His Take

The story started life in 1928 as a play called The Front Page about two male journalists – one an ambitious editor, the other a talented young hack tired of sleaze and set on leaving the profession, until circumstances intervene in the form of the biggest scoop of the year. In 1940 it became the film His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The movie kept the original premise but tweaked one crucial detail – it made the young journalist a woman. The result was what Fennessy describes as “a mash-up of a rom-com and a political piece about corruption and journalism”. Its energy and brilliant writing made it an enduring favourite, and it has now returned to the stage in an adaptation written by John Guare.

The defining element of both the play and film for Fennessy is its dialogue, which he describes as “a type of American patois that is very familiar, and when it's done well it is just brilliant... Howard Hawks [the film's director] wanted to replicate how he actually saw people speak in tight, fast-moving environments. So to do that he was one of the first directors to use plate mic's and started secreting microphones around. [The film] was a big technical achievement and it started off that whole quick-talking screwball comedy genre.”

Underneath the play's lightheartedness there is a certain timeliness to the production too. Fennessy's play National Interest, about the Balibo Five, came out recently. It also focussed on journalists, albeit in a very different, far more tragic, context. By comparison, the picture of journalism painted in His Girl Friday seems quaint. But Fennessy explains that he was partly inspired to stage the play by the News of the World phone tapping scandal in Britain. “The journalists appear like these happy-go-lucky schmucks just pumping out stories and it's all very innocent, [but] there's a very black edge to how they are treated in this work... they'll do anything to get the story.”

Will fans of the film be surprised by anything in the play? Fennessy pauses to think about it. “I get the feeling that John Guare absolutely loved that film, so there's a lot of love and a lot of devotion within the script. [But] I think they might be.” Fenessny was never looking to replicate the performances of Grant and Russell in the lead roles. He explains that rather than trying to capture their idiosyncratic charisma he wanted lead performances that brought their own flair and above all, chemistry. “They are meant to be oddball lovers. So we recognise, and they recognise, that they shouldn't be together, but when they are together, it works. For that to occur you've got to have a sense of plausibility.” The leads in the MTC are played by Philip Quast and Pamela Rabe. “I'm not sure what it is, if it's a look or something, but there's terrific plausibility and connection with those two actors.”