Voices of Democracy: A Talk with Michael Frayn and Michael Blakemore

Michael Frayn and Michael Blakemore, the playwright and director,
respectively, of the impending realpolitick drama, Democracy, are the
next participants in Theatermania.com’s series of talks with theater people.
The theater veterans will be interviewed by chief drama critic David Finkle.

Frayn and Blakemore, among contemporary theater’s most important
collaborative teams, previously worked together on a number of Frayn’s plays over the past 20 years or more, perhaps most significantly among them
Benefactors, Noises Off and Copenhagen.
Copenhagen won the 2000 Tony for Frayn; that year Blakemore won Tonys for both the Frayn work and for the Kiss Me Kate revival. He’s the first director ever to win two Tonys in one season. Blakemore’s show
business novel, Next Season, about an English regional theater, is
still in print, as are many of Frayn’s novels, including the comic
Headlong.

Democracy, which looks closely at Willy Brandt’s checkered
political life, bowed at London’s Royal National Theatre last year. Now
transferred to the West End, it won the 2003 Evening Standard Award for Best Play, the 2003 Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play and the 2003 South Bank Award for Best Play. In England, Roger Allam initially portrayed Willy
Brandt and Conleth Hill appeared as his secretary/un-doer Gunter Guillaume,
the parts being created in New York by James Naughton and Richard Thomas.

Award recognition is nothing new to Frayn and Blakemore, who will discuss
their work methods along with other aspects of their lengthy careers
together and separately.