Lo que dijeron los pilotos luego de la práctica del Island X-Prix de la Extreme E
El equipo Chip Ganassi Racing marcó el mejor tiempo en las dos prácticas libres disputadas en Cerdeña, Italia de cara a lo que será el Island X-Prix desde mañana. Los pilotos de los equipos que marcaron los mejores registros se expresaron luego de una sesión que no fue nada fácil por las condiciones de la pista y el calor.
P1. Sara Price (GMC Hummer EV Chip Ganassi Racing): “El año pasado no tuvimos un gran comienzo, así que es genial que hayamos tenido un buen comienzo. La consistencia es clave para nosotros este año”
“Tengo mucha confianza en el equipo, creo que tenemos una buena puesta a punto y hemos aprendido mucho en el tiempo que llevamos en Extreme E, así que estamos en una buena posición”
“Creo que el circuito se ha trabajado un poco más desde el año pasado. Va a ser mucho más rápido, no tan duro y quizás no tan técnico a veces. Este es un terreno al que estamos acostumbrados viniendo del sur de California y compitiendo en Baja, así que es donde nos sentimos como en casa"
P2. Johan Kristoffersson (Rosberg X Racing): “Me siento renovado y en gran forma y el equipo hizo un gran progreso durante nuestra prueba en Francia, por lo que estamos listos para una emocionante semana de carreras”
“Es muy emocionante volver a Cerdeña. La pista se ve muy rápida y está más suave que el año pasado. La mayor parte de la parte al principio es muy similar, pero las curvas se toman de forma un poco diferente. También creo que la última parte es un poco más emocionante que el año pasado, así que espero que haya buenas carreras y oportunidades de adelantamiento también.
"Va a hacer calor, no estamos acostumbrados a este calor en Escandinavia, ¡así que va a ser un poco diferente!"
P3. Emma Gilmour (McLaren Electric Racing): “La pista se ve muy bien y se ve rápida, así que creo que va a ser muy divertido de manejar”
“Nos sentimos confiados después de que hicimos una muy buena prueba juntos y ahora sabemos mucho más sobre el fin de semana de carrera. Llegar a Arabia Saudita fue una gran curva de aprendizaje para muchos de nosotros trabajando juntos por primera vez, por lo que fue realmente alentador vernos competitivos desde el primer momento".
P4. Catie Munnings (Andretti United): “Realmente me gusta la nueva sección del trazado: será muy rápida y fluida”
“Con las dos carreras seguidas, es especialmente importante mantener el ritmo. Por lo general, uno llega hasta el final del fin de semana y quiere continuar, por lo que ahora tenemos la oportunidad de continuar con esta fecha doble. Creo que le dará a la gente una oportunidad si se decepcionan en el primer evento. Obviamente, sin embargo, todo el mundo busca en última instancia dos resultados sólidos”
Imagen y Citas: Prensa Extreme E
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Merrily We Roll Along review summary Part 1
Peter Marks, Washington Post
Like precision code breakers, the team responsible for the revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” have cracked it.
The blessed contributions of Groff, Mendez and Radcliffe — in addition to Krystal Joy Brown, Katie Rose Clarke and Reg Rogers in crucial supporting roles — coalesce in a way that feels almost spiritual.
But when you’re hearing his music so beautifully realized — Radcliffe keeps up impressively with musical-theater prodigies Mendez and Groff — you grasp even more deeply the melodic and lyrical sophistication at work.
Groff’s transformation-in-reverse is a perceptive journey as well, from remorseful Hollywood sellout to star-struck starving artist, pressing his nose up against the window of fame and riches.
Ideally, this Broadway incarnation will be both a hit and a reflection of the higher aspirations of musical theater. It’s even tighter, funnier and more touching than what Friedman staged off-Broadway.
So much ingenuity. So much joyful creativity. So much for audiences to savor.
Kobi Kassal, Theatrely
Further, it's hard to go wrong when you have Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez above the title. The heart of the show lies with this trio whose genuine connection and truth shines out across the Hudson stage eight times a week. Groff, who has the charisma down pat, dazzles as Frank. When paired with Radcliffe’s Charley, filled with loveable charm, and Mendez’s Mary who is utterly gut-wrenching to watch as her true love slips away, this trio equals Broadway perfection.
Merrily marks the third Broadway revival of a Sondheim work since his death, in addition to the premiere of his final work, Here We Are, at The Shed. Many of his shows are beloved, but if you want a healthy dose of Broadway serotonin, get thee to the Hudson immediately. Truth be told, you don’t need to listen to the critics, and if you have gotten this far in the review, I think we are all on the same page. Some true theatre magic is happening on that stage, and for that we will forever be grateful.
Sara Holdren, Vulture
It’s possible for Frank to swing and schmooze his way through this scene as the worst version of himself: “Who says, ‘Lonely at the top’? / I say, ‘Let it never stop!’” he sings to his crowd of sycophants. But Groff is an actor who’s able to communicate hurt and humanity even through a carapace of ego and moral deficiency. (In this way he reminds me of Matthew Macfadyen: Who among us has any business feeling empathy for Tom Wambsgans? And yet …) All through Merrily’s opening scene, Groff’s eyes are dead hollows — deep, dark wells with reservoirs of tears way down at the bottom, threatening to make their way up. He smiles, he sings, his body propels itself around the room, and he’s not there. His Frank is the worst version of himself, but he knows it, and he’s terribly alone and afraid. Watching Groff — who, as the show moves forward and backward, becomes visibly younger: driven, yes, but also sweet and earnest, almost puppyish — I thought of Chekhov’s successful, unprincipled writer Trigorin, who tells his lover: “I haven’t got any willpower. I never have had … Go on, take me, take me away with you. But please, don’t ever let me out of your sight.” Groff makes clear that Frank’s is a tragedy of weakness, not simply of greed.
And Charley! As the twitching, high-integrity, high-anxiety writer, Radcliffe is a complete delight. Next to Groff’s Frank, who’s tall, square-shouldered, and — at least outwardly — self-possessed, Radcliffe is a vibrating sprite, the kind of person whose big brain you can practically see smoking as it spins.
The enlivening pulse created by Radcliffe, Mendez, and Groff gains strength and drive through the production’s rock-solid ensemble. Gilmour (also the costume designer) dresses them in softly period, unified swaths of color as the play moves back in time — blues, then beiges, then, in the lavish, La Dolce Vita–ish early ‘60s, in hard black and white. There’s something smart happening here: Groff, as Frank, wears varyingly sophisticated versions of the same white shirt and black trousers throughout the show, but at the top of Act Two, as Gussie (not yet his wife) seductively introduces him to “The Blob” — a pulsating swarm of influentials, “the ones who know everyone that everyone knows” — Frank’s clothes match the company’s for the first time. He is, whether consciously or not, getting sucked into something. No — it already has him.
Some shows can withstand miscasting — turns out, Merrily can’t. (It’s often said that the casting of very young actors was a large part of the original production’s failure.) Even the big producer, Joe Josephson, who can come off as a Hollywood hack with dollar signs for pupils, is brought a sense of hangdog appeal by Reg Rogers. You get the feeling that Josephson is affable at heart, tired in soul, and that even he might have had ideals once. Friedman’s great insight — perhaps owing to her own long career onstage — is to have sought out actors she, and we, can entirely trust, and to trust them. (It sounds simple. It’s not.) She locates the play’s potential to be caring rather than callous not on the page but in the specific human beings who are here, doing this thing, right now. A central trio as sensitive and superb as this one doesn’t just make Merrily more moving; it makes it much more fun. It even adds a faint glimmer of something resembling hope. If Frank can reconsider, then he may yet change. Or he may not. But either way, an actor must show us, as Groff does, a true encounter with the mirror. With their irresistible energy and chemistry, Mendez, Groff, and Radcliffe lift Merrily up, yet keep it grounded with real, apparent affection and emotional heft. They are the ones reviving the play, by revealing and jump-starting its heart.
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Abdul, Paula
Accardi, Gimena
Aniston, Jennifer
Apatow, Judd
Baddiel, David
Baron Cohen, Sacha
Bass, Lance
Bayer, Vanessa
Beckham, Sara
Benson, Ashley
Bialik, Mayim
Bieber, Justin
Biel, Jessica
Black, Jack
Bloom, Orlando
Braun, Scott
Brie, Alison
Brolin, Josh
Cain, Dean
Carr, Jimmy
Chastain, Jessica
Chenoweth, Kristen
Cohen, Andy
Collins, Lily
Condor, Lana
Cooper, Bradley
Cox, Courtney
Crystal, Billie
Curtis, Jamie Lee
David, Cazzie
Davis, Viola
Debose, Ariana
Del Rey, Lana
Deschanel, Zooey
Deutch, Zoey
Dewan, Jenna
Diddy Combs, Sean
Dobrev, Nina
Douglas, Michael
Dr. Phil
Eric, Andre
Fanning, Dakota
Ferrell, Will
Fisher, Isla
Foster, Chelsea
Fry, Stephen
Gad, Josh
Gadot, Gal
Gage, Lukas
Garner, Jennifer
Garner, Julia
Garrix, Martin
Gellar, Sarah Michelle
Gelman, Brett
Gilmour, David
Gomez, Sarah
Goodblum, Jason
Groban, Josh
Groff, Jonathan
Haddish, Tiffany
Hamil, Mark
Hamm, Jon
Handler, Selena
Hargitay, Mariska
Hewitt, Jennifer Love
Hudgens, Vanessa
Hyland, Sarah
Imbruglia, Natalia
Jackson, Paris
Jenner, Kris
Jenner, Taylor
Judge Judy
Kailing, Mindy
Kardashian ,Amy
Kardashian, Khloe
Kardashian, Kourtney
Kemsley, Dorit
King, Joey
Kiyoko, Hayley
Kloss, Karlie
Kunis, Mila
Lautner, Nicole
Leggero, Natasha
Levine, Adam
Levy, Eugene
Levy, Shawn
Lohan, Lindsay
Lohan, Lindsay
Longoria, Eva
Lucas, Matt
LuPone, Patti
Madonna
Mamet, Zosia
Marguiles, Julianna
McGregor, Ewan
Mendel, Howie
Messing, Debra
Meyers, Seth
Mia, Pia
Michele, Lea
Miguel
Milano, Alyssa
Mirren, Helen
Moore, Mandy
Morrone, Camila
Munn, Olivia
Norris, Chuck
O'Donnel, Rosie
Oberman, Tracy-Ann
Ora, Rita
Osbourne, Kelly
Osbourne, Sharon
Oyelowo, David
Pascal, Amy
Paulson, Sarah
Peck, Josh
Peele, Jordan
Peltz, Kim
Perry, Katy
Phillipps, Busy
Plaza, Aubrey
Pompeo, Ellen
Portman, Natalie
Prisloo, Behati
Richie, Sofia
Riley, Rachel
Rock, Chris
Rock, Chris
Rose, Ruby
Rosenthal, Phil
Roth, Ellie
Rowling, JK
Saldaña, Zoe
Sandler, Adam
Savage, Ben
Schnapp, Noah
Schreiber, Liev
Schumer, Kylie
Schwartz, Lorraine
Schwarzenegger, Patrick
Schwimmer, David
Segel, Jason\
Seinfeld, Jerry
Seinfeld, Jessica
Shannon, Molly
Shields, Brooke
Short, Martin
Silverman, Brooklyn
Snyder, Zach
Sommerhalder, Ian
Spears, Lynn Jamie
Spektor, Regina
Stiller, Ben
Sting
Stone, Sharon
Sudeikis, Jason
Theroux, Justin
Thorne, Bella
Timberlake, Justin
Tisdale, Ashley
Waititi, Taika
Walsh, Kate
Washington, Kerry
Whiterspoon, Reese
Wilde, Olivia
Williams, Tyler James
Wu, Constance
Yatra, Sebastian
Zimmer, Constance
Zinchenko
Zoe, Rachel
Zuckerman, Jeremy
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Muse Magazine
Muse Magazine x Johan Sandberg
musemagazine.it
February 2022
Johan Sandberg - Photographer
Sara Gilmour - Fashion Editor/Stylist
Jacob Kajrup - Hair Stylist
Eny Whitehead - Makeup Artist
Alexandra Sandberg - Casting Director
Kristin Drab - Model
Louise Menard - Model
Rayan Mazuel - Model
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Vamos relembrar como foi o Artic x Prix em 2021
Que foi um marco para o esporte e para o automobilismo sendo o primeiro evento esportivo da história na Groelândia.
Qualyfing : teve duas baterias contra o tempo esse era o formato com uma volta para cada piloto da dupla com a pontuação de 9 a 1 ponto .
Semi-Final 1
Na largada Cristina Guttierrez e Ema Gilmour Largaram bem,más Guttierez teve um problema um pouco depois e foi ultrapassada por Carlos Sainz Pai.
Momento em que o Sainz pai passou a Ema Gilmour com o Hyperdrive.
No final da 1ª volta Aciona Sainz estava na frente ,em segundo Veloce Racing e X44 em terceiro.
Troca de pilotos: Aciona Sainz ; Laia Sanz , Veloce Racing; Stephan Sarrazin; X44; Sebastien Loeb.
No inicio da 2ª volta Loeb estava na cola do Sarrazin
No final da ultima volta Loeb estava bem próximo da Laia Sanz
Nesse momento Loeb usou o Hyperdrive
E conseguiu passar
Laia Sanz e Sarrazin também usaram o Hyperdrive
Nesse momento Sarrazin foi “pro tudo ou nada” e acabou quebrando a suspenção do carro nas pedras que tinha antes da linha de chegada.
E a vitória da semi-final 1 ficou a dupla da X44.
Semi-final 2
Na largada Jutta largou melhor más já foi ultrapassada por Kristofersson e Timmy Hansen.
Um pouco depois da largada Kristofersson usou o Hyperdrive
Momento em que apareceu mensagem de punição de 10s por bater waypoint (bandeira) para o carro da Rosberg X Racing .
Momento em que o Timmy Hansen conseguiu passar o Kristofersson e recuperar a liderança
Na 1ª volta Kristofersson terminou na frente com o carro da Rosberg X Racing.
Troca de pilotos :Rosberg X Racing,Molly Taylor; Andretti :Catie Munnings;ABT Cupra, Matias Ekstrom.
O momento em Catie Munnings passou e recuperou a liderança para a Andretti
E no final da volta Catie aumentou a vantagem usando o Hyperdrive
E Molly também usou nesse momento pra tentar atacar
A vitória da semi-final 2 ficou com Catie Munnings e Timmy Hansen da Andretti
Crazy Race
Na largada Mikaela Ahlin-Kotulisnky largou bem com o carro da JBXE
Momento em que aparceu a mensagem de punição de 10s na zona de troca de pilotos por enfregimento de pneus a JBXE
A disputa estava entre Sara Price e Christine GZ pela Segunda posição.
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Intro to Extreme E’s teams and drivers (part 1/2/3)
(here is probably where I mention that all the gifs are of last year’s livery, where applicable!)
Veloce
- Veloce Racing, with Jean-Éric Vergne fairly senior within it.
- Drivers: Christine Giampaoli Zonca (“GZ”) and Lance Woolridge.
- Jamie Chadwick drove for them for a while last year!
- Championship Position 2021: 7th.
Chip Ganassi Racing
- Segi TV Chip Ganassi Racing, owned by Chip Ganassi.
- Drivers: Sara Price and Kyle Leduc.
- Incredibly ALL-AMERICAN and also incredibly unlucky.
- Championship Position 2021: 8th.
Xite Energy Racing
- Owned by Oliver Bennett.
- Drivers: Klara Andersson and Oliver Bennett.
- Andersson is completely new to the series this year, but is missing the first race with COVID.
- Championship Position 2021: 9th.
McLaren XE
- Owned by Zak Brown
- Drivers: Emma Gilmour and Tanner Foust.
- This is the team’s first year in Extreme E.
- Championship Position 2021: N/A
Championship Drivers:
- These stand in for ill/injured drivers.
- Jutta Kleinschmidt was originally one, then performed so well standing in for Claudia Hürtgen that she got hired!
- Tamara Molinaro, ITA
- Timo Scheider, DEU
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This short film “Darkness is not unstoppable” was filmed at Loft Studios for Numero Berlin. Makes you think!
Film by: Driu Crilly & Tiago Martel
Creative Director: Macs Iotti
Stylist: Sara Gilmour
Hair Stylist: Raphael Salley
Makeup Artist: Natsumi Narita
Set Designer: Thomas Petherick
Casting Directors: Emilie Åström and Jacob Mohr
By Sara Darling
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David with Sara, 1983.
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David, Polly, and several cats
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Rosberg X Racing continúa su dominio en la Extreme E con victoria en el Island X-Prix II
Esta vez no hubo polémica. Por tercera vez en la temporada, Rosberg X Racing cruzó la meta en primera posición, pero a diferencia de la última carrera en Cerdeña esta vez sí fue la segunda victoria del año para la escudería de Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky y Johan Kristoffersson, que se escapa adelante en el campeonato. La victoria fue en pista, luego de que Ahlin-Kottulinsky completara un gran adelantamiento sobre Jutta Kleinschmidt en la vuelta final del Island X-Prix II. Luego, Kleinschmidt y el ABT Cupra, segundos en pista con Nasser Al-Attiyah, serían descalificados del evento luego de que Jutta no se abrochara completamente los cinturones de seguridad luego del cambio de pilotos. Así, el podio quedó conformado por Rosberg X Racing, X44 en segunda posición y Andretti United tercero.
La acción del domingo comenzó con la Semi Final 1, donde Rosberg X Racing se llevó una cómoda victoria. Luchando por el segundo puesto, Laia Sanz y Sara Price tuvieron contacto, lo que dañó la suspensión trasera del prototipo de Price y Chip Ganassi Racing, clasificando a Laia, Carlos Sainz y Acciona Sainz a la Final junto con Rosberg.
Luego se vino la Semi Final 2, donde la victoria fue cómoda para X44 con sólido esfuerzo de Cristina Gutiérrez y Sebastien Loeb pese a problemas de potencia seguido de ABT Cupra con Nasser Al-Attiyah y Jutta Kleinschmidt, que resistieron los ataques de Emma Gilmour y Tanner Foust de McLaren. Así, X44 y ABT Cupra pasaban a la Final.
Para definir el último puesto para la Final, se corrió la Crazy Race, en la cual Catie Munnings de Andretti United tuvo una brillante salida para quedar primera seguida de Lance Woolridge de Veloce. Después de intentar el sobrepaso en varias oportunidades, Woolridge igualó a Munnings en la recta camino al cambio de pilotos, pero los autos hicieron contacto y el auto de Veloce terminó haciendo un trompo quedando detrás del de JBXE con Hedda Hosas. Así el duelo quedaba entre Timmy Hansen de Andretti United y su hermano Kevin Hansen por el JBXE pero Kevin cometió un error e hizo un trompo, permitiendo que Andretti United ganara el último cupo a la Final.
En la Final, ABT Cupra aprovechó los votos del Grid Play para ponerse en la mejor posición de salida y ganar la largada con Nasser Al-Attiyah. El qatarí tuvo una inspirada vuelta, resistiendo los embates de Johan Kristoffersson del equipo de Rosberg y Sebastien Loeb del X44. Todo quedaría en nada, ya que en el cambio de pilotos Jutta Kleinschmidt no pudo ponerse bien los cinturones de seguridad y pese a salir en el liderato, se sabía que sería descalificada. Aun así, Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky arriesgó y la adelantó en una zona de paso por agua, ganando en pista para el Rosberg X Racing. Jutta cruzaba la meta segunda pero fuera de carrera, con lo que el X44 pasaba al segundo puesto con Cristina Gutiérrez y Sebastien Loeb y tercero quedaba el Andretti United con Catie Munnings y Timmy Hansen. El Acciona Sainz terminó cuarto pese a abandonar en la primera vuelta.
Con los resultados, Rosberg X Racing tiene un liderato de 37 puntos con 60 en juego, luego podrían asegurar fácilmente el título en la próxima ronda en Chile...
Campeonato de Equipos
Rosberg X Racing 80 pts.
NO.99 GMC Hummer EV Chip Ganassi Racing 43 pts
X44 41 pts
ACCIONA | SAINZ XE Team 40 pts
XITE ENERGY Racing 27 pts
Genesys Andretti United Extreme E 27 pts
NEOM McLaren Extreme E 19 pts
JBXE 18 pts
Veloce Racing 7 pts
ABT CUPRA XE 6 pts
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David Gilmour & Ginger Gilmour with daughter Sara
Ginger's Birthday Party 1980
Pink Floyd Wall Album Times
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chapter 6: anne boleyn on the nineteenth-century stage
[citation: kerry powell, “gendering victorian theatre,” in the cambridge history of british theatre, ed. joseph donohue (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2004), 352]
[additional citation: sara hudston, victorian theatricals: from menageries to melodrama (london: methuen, 2000)]
[additional citation: michael gilmour, “victorian melodrama,” literature compass 12, no. 7 (2015)]
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Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
A Director Making His Mark in More Ways Than One
LONDON — The director Jamie Lloyd was giving me a tour of his tattoos. Not the Pegasus on his chest or the skeleton astronaut floating on his back, though he gamely described those, but the onyx-inked adornments that cover his arms and hands, that wreathe his neck, that wrap around his shaved head.
When I asked about the dragon at his throat, he told me it had been “one of the ones that hurt the least,” then pointed to the flame-licked skulls on either side of his neck: his “covert way,” he said, of representing drama’s traditional emblems for comedy and tragedy.
“I thought maybe it’d be a little bit tacky to have theater masks on my neck,” he added, a laugh bubbling up, and it’s true: His dragon would have eaten them for lunch.
It was early December, and we were in a lounge beneath the Playhouse Theater, where Lloyd’s West End production of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring James McAvoy in a skintight puffer jacket and his own regular-size nose, would soon open to packed houses and critical praise.
Running through Feb. 29, and arriving on cinema screens Feb. 20 in a National Theater Live broadcast, “Cyrano” — newly adapted by Martin Crimp, and positing its hero as a scrappy spoken-word wonder — capped a year that saw Lloyd celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic.
In London last summer, his outdoor hit “Evita” traded conventional glamour for sexy grit, while his radical reinterpretation of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” starring Tom Hiddleston, was hailed first in the West End, then on Broadway. Ben Brantley, reviewing “Betrayal” in The New York Times, called it “one of those rare shows I seem destined to think about forever.”
When Time Out London ranked the best theater of 2019, it gave the top spot jointly to all three Lloyd productions, saying that he “has had a year that some of his peers might trade their entire careers for.”
Lloyd, who is 39, did not spring from the same mold as many of those peers. There was for him, he says, no youthful aha moment of watching Derek Jacobi onstage and divining that directing was his path. Epiphanies like that belonged to other kids, the ones who could afford the tickets.
If there is a standard background for a London theater director — and Lloyd would argue that certainly there used to be — that isn’t where he came from, growing up working class on the south coast of England, in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.
The first time I laid eyes on him, chatting in the Playhouse lobby after a preview of “Cyrano,” he was the picture of working-class flair — the gold pirate hoops, the pink and black T-shirt, the belt cinching high-waisted pants.
He looks nothing like your typical West End director. Which of course is precisely the point.
What’s underneath
“It’s quite often said of him,” McAvoy observed by phone, once the reviews were in, “that he strips things away or he tries to take classical works and turn them on their head. I think he’s always just trying to tell the story in the clearest and most exhilarating way possible.”
The “X-Men” star, who put the number of times he’s worked with Lloyd in the past decade at a “gazillion,” calls theirs “probably one of the most defining relationships that I’ve had in my career.”
Yet Lloyd himself is on board with the notion that his assertively contemporary stagings pare back stifling layers of performance history to lay bare what’s underneath.
Like the tiger and dragons that he had emblazoned on his head just last May, though, the unembellished nature of his shows — as minimalist in their way as his tattoos are the opposite — is a relatively recent development.
Lloyd’s first “Cyrano de Bergerac,” starring Douglas Hodge in 2012, was also his Broadway debut. It was, he said, “absolutely the ‘Cyrano’ that you would expect,” with the fake nose, the hat, the plume, the sword-fighting.
There is, granted, sword-fighting in the new one — but the audience has to imagine the swords.
Lloyd’s productions, including a lauded revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Passion” in 2010, long marked him as a hot young director on the rise. But he sees in some of his previous work a noisy tendency toward idea overload.
The pivot point came in 2018, with a season that the Jamie Lloyd Company — which he formed seven years ago with the commercial producing powerhouse Ambassador Theater Group — devoted to the short works of Harold Pinter. The playwright’s distillation of language forced Lloyd to match it with his staging.
That immersion led to what the director Michael Grandage — one of Lloyd’s early champions, who tapped him at 27 to be his associate director at the Donmar Warehouse — called Lloyd’s “absolute masterpiece.”
“I had quite a lot of ambition to do a production of ‘Betrayal’ in my life,” Grandage said. “And then when I saw Jamie’s, I thought, ‘Right, that’s it. I don’t ever, ever want to direct this play.’ Because that’s, for me, the perfect production.”
Playing dress-up
Charm is a ready currency in the theater, but Lloyd’s is disarming; he seems simply to be being himself, without veneer. Like when I fact-checked something I’d read by asking whether he was a vegan.
“Lapsed vegan,” he confessed immediately, with a tinge of guilt about eating eggs again.
Pay no attention to any tough-guy vibe in photos of him; do not be alarmed by the sharp-toothed cat on the back of his head. In conversation, Lloyd comes across as thoughtful and unassuming, with an animated humor that makes him fun company. If he speaks at the speed of someone with no time to waste, he balances that with focused attentiveness.
His father, Ray, was a truck driver. His mother, Joy (whose name is tattooed on his right forearm, near the elbow), cleaned houses, took in ironing and ran a costume-rental shop, where young Jamie would sneak in to dress up as the children’s cartoon character Rainbow Brite.
“It’s very embarrassing,” he said, squelching a laugh.
Seeing professional theater wasn’t an option then for Lloyd, whose grown-up passion for expanding audience access — one of the things he has made himself known for in the West End — grew out of that exclusion. His company has set aside 15,000 free and 15,000 £15 tickets for its current, characteristically starry three-show season, which will also include Emilia Clarke in “The Seagull” and Jessica Chastain in “A Doll’s House.” At the 786-seat Playhouse, that adds up to just over 38 full houses.
Lloyd, who was studying acting at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts when he decided he wanted to direct, found his way to theater as a child by acting in school shows and local amateur productions. Twice he was cast as a monkey; in “The Wizard of Oz,” thrillingly, he got to fly.
The details of his early days have always been colorful — like having a clown as his first stepfather, who performed at children’s parties under the stage name Uncle Funny. But Lloyd is quick to acknowledge the darkness lurking there.
“It sounds a little bit like some dodgy film, because he was actually a really violent man,” he said. “And there were times where he was very physically abusive to my mum. There was a sort of atmosphere of violence in that house that was really uneasy. And yet masked with this literal makeup, but also this sense of trying to entertain people whilst enacting terrible brutality behind the scenes.”
This is where he locates his own connection to Pinter’s work.
“A lot of that is that the violence is beneath the surface,” he said. “And on the top there is this sort of, what I call a kind of topspin, a layer of cover-up.”
Long relationships
Lloyd was still at drama school when he staged a production of Lapine and William Finn’s “Falsettoland” that won a prize: assistant directing a show at the Bush Theater in London. Based on that, Trevor Nunn hired him, at 22, to be his assistant director on “Anything Goes” in the West End — a job he did so well that Grandage got word of it and hired him to assist on “Guys and Dolls.” While Lloyd was doing that, he also began directing in his own right.
The costume and set designer Soutra Gilmour, who has been a constant with Lloyd since he cold-called her for his first professional production, Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” said theirs is an easy relationship, with a “symbiotic transference of ideas.” Even their creative aesthetics have evolved in sync.
“We’ve actually never fallen out in 13 years,” she said over mint tea on a trip to New York last month, just before “Betrayal” closed. “Never! I don’t even know how we would fall out.”
Of course, the one time she tried to decline a Lloyd project five years ago, because its tech rehearsals coincided with the due date for her son’s birth, he told her there was no one else he wanted to work with. So she did the show, warning that at some point she would have to leave. Now, she says, he understands that she won’t sit through endless evening previews, because she needs to go home to her child.
Lloyd and his wife, the actress Suzie Toase (whose name is tattooed on one of his arms), home-school their own three boys (whose names are tattooed on the other). Their eldest, 13-year-old Lewin, is an actor who recently played one of the principal characters, the heroine’s irresistible best friend, on the HBO and BBC One series “His Dark Materials,” whose cast boasts McAvoy as well.
Enter the child
Lloyd’s interpretation of “Betrayal,” a 1978 play that recounts a seven-year affair, imbued it with a distinctly non-’70s awareness of the fragility of family — the notion that children are the bystanders harmed when a marriage is tossed away.
Its gasp-inducing moment came with the entrance of a character Pinter wrote to be mentioned but not seen: the small daughter of the couple whose relationship is imperiled. In putting her onstage, Lloyd didn’t touch the text; it was a simple, wordless role. With it, he altered the resonance of the play.
To me, it seemed logical that Lloyd’s production would have been informed by his experience as a husband and father — and maybe also as a child in a splintering family. How old had he been, anyway, when his parents split up?
“Five,” Lloyd said. “The same age as the character would be.” He paused. “Oh God, yeah, fascinating. I’d not thought about that. Exactly the same age.”
If that fact was of more than intellectual interest to him, he didn’t let on. He volunteered a memory, though — of being a little one “amongst these kind of big giants, and I guess what we can now see as the mess of their lives.”
Blazer-free
Doing “Betrayal” in New York, Lloyd was struck by how eager Americans were to chat about his tattoos. Still, he told me after I texted him a follow-up question about them, he hadn’t expected his appearance to be such a talking point in this story.
It’s not just idle curiosity. It’s about what the tattoos signify in a field where, in Britain as in the United States, the top directors tend to have grown up very comfortably. It’s about who is welcome in a particular space, and who gets to be themselves there.
For a long time after Lloyd started working in the theater, he wore a blazer every day: a conscious attempt to conform in an industry where he felt a nagging sense of difference.
“Every other director at the time was from an Oxbridge background,” he said, “and looked and sounded a particular way. I spent a long time pretending to be like them.”
It was a performance of sorts, with a costume he donned for the role.
It was only about seven or eight years ago — around the time he left the Donmar and started putting together his own company — that he stopped worrying about what people might think if he looked the way he wanted.
“My dad had tattoos” was the first thing he said when I asked him about his own.
“I guess it’s partly getting older,” he mused, “but it’s just sort of going, ‘You can’t pretend to be someone. You’ve got to be who you really are, in every way.’”
The tattoos that have gradually transformed him are from a different aesthetic universe than his recent work onstage. Yet the impulse, somehow, is the same.
In shedding the blazer, in inking his skin, Lloyd has peeled back layers of imposed convention to show who’s underneath.
And should you spot him at the theater, where he is hard to miss, you’ll notice that he looks just like himself.
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Soundtrack of my life ...
the ten bands and recording artists that have most influenced me, my life and everything about me ...
(as usual, in no particular order)
TOOL
fave tracks: Forty Six & Two, Ænema, Stinkfist, Schism, The Grudge, Lateralus, Reflection, The Pot, Right In Two, Vicarious, Jambi, Rosetta Stoned
fave album: Lateralus
exquisite complexity in musical form, truly epic soundscapes and a pulsing, building intensity of sound. NOBODY does opening tracks better than these guys.
NINE INCH NAILS
fave tracks: Wish, Closer, Happiness in Slavery, the Perfect Drug, Gave Up, Head Like a Hole, Survivalism, Less Than, The Hand That Feeds, Just Like You Imagined, The Hand That Feeds
fave album: Broken (technically an EP, but still ...)
Trent Reznor is a genius. Discordant soundscapes and tortured vocals, an almost painful industrialized percussive pulse and moments of sudden, unexpected beauty. There’s a reason his music gets used SO MUCH in trailers ...
QUEEN
fave tracks: (too many to name, but most of all ...) Brighton Rock, One Vision, Who Wants to Live Forever?, Innuendo, Seven Seas of Rhye, Is This the World We Created?, Under Pressure, Radio Ga Ga and, of course, Bohemian Rhapsody
fave album: A Night at the Opera (and also Sheer Heart Attack)
Quite simply they were the best band in the world. EVER.
MUSE
fave tracks: Sing for Absolution, Map of the Problematique, Plug In Baby, Citizen Erased, Dead Inside, Time Is Running Out, Knights of Cydonia, Hysteria, Butterflies & Hurricanes, Reapers, Sunburn, Uno, Thought Contagion, Get Up & Fight
fave album: Black Holes & Revelations
An ever evolving epic sound, compellingly powered by Matt Bellamy’s devastating voice and ridiculous talents with guitar and piano.
TORI AMOS
fave tracks: Cornflake Girl, Space Dog, Pretty Good Year, Caught a Lite Sneeze, Father Lucifer, Talula, Spark, Northern Lad, Cruel, Carbon, Scarlet’s Walk, Bouncing Off Clouds, Roosterspur Bridge, Programmable Soda, Beauty of Speed
fave album: Under the Pink
my first real musical crush, with an amazing voice which is by turns seductively breathy and thoroughly soul-piercing, whose piano skills are without compare.
FLORENCE + THE MACHINE
fave tracks: Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up), Cosmic Love, Between Two Lungs, Bird Song, Seven Devils, No Light, No Light, Never Let Me Go, Spectrum, Breath of Life, Queen of Peace, Ship to Wreck, Third Eye, St. Jude, Conductor, The End of Love, Grace, Sky Full of Song, No Choir, Wish That You Were Here
fave album: Ceremonials
for me, Tori’s natural successor, with one of the greatest voices I have EVER heard. Haunting vocals and an exquisitely symphonic sound of incredible richness. Florence Welch is a goddess.
THE CURE
fave tracks: From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, Inbetween Days, Just Like Heaven, Lullaby, Pictures of You, Disintegration, Cut Here, Dredd Song, Burn, A Forest, Boys Don’t Cry, The Walk, Love Cats, Close To Me, A Night Like This
fave album: it’s between Disintegration and Wish
my introduction to alternative rock and goth music in particular, a truly awesome band who continue to be awesome regardless of how long they’ve been going, and this band is as old as I am! Robert Smith is a LEGEND, one of my genuine, bona fide IDOLS.
METALLICA
fave tracks: For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Thing That Should Not Be, Orion, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Master of Puppets, One, The Unforgiven, Of Wolf & Man, Sad But True, Wherever I May Roam, Nothing Else Matters, Hero of the Day, Mama Said, Until It Sleeps, The Outlaw Torn, The Unforgiven II, Turn the Page, Hardwired, Atlas, Rise!
fave album: Master of Puppets (the first album I ever bought!)
the band that first got me into metal, and for me still THE BEST metal band around. At their best when they’re HEAVY, an unstoppable juggernaut of pounding drums, chugging power chords, to-die-for solos and James Hetfield’s incomparable voice.
LINKIN PARK
fave tracks: In the End, Crawling, Runaway, Pushing Me Away, Numb, Breaking the Habit, Figure.09, Somewhere I Belong, Nobody’s Listening, Leave Out All the Rest, No More Sorrow, The Little Things Give You Away, The Catalyst, Iridescent, Waiting for the End, Castle of Glass, Powerless, Roads Untraveled, Burn it Down, Lost in the Echo, Until It’s Gone, Heavy, Battle Symphony, One More Light
fave album: Meteora
they may have started out as the definitive nu metal band, but I’ve loved them in EVERY iteration of their ever-evolving sound, from raw, savage power to pure, transcendent simplicity. Mike Shinoda is a musical genius, and Chester Bennington was a magnificent talent who was taken from us far too soon ...
BIFFY CLYRO
fave tracks: Folding Stars, Semi-Mental, Machines, The Conversation Is..., Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies, Now I’m Everyone, Mountains, Many of Horror, The Captain, Booooom, Blast & Ruin, Know Your Quarry, Bubbles, Shock Shock, Stingin’ Belle, Victory Over the Sun, Biblical, Picture a Knife Fight, Spanish Radio, Skylight, Sounds Like Balloons, Howl, Wolves of Winter, Don’t, Won’t, Can’t, Re-Arrange, Flammable, Friends & Enemies, Animal Style, Different Kind of Love, Colour Wheel, All Singing & All Dancing, Tunnels & Trees, The Naturals, Fever Dream, Balance Not Symmetry
fave album: Opposites
last but MOST CERTAINLY in no way least, in my opinion quite simply THE BEST BAND to ever come out of Scotland, a trio of musical maniacs who are never anything less than thoroughly surprising and always original. Seriously, there’s no other band like them out there, and I love them for it. Probably my favourite alt rock band of all time ...
honourable mentions: Funeral For a Friend, PVRIS, My Chemical Romance, Big Country, Sara Bareilles, a Perfect Circle, Witterquick, Don Broco, Smashing Pumpkins, Fightstar, Tonight Alive, The Killers, Pearl Jam, Idlewild, Editors, Fall Out Boy, Genesis, 30 Seconds to Mars, David Gilmour, U2
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