Interview: KENN MCLAUGHLIN of SWITZERLAND at STAGES HOUSTON

One of my favorite show's this year has been the Stages Houston chilling production of SWITZERLAND.  It features legendary Houston actress Sally Edmundson taking on iconic Texan writer Patricia Highsmith as a character.  It also presents the dazzling talents of Ian James.  I got a chance to talk with director Kenn McLaughlin about this thriller, and why he chose it to be his last directing bow at Stages. The show runs through November 12th at Stages Houston.  

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 Brett Cullum:  The play SWITZERLAND depicts a fantasy of celebrated Texan and crime novelist, Patricia Highsmith, haunted by a young man goading her to continue with her most famous creation, Tom Ripley. I wanted to ask you what made you want to produce and direct SWITZERLAND?

Kenn McLaughlin: Oh, gosh! When I first read it it sent chills up my spine. That doesn't normally happen when you read something, and I saw there were some creepy things that happened in this play. Then there's some wonderful twists! It's just that kind of element of surprise that I love in theater. I love it so much, and I just found this one to be incredibly interesting.

There was just so much going on. I fell in love with it back in 2014 when I first had it in my hand. And I wanted to produce for a long period of time. Ultimately, because it's that element of surprise that I love most about theater, SWITZERLAND is all about surprise.

Brett Cullum: I was intrigued with using Patricia Highsmith, the author of the Tom Ripley books, as a character. How much of the real Patricia is in here?

Kenn McLaughlin: It's a piece of fiction. It’s all about creative process, but it draws deeply on what we know of the public record, about who she was as a human and how she interacted with the world. In the end of her life, she was essentially isolated in a bunker in Switzerland. So, there's a lot it says in terms of her biography, and the way in which she behaves in the play is very accurate to her persona in the world.  The play actually drew from some of her journals and diaries for dialogue. 

Patricia Highsmith was not considered to be one of the kindest people who ever lived. In fact, she was regarded to be one of the nastiest people. A quirky woman who went around and would carry snails against her body to dinner parties. Also, a woman far ahead of her time.  She was an out lesbian who wrote one of the most seminal, queer books of all time THE PRICE OF SALT. This play gives her a full humanity! You get to hear so much of the challenges of what it was to be an open Lesbian writer in a male establishment in the 1940s. 

Brett Cullum: One of the unique things is that Patricia obviously was a Texan, and so we have playing her in the piece, Sally Edmondson. She is a Houston theatre legend!  What made you ask Sally, to create this enigmatic “booger” of a character?

Kenn McLaughlin: Sally and I have done so many things together.  When Switzerland came up years ago, I thought about her, and when it came back onto my radar just about 18 months ago or so I called her up.  

I said “You know, Sally, the reason I would want to do this with you… is it's so different from anything we've ever done.”

We've done things like STEEL MAGNOLIAS and AUNTIE MAME. She's generally played these hopeful and full of life women! This is a woman lives in the dark part of our human psyche. What she's interested in is death, murder, and she's wrestling with end-of-life questions.  And so I was intrigued by the idea of Sally and I going into that together. 

Brett Cullum: Ian James is playing opposite her, and we saw him at stages in 2019 before the pandemic in a show called SEX WITH STRANGERS. He doesn't have quite the history Sally does with stages. What made you choose him to act opposite her?

Kenn McLaughlin: He has a charisma.  We auditioned a lot of actors, and there were all sorts of really fascinating choices to tell the story.  One of the things that's really unique about SWITZERLAND is underneath it all… It's a love story – a quirky, unexpected one. There was a need for the actor to really have chemistry... more like an electricity with Sally.  They attack one another often in the play, but they also then comfort one another. It's more animal. It's not intellectualism. And Ian and Sally, just explode. He’s also a wonderful actor who I knew was not going to be intimidated by Sally.

Brett Cullum: What made you want to go this dark for your final turn directing at Stages? 

Kenn McLaughlin:  This is a thriller … a psychological thriller. It's an homage to Hitchcock, and at moments it is definitely a tribute to Patricia Highsmith and the way in which she crafted things so sophisticated and so thoughtfully.

I didn't know when I put it together that it would be my last show at Stages.  There was this incredible poetry to the fact that Sally and I would be doing this.  And that Ian, who had been a former student of mine, was coming along for the ride. The play itself is about the act of creating and the way in which artists push themselves and challenge themselves with the hardest of questions.

I love leaving on a note that says, “We're not done doing this! I'm not done asking the kinds of questions I will ask for the rest of my life as an artistic personality.” This is a play that that does that. So it ended up being just an incredible opportunity on every level.   

Photo was taken by Melissa Taylor and features the cast of SWITZERLAND.  The play runs at Stages Houston through November 12th.  

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