At the age of 25, Patrick Bringley realised he not had the urge for food for his glitzy job on the occasions workforce at The New Yorker. It was 2008, and he’d simply lived via the demise of his 26-year-old brother, Tom, from most cancers. “I had misplaced somebody, I didn’t want to transfer on from that,” Bringley writes in his memoir, All of the Magnificence within the World. “In a way, I didn’t want to transfer in any respect.” He discovered a job that fitted his mind-set, as a guard on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in Manhattan. Ten lengthy years handed, with Bringley standing watch as guests moved via the huge museum, marvelling at its treasures. Now, Bringley is making ready to tread the boards on the off-Broadway DR2 Theatre for the opening night time of his one-man present primarily based on his bestselling memoir. “I can rekindle these emotions after I’m on stage,” he tells me.
We’re standing within the atrium outdoors the museum’s American wing, bathed in gentle from the glass ceiling. Going through us is the grand, Nineteenth-century facade of a Wall Avenue financial institution. “They tore it down within the 1910s,” Bringley, now 41, tells me matter-of-factly. “The Met stated, ‘We’ll take it!’” For the reason that publication of his e-book in 2023, the author, who has an undergraduate diploma from New York College and a grasp’s in historical past from close by Hunter Faculty, has led non-public excursions on the Met, which he says are “profitable”. Now, Bringley is bringing his memoir to life on stage with the assistance of Dominic Dromgoole, former inventive director of Shakespeare’s Globe in London. “There appeared one thing so pure to me about doing a one-man present a few lonesome determine like a guard,” says Bringley. “It simply makes a sure cosmic sense.”
At first look, Bringley seems to be light and unassuming. He’s dressed for our assembly in denims and a slouchy blazer. His wispy blond hair is someplace between neat and unkempt – respectable. When he speaks, nevertheless, Bringley has the mesmerising air of a person who’s discovered enlightenment. “What was extraordinary about coming to this place, and my job, is that I used to be compelled to step outdoors the conventional circulation of life. And if you try this, you realise that you may begin considering with an unbelievable freedom,” he tells me, “since you’re not simply compelled to funnel your ideas down into some actionable little piece of intelligence that’s going to ahead your profession, or impress the man sitting subsequent to you. As an alternative, I can assume grandiose ideas, or silly ideas, or experimental ideas. You’ll be able to cease and assume, ‘What the hell is that this existence?’ The type of issues a thinker would assume, or a Buddhist monk would assume.
“And right here, you’ve gotten so many issues to ping that off towards,” he provides, casting a hand round on the Met’s innumerable masterpieces. “And I discovered it to be the one approach to actually understand the true magnificence, and thriller, and majesty, and strangeness of this existence.”
Days later, I’m talking to Dromgoole about his earnest new apprentice. “He’s obtained a great, shiny spirit,” he tells me. “You simply assume, God, that’s someone who has labored out methods to stroll effectively via the world.” The pair met on the Charleston Literary Competition in 2023, bonding over their mutual love of Shakespeare earlier than Bringley gave a presentation on his e-book. Dromgoole was immediately impressed. “He’s obtained a really seemingly guileless approach of trying fairly ‘Aw, shucks’, and fairly harmless, after which taking you thru to locations you don’t anticipate to go to, which are fairly wealthy and fairly profound.”
Throughout 80 minutes on stage, Bringley will painting himself, fellow guards, museum guests, and even his late brother. “I spent about three hours a day for 10 weeks simply operating traces,” he says of memorising the gargantuan script. He did so whereas taking walks round Central Park or driving one among New York’s many public ferries, listening to himself in his headphones – enjoying, pausing, remembering. The irony of going from a stoic watchman to an orator will not be misplaced on him. “I was very, very quiet for a residing. Now I simply discuss, like, half 1,000,000 phrases each day.”
Over a number of months of rehearsals, Dromgoole taught Bringley methods to translate his prose for a stay viewers. Generally, his recommendation was broad. “Each thought that you simply’re talking, you’re having for the primary time,” Dromgoole advised him. “It has to pop, it could’t be monotone.” Different instances, the director homed in on particular traces, telling Bringley to ship them with “extra violence” or “much less piety”. “Generally he reaches for cosmic statements,” Dromgoole says of Bringley’s writing, “and typically that works, however that at all times needs to be fed by a bedrock of specificity, and banality, and plain and boring particulars.”
Specifically, the director was eager to incorporate extra particulars about life as a guard to stability Bringley’s extra philosophical musings. For example, Met guards stroll thus far every day that they’re paid a “hose allowance” of $80 (£62) a yr for socks. In a single chapter of his e-book, Bringley remembers being advised by a wizened older colleague that 12 hours standing on wooden floors is like eight hours on marble. “In addition to the large questions on artwork and life, you need it to have simply details about process,” says Dromgoole. “It’s beautiful in that it does open up these massive questions, however you simply should get the stability proper.”
Throughout the play, Bringley will as soon as once more don his outdated dark-blue swimsuit – the uniform of the Met guards. He was adamant that his former colleagues needs to be among the many first to see his play, and without cost. Nonetheless, when he put it to the producers, they prompt a meagre low cost. “Ten per cent,” he says, incredulous. “I used to be like, ‘You can’t provide these individuals a ten per cent low cost.’” Fortunately, somebody had the thought of inviting them to the gown rehearsal, which is occurring the day after our dialog. After I converse to Dromgoole afterwards, he describes the night time as “terrific”. “As a result of every part he stated about them within the e-book is true… They had been a really, astonishingly, genuinely numerous group of individuals.” Seeing all of them in a room, he stated, “You’d by no means guess what the connection was.”
In fact, revisiting his memoir has meant Bringley inhabiting a youthful model of himself – one that’s nonetheless grieving. Has it been an emotional course of, residing in these footwear once more? “It has,” he says, pausing thoughtfully. “It’s your job as an actor, if you find yourself really performing it, to relive the issues that you simply’re speaking about – and among the issues are painful, and among the issues are stunning.” It’s all within the pursuit of constructing a human connection. He’s hoping individuals will depart the theatre feeling “like they actually skilled one thing”, not only a man giving an artwork historical past lecture. “Even the elements which are about being a museum guard, that’s all true of anybody who walks right into a museum and spends a number of hours in solitude, or out within the woods,” he says. “That’s one thing that feels numinous, that feels past phrases, that feels by some means extra elemental. And I’m making an attempt to kindle that feeling on stage.”
‘All of the Magnificence within the World’ opens 7 April at DR2 Theatre; tickets and information here
