The Stage

Mendes’ Scamp to debut with Fuddy Meers

Published Tuesday 17 February 2004 at 12:35 by Jeremy Austin

Sam Mendes’ new film and theatre production company Scamp will make its West End debut in May at the Arts Theatre with a co-production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s off-Broadway hit Fuddy Meers.

The comedy, about 24-hours in the life of an amnesiac, opens at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in March before coming into London. It is co-produced with the Midlands venue and with Edward Snape’s Fiery Angel company. Angus Jackson will direct Julia Mackenzie in the show.

Head of theatre production at Scamp, Caro Newling, said the company will not only retain and build upon the American links forged by Newling and Mendes while at the Donmar Warehouse with companies such as Brooklyn Academy of Music, it will also develop British work.

While it will have a strong remit for new writing, other work being developed includes the first revival of Howard Brenton and Dave Hare’s Pravda, which premiered at the National Theatre in 1985 and will be directed by Ed Hall, and a new production of Macbeth, directed by Katie Mitchell.

The big budget Shrek - The Musical is also in development, produced by Newling and Mendes in tandem with Hollywood studio Dreamworks.

Mendes will direct some of the work produced by Scamp but Newling said the company has not been set up to find work for the former Donmar Warehouse artistic director. When they collaborated at the Donmar, Mendes only directed around ten of the 70 shows they produced.

Said Newling: “The excitement is identifying other people with projects and to take them forward. It is about identifying writers we want to work with and going to them, or writers who have made interesting suggestions to us.”

Among those, Owen McCafferty has been commissioned to write an adaptation of JP Miller’s play Days of Wine and Roses, Nick Whitby is adapting the 1942 Ernst Lubitsch film To Be or Not to Be and Heidi Thomas is writing a play chronicling the Russian royal family’s last three months of captivity before their assassination.

Also in the company is Pippa Harris, former head of drama commissioning at the BBC, who is in charge of the film division. Newling, however, stressed that the idea behind Scamp is not to develop stage work for film or visa versa.

“It isn’t about ‘let’s put on a play and make it into a movie’. That isn’t something that is particularly achievable and it isn’t what we are about,” she said.

Dreamworks, which produced Mendes’ Oscar-winning American Beauty, has provided funding that covers the office rental and the three salaries at Scamp. In return it has a first-look deal at film projects the company is working on but Newling stresses it is not an exclusivity deal and Scamp can work with any film company.

She also added that the Hollywood company, founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, is not interested in theatre production with the exception of work to which it owns the intellectual property rights.