If Newell has a signature talent, it's here: an ability to cut to the chase, to strip away the artifice built up around a classic and remind us why the play was important in the first place. To accomplish that, he told me, in his ironically ornate fashion: "I worm my way through the iconography and many iterations of a work. When I did 'Hamlet,' this took me three years. 'Porgy' felt like archaeology. Doug and I picked through layers, the original production, the original novel, the life of (co-author) DuBose Heyward, the Outer Banks of South Carolina that inspired him, the prayer houses that inspired (co-author) George Gershwin — constantly trying to arrive at the place of original inspiration, to what gave the artist the feeling he should do this. Then we translate those findings and bring them forward to where we are now, where the contemporary audience is. That jump forward can seem like we're just doing something to be different, but it's in the spirit of serving the original inspiration."