Mendes Discusses CHARLIE, Bond & Heading National Theatre?

Versatile Academy Award- and Tony Award-winning stage and screen director Sam Mendes compares film to theatre and discusses many aspects of both mediums in a wide-ranging new interview in promotion of the upcoming West End bow of the highly anticipated adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's classic CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.

In juxtaposing making musicals versus movies, Mendes states, "Of all the things I've done, whether it be movies on a very big scale or a smaller one, or whether it be big plays or small plays, or running a theatre, new musicals are the most difficult, without question."

That says a lot considering the man behind the most successful James Bond film franchise entry in history, SKYFALL, is the one who is saying it!

Mendes also recounts his experience on his last new original musical debut, that of THE FIX in the late 1990s at the Donmar Warehouse, starring John Barrowman and Philip Quast - the latter who would go on to win an Olivier Award for his work in the show. He says, "...I learnt an enormous amount - you always learn from your failures, you don't learn much from your successes."

Mendes continues, "I've definitely thought about all three of those shows [OLIVER!, THE FIX and CABARET] and the mistakes I made on them in the process of doing this. And I know that in terms of process I've not made some of the mistakes I made on those shows here, and it's been a much more enjoyable experience as a consequence."

He concludes, "It's a wildly different process and yet in some ways it is even more difficult to do [revivals], because people have two legendary productions of those shows in their minds already and to eradicate it or reformat it when they've already been done to perfection the first time around is a very difficult burden to bear the whole time. Whereas with this, no one really knows. There's an excitement to creating something new. It's stressful, of course, because big things can change and you are sometimes rewriting a number or restaging and rejigging things, but you don't have that thing of someone out there knowing how it should go."

Also, Mendes comments on rumors that he may take over The National Theatre following fellow Broadway/Hollywood director Nicholas Hytner's departure later this year.

He remarks, "How can you not be interested? It's the most amazing job. But it's a simple thing for me, and if I run The National Theatre I can't direct movies. It's no more complicated than that. I love directing movies as well as plays. Anyone who seriously does the job has to do it for ten years, or the very minimum five, and you can't just go away and direct movies. I did it at the Donmar, but that's a 250 seat theatre that does just five shows a year. The National Theatre is The National Theatre. I had a very brief conversation with them, but put it this way, the first line of the person who discussed me doing it was, 'You don't want to do this, do you?' It was basically phrased that at the moment it would seem unlikely that I'd want to do this. That's assuming they would even offer it to me, but it needs the kind of dedication that the two Nicks have shown, and it shows you what two remarkable people can do when they are fully dedicated to a single institution. The reality is that they've taken it to such a level and set it up so brilliantly for the next generation with all the development and capital work. They have to have somebody who is fully dedicated to it, because otherwise it will drop off."

Check out the entire interview with Sam Mendes by Mark Shenton in The Stage here.

So, would you like to see such an accomplished and acclaimed theatre and film director such as Sam Mendes set up shop at The National Theatre?