INTERVIEW: World of snooker explored in Broadway’s ‘The Nap’
Photo: The Nap stars Ben Schnetzer and Heather Lind. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by BBB with permission.
Snooker, the British equivalent to shooting pool, is the subject of the new crime dramedy on Broadway, The Nap. Written by Richard Bean (One Man, Two Guvnors) and directed by Daniel Sullivan (The Little Foxes), the show is currently playing a limited engagement at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in Midtown Manhattan.
The main character is Dylan Spokes (Ben Schnetzer), a local snooker player in northern England who has aspirations to make it big in the sport one day. Hovering over him is his ex-con father (John Ellison Conlee) and needy mother (Johanna Day). When talks of making extra money by throwing a game of snooker enter the fray, a bevy of characters influence Dylan’s life and moral compass. Included among those in his orbit: renowned gangster Waxy Bush (Alexandra Billings), sports manager Tony DanLino (Max Gordon Moore) and law-enforcement official Eleanor Lavery (Heather Lind).
Amazingly, the stage of the Samuel Friedman Theatre transforms into a full-on snooker competition during The Nap, and the action is all real. These actors, including snooker champion Ahmed Aly Elsayed, play out the high drama of this sports contest with the audience watching breathlessly.
Lind plays a pivotal role in the Manhattan Theatre Club production, and she’s no newcomer to MTC. The actor has previously appeared in Incognito and Of Good Stock for the company, in addition to her work in Broadway’s The Merchant of Venice and The Public’s Othello.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox spoke with Lind about her role and what’s it like to bring snooker to life on a Broadway stage. Here’s what she had to say:
On how she joined the production …
“I read the script. I went in for an audition. I think perhaps I was helped forward into the process because I’ve worked with Dan Sullivan before, who’s the director. He directed me eight years ago when I did The Merchant of Venice, so I knew him. And I’ve worked with MTC before, so it just felt like a little family reunion. I really liked the play and just did a crazy audition for it and then became attached.”
On the twists and turns of the play …
“I remember when I read the script for the first time, I gasped out loud. … It was really exciting, and it was appealing for me as an actor. I love playing things that are surprising and unexpected.”
On developing a backstory for the role of Eleanor Lavery …
“There’s an element I think of my character that is extremely buried that she only allows to the surface when she feels really safe. That allowed me to invent a backstory. I sometimes don’t get too, too specific about backstory because it can get me in my head a little bit, but for her I just imagined where she might have come from, what her family life might have been like. … Because the play is also so humorous, I found that contradiction to be not only complex for me but also funny. It would be interesting and funny to see how those things bubbled up consciously and unconsciously for me.”
On working with Richard Bean …
“We had Richard Bean, the playwright, in rehearsal with us for the first week and a half, and he talked us through a lot of the basic things we needed to know about snooker and about some of the references in the play. And then because we were working with Dan Sullivan, he was also able to point out moments where he thought the play could be clearer for the audience in terms of just explaining what snooker was in the midst of the drama and try to make sure that people weren’t completely lost.
“So Richard, the writer, was really wonderful about changing things, just to make them a tad bit more American actually, so that our audiences didn’t feel that they were always scrambling to catch up to this world because it is pretty unfamiliar to most people in the States, I think. And it was to me. I had never heard of snooker before this play, and I have family in England. So I think it’s a very small world. I mean, it’s a huge competition in England and internationally, but I think it’s a fairly small world of people involved at least from my perspective. We had to take a few of the British sayings out. Some of the language we tried to Americanize slightly, so that we didn’t lose our audience.”
On developing an accent for her character …
“I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of dialects in my career. I don’t know how that’s happened. I’m grateful that I studied it a little bit in school because I’ve had to approach some work from various places, so I really like using accents. I find that it focuses the language for me in a really specific way. If I think about it, all characters have an accent of some kind, and if you know where they’re from, you can use that. … And everyone, of course, is from somewhere, so I like using accents.
“I thought this particular one is tricky because it takes place in northern England, so several of the characters live in that place. And they speak with a northern Yorkshire accent, and then there are some characters, myself included, who are from away. So we all had to decide specifically where we are from, and my character is from London. But, of course, within London there are many different dialects to work with. We worked with a great dialects coach, Ben Furey, and he helped really specify where we all from. It’s a challenge every night because anybody has done an accent other than their own before knows that you only have to hear someone else’s accent coming in your ear for it to start messing you up a little bit, and in this play, we’re constantly having conversations with people who have different accents than we do. So it’s pretty challenging. There’s one scene where Ben Schnetzer, who plays the lead male character, Dylan, we’re having a conversation about dancing, and I’m from London. So I say ‘d-ah-cing,’ and he’s from Yorkshire, so he says ‘dan-cing.’ We have a moment where we actually echo each other with that exact word, and, of course, the sounds are so different. It’s very interesting to imagine how particularly people in the UK communicate because some of their regional dialects are just so different. It’s been fun.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Nap is currently playing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in Midtown Manhattan. The Manhattan Theatre Club production stars Heather Lind and continues through Nov. 11. Click here for more information and tickets.
