In the West End, Directors in Residence

LONDONâ€"“That’s that theater taken care of, then!”

The above could be the catchphrase of London’s West End at the moment, as various playhouses pair up with directors in an attempt to “brand” a theater, so to speak.

Two prominent West End theaters have each hitched themselves to directors who not long ago were regularly seen at a particular Off West End address. I’m referring, of course, to Michael Grandage, the former artistic director of Covent Garden’s intimate Donmar Warehouse, and Jamie Lloyd, who one could argue came of age as a director under Mr. Grandage’s tutelage at the Donmar. (Among Mr. Lloyd’s Donmar credits was the best production I have yet seen of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical “Passion.”)

The current season finds the two men embarked upon the stewardships of a pair of cmmercial theaters all of five minutes from each other. Mr. Grandage got in first, beginning a 15-month tenancy at the Noël Coward Theater in December with “Privates on Parade,” the 1977 Peter Nichols/Denis King play-with-music that in effect is a revival of a revival. Mr. Grandage staged the same show with a different cast at the Donmar late in 2001 in a production that won its star, Roger Allam, an Olivier award.

And here the title is again, this time with Simon Russell Beale in endearingly frothy, flouncy form as the army captain Terri Dennis, an Englishman abroad who never met a double entendre or innuendo to which he couldn’t apply liberal dollops of camp. (The piece is set at the start of the Malayan Emergency in 1948.)

The show, first seen in the soul-baring confines of the 250-seat Donmar, is perhaps inevitably more presentational at the Noël Coward, with its tradi! tional proscenium and more than three times the seating â€" and correspondingly less revelatory.

That said, the flat-out brio of the revue-style show marks a most agreeable start to a five-play lineup that only gets starrier. Next up is the one world premiere of the lot - “Peter and Alice,” a new play from John Logan (“Red”), that marks the return to the London stage of Judi Dench, whom Mr. Grandage directed four years ago in Yukio Mishima’s “Madame de Sade.” After that come two Shakespeares (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Henry V,” the latter with Jude Law as the king), that pair preceded by Daniel Radcliffe in the first London revival of Martin McDonagh’s “Cripple of Inishmaan” - Harry Potter takes on the part of Cripple Billy.

A short walk across Trafalgar Square, Mr. Lloyd’s sequence of shows at the Trafalgar Studios hasn’t been announced beyond an opening title - a new “Macbeth,” which began performancs this weekend and stars James McAvoy, the Scottish film actor (“Atonement,” “The Last King of Scotland”) who, incidentally, was in that first “Privates on Parade” undertaken by Mr. Grandage at the Donmar. The intention here remains the same as it is for the Trafalgar’s glitzier rival up the road: to position a commercial theater as the stomping ground of a specific director, who in turn can leave an imprint upon a series of shows rather than just going from one ad-hoc production to another as is the directorial norm.

This sort of endeavor isn’t new to the ecology of the West End. The Haymarket is just one of several addresses to have given itself over in recent years to one or another name director. Jonathan Kent, Sean Mathias and Trevor Nunn have all shepherded their own parades of shows to that theater, none of which made much of a noise beyond Mr. Nunn’s wonderful “Flare Path,” starring Sienna Miller and Sheridan Smith, and a Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellen “Waiting for Godot” from Mr. Mathias that looks as if it is going to be revisited on Broadway.

One can see the appeal of the enterprise. Couple a building with an artist who can create an identity for it and you are spared the vagaries of commercial production that can at times leave weeks or months between bookings.

And what director is going to balk at a scenario whereby he or she is the self-evident draw Mr. Grandage and Mr. Lloyd are (so far, anyway) scheduled to direct all the shows in their respective seasons, whereas his former leadership of the Donmar inevitably meant that Mr. Grandage could only direct a percentage of the offerings at a non-commercial house where he - or any artistic director - would be expected to share the wealth.

Throw in Kevin Spacey’s ongoing stewardship of the Old Vic, a once-troubled playhouse that has become profitably associated in the minds of the London public with the double Oscar winner, and the virtues of branding a theater are on view before you.

What happens to the theaters when these men move on The answer, or part of it, may be on view at the Donmar, where Josie Rourke is now in the artistic director’s chair.