Jake Gyllenhaal Backstage and On stage

What a week! Jake Gyllenhaal has been making the NYC stage his own during this week of previews for If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet. I do recommend you look back over the comments for the last couple of posts. A number of WDW readers have been lucky enough to see the play and they have been filling in some of the details for those of us an ocean or more away.

Jake also appeared on the Late Night with Letterman Show - the video can be seen in the last post - and so we have some photos from that as well as a stunning portrait of Jake to go with the play.

Jake graces quite spectacularly the cover of the Fall issue of Backstage. In the magazine he talks about the importance of doing something for five months which would have his full attention. He also reaffirms his long broken promise to himself to do a play for every three movies. Hopefully, this time, this will happen and in more cities too.



“To feel like you’re a part of a family that is truly relying on each other to stay afloat—that idea is what drew me in,” he says. “I had no real explanation for not doing a play for essentially a decade, but I intend not to make that mistake again. Hopefully, ideally, it will be three plays for every movie.” 

Jake also explains to Backstage about how and why he moved from LA to NYC: '“Somebody was trying to get an angle on why I moved to New York, and I was like, ‘Because my family is here and I love them. And I want to be with them and they mean everything to me.’ This is the best possible place for me to be, to be near my family, doing a show about the mess of a family, and then maybe having my family come watch it.”'

Many thanks to WDW reader Adele for her thorough and brilliant account of seeing If There Is this week. If you're going to see the play yourself then you might want to wait until afterwards before reading it, but for the rest of us it's packed full of the details we want to read - about the set, this water that we keep hearing about and the humour. Here's a quote from the review but I urge you to read it in full. I love the references to Wetherspoons - I heartily approve of their megacheap veggie breakfasts (served with beer if you want it) and I'm delighted to hear its fame is spreading!

'Jake Gyllenhaal plays Terry, who returns from his vague and mysterious travels, presumably attempting to outrun his somewhat troubled past, and lopes into the family home in Adidas shell-suit, slicked back hair and baggy jeans, all rangy physicality and blackly comic one-liners. (His very convincing English accent, if triangulated, places Terry somewhere between Shoreditch High Street, Super Hans, and Ricky Gervais. It’s flawless and hilarious.) His body language swings between self-protective and endearingly casual as he breaks apart the tightly-strung lives of a pre-occupied family and forces them to re-evaluate what is important. Jake masters the comic timing and Terry’s endearing likeability and undermines it with flashes of anger, drunkenness and helplessness as George accuses him of being just a “scared little boy”.'

'Terry’s presence is a final catalyst for troubled, bullied, overweight niece Anna, and their slightly uneasy, sometimes awkward, yet affectionate relationship provides the heart of the play. Anna’s dramatic breakdown after a disastrous date (at the local Wetherspoon’s, no less – a reference to a ubiquitous chain of British pubs which I wondered if anyone who hadn’t been subjected to them in the UK would truly appreciate) ends up throwing all the tensions between George, Terry and Fiona into sharp relief, and leaves Anna drowning in plain sight. Fiona, distracted by struggles with her elderly mother and George’s manic preoccupation, loses sight of how to help her daughter. “She means the world to me,” Fiona laments, and this is where we see Terry’s point that “saving the world” might not be so far removed from saving the family.'

Thanks so much Adele!



Finally, do watch through to the end of this video with Anna Kendrick talking about filming End of Watch with Jake. Thanks to BBMISwear for the links! Thanks to IHJ for the pictures!