] came up with in typing the publicity?

It's a term of mine actually.

To the drawing room comedies. In other words, are you thinking that the drawing room comedy is phasing out?

I think it's already gone. When I think of the drawing room comedy, I'm not thinking of a bedroom farce or of a sitcom. The drawing room comedies to me are those comedies that proliferated really mainly in the 20s, 30s, and 40s.

Dinner at Eight type of thing?

Yes, indeed. I saw one of them in an old movie the other night, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, written by a playwright everyone's forgotten about, named [Frederick] Lonsdale, who, like Terrence Rattigan, was a tremendous success in his day, churning these things out. The crown jewel of all of them is Hayfever, Noel Coward's Hayfever.

I've done that one.

I have, too. Three times. That's quintessential drawing room comedy, and I very consciously and with love am borrowing the sort of machine of that play. The idea of guests trapped, who can't get out. But the drawing room comedy essentially was one of which there's very little "plot" plot, in the sense of intrigue and so on. It's a group of people seated together and we find out about them, how they interact, and they learn things about themselves, and so on. But much of it was purely for the reason for the excuse of good talk. And that's gone.

That's true. When I saw the reading [of Marvin Gardens],this was one of those plays that, I guess my ultimate compliment as a critic is to go away saying, "That was a play I would have like to have written."

Thank you very much.

This was one of those because of the language. I love playing with language. And I noticed the same thing with Elevation of Thieves and with The Quick-Change Room, is we sort of share a twist of wording that I don't see too much.

Love good talk. That's why I love [Edward] Albee. Right from here I go to direct A Delicate Balance, which is my favorite American play, and that is just the most beautiful American prose, I think, ever written for the stage is in that play. It's just like music, it's so perfectly written. It also has a wonderful plot.

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