Broadway: The Nichols Touch

The script says that when the curtain goes up the character called Harry is standing on the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge looking suicidal. He removes his coat. A friend he hasn't seen for 15 years comes up to him just then. He quickly puts the coat back on.

As the actual play—Broadway's new smash comedy Luv—begins, Harry is up on the railing of the bridge, teetering and ready to jump. When his old friend walks up to him and says, "Is it? —No! Harry Berlin! . . . How've you been doing, Harry?" the emphatic incongruity of the moment touches off a wave of mad laughter. The tone of the play has been perfectly set.

Happened In. It was Mike Nichols, the director, who put Harry up on the railing. Nichols deals in exaggerated probabilities, and his touch has made hits of all three plays he has directed so far—The Knack, Barefoot in the Park and Luv. He may be one of the more gifted and promising new directors to take his place in the American theater since Elia Kazan left Constantinople.

A Nichols play is a busy, gymnastic comedy of the absurd. Characters grunt and wheeze, climb stairs, assemble rusty iron beds, ride motor scooters, lose their pants, leap off bridges, throw knives. But the procession of sight gags only emphasizes the drift of the dialogue, supporting and not replacing the language of the playwright. As he approaches character from several directions, Nichols apparently feels particularly comfortable in a tenor of intelligent slapstick.

Nichols developed his sure eye and ear for comedy honestly. In partnership with Elaine May, he emerged as one of the outstanding comedians of his time. The improvisations he has long done with her are of the same fabric as his work as a director. Their old act continues—TV appearances, occasional concert performances—but both Nichols and May are expanding in their individual directions. Elaine is at work on her second play. Mike, who last year just happened into the Barefoot job at the suggestion of Producer Saint-Subber, says that "as soon as I started rehearsals, I knew I would never want to do anything else."

Cohesive Movement. Now 33, Nichols is the sort of director whom most writers and actors only meet when they are asleep and dreaming. Actors agree he is their ideal one-man audience. He sits in rehearsals and howls and chuckles until the actors get delusions and stare across the footlights at 1,500 Mike Nicholses. He lets them invent and improvise on their own. When in doubt he says, "I don't believe it, but try it."

He has guiding precepts. "Let the laughs go and play the people," he says. When he makes a mistake, he is the first to acknowledge it. "Mike is the best director I've ever worked with, and that includes Gielgud and Peter Brook," says Brian Bedford of The Knack. "Mike has the patience to wait until the part slowly emerges. I'm sure he does guide you, but so subtly you think everything comes from within yourself."