There’s rarely a dull moment at the Complex on Arran Street East – the last Friday evening in August provides further proof of this, when I arrive to interview Artistic Director Vanessa Fielding about their upcoming production, the Irish premiere of On the Waterfront. There’s a commotion outside the Depot venue space, with equipment being rushed in and out, to accompany the noise from a crowd spilling out of the Boar’s Head and onto the Luas tracks.
“We were shooting a music video here today with the rapper KSI and they made an ice throne with a snow feature that has now gotten stuck to the floor. We have to restore it by tomorrow morning for a fashion show!” Fielding says as we make our way to her office above the Gallery space. It’s unclear where she finds the time for our interview amidst dealing with this, but it seems that problem-solving on the fly is second nature to her, and she is generous and open with her time, speaking at length and with passion about her latest project, the people with whom she works, and the city centre community which her interdisciplinary arts venue serves.
We’re here to talk about On the Waterfront, made famous as a film by director Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg, and re-worked by Schulberg and Stan Silverman in the 1990s into a Broadway play that flopped, with the New York Times comparing it to “seeing what happens when a Rolex of a film is taken apart for no special aesthetic reason, then put back together with much of its mechanism missing”. I ask why Fielding thinks the play was so poorly received, and she’s unequivocal; “It has to have been the production – the script is really strong and stands the test of time; the narrative sustains itself, as in the film, with all the memorable instances and lines intact,” and this is supported by the reception to Steven Berkoff’s production in 2019, which the Guardian called “a gripping piece of theatre”.
Fielding’s production is not striving for the brutal realism that helped make the film so dynamic and realistic. Instead she’s excited by its realisation in a modern Irish context, where “detailed ‘method’ realism is translated into an abstract aesthetic, fusing the eras of 1950 and today – the acting will be real nonetheless and deliver the heights of the story. The look will be cool and a fusion of then and now to enhance its relevance, through costume and set”.
This in contrast to the film, a gritty tale of union corruption and personal redemption, on the New Jersey docks. The winner of eight Academy Awards, it became best known for Marlon Brando’s performance as ex-boxer Terry Malloy, who despairs to his brother Charley that he “coulda been a contender!” in one cinema’s most iconic scenes.
Filmed in a freezing New Jersey winter in 1953, Kazan wrote in his autobiography that the “bite of the wind and the temperature did a great thing for the actor’s faces: It made them look like real people, who suffered the cold because they had no choice”. This was an extension of Method Acting, of which Kazan was one of the strongest American proponents, as it encouraged actors to find the inspiration for their performance in their own lives and experiences.
Brando gives one of the great film performances, but lead actor Lloyd Cooney is unfazed by the potential for comparison: “Brando has done the iconic Terry Malloy, but it’s never been done in Ireland before, so it’s new here, and that’s exciting”, he says, pointing out that “theatre audiences are very open to the fact that there are different interpretations of characters”. Fielding makes the same point, observing that “if it was a play that was done more regularly, nobody would be thinking about this one iconic performance”, but that instead of it being an attractive role, it’s “been exclusive, it hasn’t been seen as an option”.
On the Waterfront showcases the plight of dockers who are exploited by their union bosses, forced to compete in a daily “shape-up”, where their prospects of employment for the day hinge on being granted the privilege by their own union reps. Terry, at the prompting of his local priest Fr Barry and love interest Edie, eventually gathers the courage to testify at a Crime Commission against his former paymasters. Although regarded as one of the finest films of the century, it was also explicitly a defence of Kazan’s decision to be a friendly witness to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1952, which allowed him to retain his film career, at the expense of the respect and trust of many former friends and fellow travellers.
For Fielding, though, her production has a relevance divorced from this, and specific to a contemporary Irish context: “We have a group of people who are currently voiceless; single, marginalised men, and those people are finding it difficult to survive. These men with the same challenges as each other are being set against each other for political gain. We are trying to give them a voice, to challenge their exclusion and encourage understanding through producing this play now”.
She has form for re-creating American classics, having last year translated with Catherine Joyce the Tennessee Williams play The Rose Tattoo into a modern Irish Traveller setting. From this visceral production she’s retained Cooney, and several of the behind-the-scenes team. She’s at her most enthusiastic when discussing her collaborators, but especially the actors: “It’s such a short time you have to get actors to trust you, and you travel together, it’s a marriage; you give everything to get the actor there; I like to get stuck in and go together with the actor”.
She tells me that she’s explicitly inspired by Kazan’s style: “we’re both actor-led, we work with people”, she says, an assertion backed up by Cooney, who says that she’s “got great instincts, and is very trusting – it feels like a collaboration working with Vanessa”. Anne O’Riordan plays the role of Edie, with Luke Griffin as Fr. Barry. She has also cast Michael Collins, upholding a pledge she made after The Rose Tattoo to ensure actors from the Travelling Community get cast in non-Traveller parts. and Fielding’s desire to get into the month of rehearsals with them is as blatant as it is infectious – “I got my first choices with all 10 actors, and that’s unheard of!”, she tells me.
This enthusiasm is shared for other members of the team. Visual artist Tanad Aaron, alongside Mark Swords, produced a design for the set, which will be housed in the Depot space, an old fruit warehouse, and has the sharp, industrial design that comfortably evokes the New Jersey docks. This is as yet unrealised, but it’s a bold design, with the audience on both sides of the stage, and a series or ramps and platforms on which the action occurs.
She has enlisted Philip Connaughton as choreographer, and in this there is the one deviation from the text: “There’s a reporter whose role states the over-obvious and we’ve replaced it with movement and dance to set the context”. Music and sound is designed by Simon Cullen, retained from The Rose Tattoo, in consultation with IMC, who will together design a soundscape influenced from the 1950s New York jazz scene. Kelly Phelan produces, with Saibh Hooper running marketing on the show.
Fielding and Cooney both speak about the problems faced by artists and cultural venues in Dublin, with the latter noting the improvements brought about by the Basic Income for the Arts scheme, and the former praising the engagement and interest shown by a number of political parties in her idea of “cultural mortgages”, by which a company would purchase their venue over several decades. The kind of creative thinking on display in the Complex is needed in the theatre, the gallery, the gig venue, and beyond, and as I leave, I ask what they have coming up next. The answer tells me what I know already, that the Complex is one of Dublin’s best, most diverse, and most interesting venues.
“We have lots of music gigs, we call them Depot Sessions, and the next one in October features Big Love, Cabl, and CHERYM. Then there’s the International Comedy Film Festival in November, and in January, Brian Warfield from the Wolfe Tones has written a play, called Celtic Exodus…”
As October turns to November, though, Fielding’s On the Waterfront is bound to be the hottest ticket in post-festivals, pre-Christmas theatre, so is definitely not to be missed.
Words: Adhamh Ó Caoimh
Images: George Hooker
On The Waterfront is at the Complex Dublin from Nov 1st to Nov 16th, with previews on October 30th and 31st. Further details and tickets are available here.
