Not one Bad Follicle

Great Energy and a sense of anticipation are palpable at the Al Hirschfield Theatre where HAIR is playing, almost as if the audience knew in advance that finally, something is going to be as great as the reviews. When the lights started to go down there was an audible intake of breath, and applause: they couldn’t wait, and the excitement was justified. I am probably the only one of my generation who never saw it, or the movie, and knew only the most celebrated songs in its score(“Age of Aquarius,””Easy to be Hard,””Let the Sun Shine In.”) I was writing novels and taking care of babies, so the obscenity of Vietnam never surfaced on my spiritual radar until Lyndon Johnson announced he would not accept or seek, etc. But there was a woman I met at intermission who had wept all during the first act, because her high school class in East Los Angeles didn’t have the connections or the money to avoid the draft, and she didn’t know how many of them had probably died. I didn’t start crying until the second act, when the full power of this musical hit me. For the first half, I just rollicked in the talent and the visible joy of the performers.
The show—and a true show it is, lights and color and costumes and nudity coalescing into an almost dream state, except that everyone and everything is so alive it could only be lucid dreaming—is the most exciting I’ve seen since moving back to New York. For me it was less a revival than a Revival Meeting, everyone, cast and audience alike, got so completely into the spirit, it made me believe. I was in a particularly lucky location, so got kissed, hugged, and my hair played with by members of the cast who come barreling down the aisle as though carrying good news. They are beautiful, gifted, generous and funny, and those among them playing contrarians and stiffs are just as spontaneously funny—when the disapproving very middle class couple went to leave the theatre, the wife(in drag) muttered “Let’s go see ‘West Side Story’,” to bleats of laughter on the part of those who heard(and apparently had seen ‘West Side Story.’)
Will Swenson is more than winning and likeable in the key role of Berger, inoffensive for all he does of a seemingly offensive nature, and endearing when he interacts with the audience(was that really his Mom in the front row?) Bryce Ryness is funny and touching as Woof(twas he who toyed with my hair, and bent down to let me play with his) Gavin Creel is bright and ultimately deeply moving as Claude, who ends up the shorn victim of that war. Cassie Levy is the most visibly vulnerable of the universally pretty and gifted women, and Saycon Sengbloh, a substitute Dionne in the performance I attended has a presence and a voice that could blow you out of the theatre, if it wasn’t so much better being able to stay. When the understudies are that good, you can’t make a mistake to go go go. Loved it loved it loved it. The youthful exuberance and happiness of all involved—not the least the band who can be observed having a great time while playing, makes the point of how much is lost in a war, and the pointlessness of the whole terrible exercise. Up to the minute, really, revival or no. Hurry Hurry hurry, though it’s due to be there through November. Long, even longer may it wave.

Nice Work if you Can Get It

Sherie Rene Scott is a conventionally pretty, unconventionally gifted, phenomenally hardworking and very alive woman who has, apparently, been trapped for several seasons inside 'The Little Mermaid.' In 'EVERYDAY RAPTURE,'this Almost One-Woman show, (two back-up singers, a cutely nerdy teenage boy plant in the audience and a four piece band) she exhibits talents, wit, and irreverence that made Ben Brantley, the theater critic for the New York Times for those of you who are someplace else(Mars, the Moon)swoon in public. Having escaped(not too easily) her Mennonite upbringing in Kansas, like Judy Garland, one of her idols, she isn't there anymore, having lifted herself with energy and grace into the semi-Big Time. She herself cites having played secondary roles in a musical or two(I have seen her in only one, in which she was not particularly memorable nor was the musical) and it was fun for me to get to know her and the probably great range(she sings full throttle, and does a fine Judy Garlandesque 'You Made me Love You' not to a picture of Clark Gable but Jesus, in various renditions-- the paintings not the song.) She is self-deprecating in a way that suggests she does really like herself which was a relief after watching a loved friend belittle herself a little too sincerely in cabaret. So Sherie likes Sherie, and we do, too.
I used to enjoy the Playbills the way they were so you got a little background that wasn't just credits, and you knew what the performers had come from, where they'd studied and with whom, and they could lie sometimes like Brando did saying he was born in Calcutta. As it is, we know from the show itself that her life is an open book with songs and a husband and a three year old son and some truly endearing tricks of magic, the old kind, and she deserves the first lead in a really first rate show. The person I went with was not as impressed as I, saying she liked her better when she was in a role. Well who wouldn't, and where are they? As it is, it was a treat to meet her as herself, which I hope she will be for the rest of her life, with some upstart, flashy, conniving and outrageous characters to hide behind when and if they materialize. In the meantime, Salutes.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, or in this case, ROCKS

Because I have not suffered enough, I went this Sunday matinee to see the Goodman Theatre production of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, much praised by reviewers and driving away the audience in droves, so scheduled for an early demise. Having had the good fortune this week to connect with two very bright ladies close to and involved with theatre(am spelling it the Goodman way), one of whom told me she had fallen asleep in the course of viewing it; forewarned, I nonetheless made my way to the cut-rate ticket booths, where almost everything is 50% off except for Hair and God and Carnage, the two things I really want to see, and bought my ticket.
In my youth, which never seemed that long ago until this week, I had some heavy interaction with that property, as I was in love with Tony Perkins, being built up at the time as the new teenage movie Idol, and he was scheduled to do the movie of it with Sophia Loren. I was of course deeply jealous of Sophia Loren as a matter of principle, but had no reason to be with respect to Tony. It was still the era of the Love that Dared Not Speak its Name, certainly not in Hollywood, where a career would be ruined if anyone knew, so I blithely assumed there was no physical interaction between us because he was respecting my young Jewish maidenhood, and was devastated to discover later on I had lost him to Tab Hunter.

But on the set of Desire at Paramount, I had less reason to be jealous of Sophia than Dorothy Jeakins, the costume designer, who constantly praised not just Sophia’s breasts but the tininess of her rib cage, and got to touch Tony all the time, fitting his clothes. So there he was, playing Eben, less tormented that he might be losing the farm than that Sophia would eat him alive, she was so much woman. Anyway that is the old story, but now we must deal with Mr. O’Neill.

One of the bright theatre ladies said she understood the plot was from a Greek myth. I have of late been much involved with Greek myths on several levels, having been, I hoped, inspired to write a play, and remembering I had a mind since there’s a Bryn Mawr reunion coming up, read several plays by Aeschylus, which ain’t easy. This production of Desire begins not with a whimper but a Bang, perhaps meant to be a thunderclap, followed by drums and many terrible sounds as two Neanderthalish men, meant to be the older sons of Ephraim Cabot(played stirringly but by the end who really cares) by Brian Dennehy, drag in what my friend Tyne Daly in a Getty(in LA) production of Agamemnon in which she appeared , fierce and impressive, told me was a sledge, the way old Aeschylus brought in offstage action, in that case a couple of bodies, but in this case was rocks. Rocks everywhere. No sign of elms, but rocks all around, hanging suspended in space, doing everything but getting themselves off. Not so in the case of the young lovers, Ephraim’s new young wife, played by Carla Gugino whom I really admired because she was tiny and did not bring me in mind of Sophia, and Pablo Schreiber, who played the young son, and put me much in mind of Tony when he was young and no one knew he was gay, or, as it later turned out with the help of Victoria Principal, bi-sexual. Tony’s personal tragedy might have challenged O’Neill, as having married a lovely woman, Berry Berenson, and fathering two sons, he was among the first of the highly visible to die of AIDS, and Berry, his gifted, aquamarine-eyed widow was in one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

But back to this play. The almost constant intrusion of music to lessen the stolid weightiness of the plot put me in mind of Impressionism, the awful play that had just closed next door, where the music, looped in over the silences and poor dialogue like a 40 s movie where they needed to make it seem weighty or moving faster when there was no action, was more than disconcerting. I see that concert is in the middle of that word, which makes me wonder. Anyway, the lust of the two young principles is palpable. Dennehy is fine, albeit diminished in stature during the course of the story so he seems almost to grow shorter by the end of it.

A friend of mine, Susan Dorlen, went to Yale Drama School, where her teacher said ‘The great tragedian of American writers is Eugene O’Neill, and that is the tragedy of the American theater.’ Across the street from ‘Desire’ is ‘August, Osage County,’ which I considered to be ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ turned on its side and made into a comedy. But I’ll tell you, when Abby, the young wife, kills her baby to prove to Eben that she loves him, I could not help thinking about O’Neill, the bastard really knew how to plot.
Or maybe it was the Greeks.

COMEDY, in the Round, and UNHINGED

Christopher Durang is clearly deranged, and I couldn’t be more pleased. His targets in “WHY TORTURE IS WRONG, and the People who Love Them” at the Public are those decent people despise—“enhanced interrogation” and paranoia, which include the people who have the second and so do the first. Upstairs in the home of the parents of Felicity(Tony award winning Laura Benanti, who has less of an adversary in her (could he be?) terrorist husband, than she did with Patti Lupone playing her mother in “Gypsy”) her father(Richard Poe) is conducting a “shadow government”, Dick Cheney with hair. Her mother, Luella, (Kristine Nielsen) deliciously ditsy and full of actressy surprises, gave me, personally, a passel of laughs, expressing the playwright’s disdain for that with which I most closely identified: “Wicked” and Tom Stoppard’s “Coast of Utopia” (someone she knew committed suicide rather than face the third segment of that marathon , as bleak and pretentious an experience as I have ever had in the theater.)
A happier marathon, apparently, took place at the Circle in the Square, with Alan Ayckbourn’s “The Norman Conquests.” I saw only the evening’s presentation, but the audience that had been there all day sat literally around with delighted expressions on their faces, as if they had spent the time with eccentric but beloved relatives. There is employed in the scenario the device of the “dirty weekend,” which the Brits, in their dualistic approach to sex, much too well brought up to discuss it openly, but secretly delighting in its gamey underside(see Christine Keeler and various shops in Shepherd’s Market) seem to like better than straightforward lust. Nobody managed to get away to have one in the segment I saw, but everyone longed for and almost got there. The three sisters and their various mates all of whom hunger for one of the others are acted with comedic perfection by the ensemble cast, directed to a farcical fare-thee-well by Matthew Warchus. I shall have to go back and see the other two to understand why the patently intelligent audience felt such a sense of kinship and delight with their adopted(for a day) family

The Road Less Traveled

On 45th Street, there were hordes lining up in hope of cancellations for Billy Elliot, which were not to be. Standing room plus, not counting the family of five, the Stoddards, including Maeve, 4, whose first show it was, sitting next to me, filled with anticipation. I, too, was excited to be there. Too excited, as it turned out. The little boy with the lollipop climbed the steps to the stage and stood there waiting for the show to start, a touch that touched my heart. But that was the last I was touched, I who have wept through the overture of the revived South Pacific, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the best movie musical ever, and the blind contestant on American Idol being sent home. So it is not that I am not easily moved. Billy Elliot is a masterwork of technical brilliance. “They made it so technical,” said my P.A.,(Personal Angel) a dancer and choreographer who had been to Merce Cunningham’s 90th birthday celebration at BAM last week, where she had wept throughout. But then, because hers is a softer heart than mine, and she is living in these times, she said “How great that this production is giving all those people so many jobs.”
There are 53 people in the company(not counting all those working backstage, wardrobe mistresses, wigmakers, etc) of Billy Elliot, and at times it seems that all of them are onstage at once. Little girl dancers in tutus, and Big Bad British police advancing in a line with heavy transparent shields, and striking miners and Maggie Thatcher. All of it intelligent as the movie was, but none of it as intelligible, cluttered as it seemed and felt, even to my PA, who wished she could have better observed the choreography, except there was too much of it going on at the same time. Even when yesterday’s Billy(there are three of them who alternate, -- we got to see David Alvarez, who is suitably amazing—and there is, I understand, a farm where they are growing more Billy Elliots) takes balletic flight with his older counterpart, it is rigged, quite literally. A hook on his back carries him aloft as if this were Peter Pan. So unnecessary when the music(the actual symphonic recording of Swan Lake) soars, and the dancers could do the same without metallic aids.
That music, by the way, is the last that moved me. I know this is Sir Elton, who was so touched by the story, coming so close to his own—a father who disapproved of the career he chose, as did the father of Lee Hall, the writer of the original movie, and the book and lyrics for the show--- but there is not one memorable song. Haydn Gwynne has her own personal conviction and radiance in the role of the tough ballet teacher who discovers Billy’s gift, but even her energy cannot bring a sense of originality to SHINE, the number that should have done it, saying what it was you had to do as a performer. The ghost of Fred Ebb fluttered through the lyric as it suggested one should razzle-dazzle, wafting me over to ‘Chicago.’ ‘Expressing Yourself’, the guaranteed show-stopper, became just that because of tinsel and glitter, literally, waving in the lights, and a spirited attempt at scene-stealing by Keann Johnson, who, according to my PA “pushed it,” but it worked for me. Still, all that energy did not make it into a song.
But it was an afternoon of uplift, especially for Maeve’s ten year old brother, Aidan, who had seen only one show before, The Radio City Music Hall Christmas show, and thought this was better, although which is more extravagant could be argued. I exited, my heart a little heavy, because I knew without looking that the musical I really loved, Next to Normal, across the street was not doing nearly as well, with, I think, greater originality, genuine emotionality, and true talent at the helm. Oh, well, as Anne Bancroft said, quoting her father, “that’s why there’s chocolate and vanilla.”

101 VARIATIONS

As noted on an earlier entry to this burgeoning blog, I ran into Jane Fonda the other day while lunching at Michael's,which used to be the Main Haunt of the book business while there was still one. She was with Lynn Nesbitt, the formidable literary agent who represented, among glittering others, my too-early-late lamented buddy Michael Crichton, whose premature and very sad departure leaves the literary world without its annual Crichton blockbuster, except tis said they found another novel on his hard drive. No one was harder driven than Michael, but as he was always miles ahead on gripping events to come, we'll see if this is but a way to milk the cash cow.
But it was lovely seeing the still lovely Ms. Fonda, whose performance in 33 Variations I found to be darkly dazzling, as is, in a blonde way, the lady herself(though she might insist on being referred to as 'woman,' the 'lady' label is undeniable, she so oozes class.) Surprising almost beyond belief is the fact that the play, which is itself quite admirable, is not doing much business. My waiter at Sarabeth's, himself an actor as are most of the waiters in New York, went to a matinee and said the whole balcony was empty. They should, if not clinging to the rafters at leasr be leaning over the front rows of the mezzanine, hyponotized. Besides her excellence in the role there is her luminous bravery, playing a woman who's failing, when Ms. Fonda herself has never failed except for a lapse she is still apologizing and being picketed for, and a couple of marriages. I saw the courageness of the character she played, fighting MS. echoing in a riveting way the personal courage of the actress herself, who seems to never give up, and never give in, continuing to evolve rather than simply go into the shadows with her contemporaries lest her wrinkles show.
I had occasion to almost have a movie with the on-the-brink of middle-age Jane Fonda, with my novel MARRIAGE, about a women who's more successful than her husband, at a time when it wasn't yet all right for a woman to be that (as if it WERE now, yet, ever) without its destroying the husband and the marriage. I regularly lunched then with Linda Obst, who was book-pimping for Fonda, courting me and becoming my new best friend so Jane could option the book, play the role and produce the picture. As it turned out-- she was married to Tom Hayden at the time, and was afraid people would think it was HER story, rather than mine, which it was, my husband having fallen victim to the contempt shown men when their wives outshine them, especially in Hollywood-- she decided not to buy the book. Very sad, as she would have been wonderful and so would the movie never made, as it would have synthesized who and what she was at the time. But such is the way of that West Coast playground, and, if you're sitting down, once the deal was off, I never heard from my New Best Friend Linda Obst again.
But Jane, if I may call her so, having achieved that almost-intimacy, is valiant in 33 Variations as she is in life, so I urge you all to go see it as she stretches her talent to the limits, and grabs the Golden Apple from the tree. The play's good, too, though a bit lofty for today's non-thinkers. As a friend said, Peter Schaffer('Amadeus') would have done better, but then, so would Robby Lantz as the agent. Well worth the price of the ticket which is probably available at discount, Alas.

ANGELA TAKES WING

So it is that I move into my new role of what I like to think Max Beerbohm might have been forced into should he find himself dropped into this time that marks not only the comfortable end of the world as we knew it, but the vanishing of the written word, at least on paper, and sally forth into the theater with a critical eye.
Last night I attended the revival of BLITHE SPIRIT, Noel Coward's airy and (one must think) not too hard-worked-over sprint into the comedy of the hereafter, wherein a dashing Brit in his country manse, which doubtless was originally played by Sir Noel himself, played here by the handsome Rupert Everett, who has been funnier, as Charles, (what else would Coward have called him?) brings in a local, eccentric(to put it mildly)medium, who conjures up his dead first wife, to the consternation of his second. The medium, Madame Arcadi, to the delight and occasional roars of the audience, is played past the hilt by Angela Lansbury, who, beaded and laden with frou-frou misses not one do-able comic gesture, including a woo-woo wackadoo dance of her own invention to call up the Beyond. Angela Lansbury herself is the magic of the play, and the audience cannot get enough of her, proof as she is, may wonders never cease, that not all the Good die young. She does keep the thing alive, as well as the audience.
Christine Ebersole is appropriately radiant as the dead Elvira, and sings from offstage in her lovely voice a number of Coward songs during scene changes. The odd thing is Irving Berlin's 'Always' the record that is played throughout the show, considering that so many of Coward's songs, especially 'I'll See you Again' would have done just as well, and he could have paid himself the royalties. Just as, could Arcadi have conjured him, he doubtless would have cut some of the laborious second act. Jayne Atkinson does what I assume is her best in the thankless role of the present(for a while, anyway) second wife, and Susan Louise O'Connor skitters comically across the stage at half mast as the maid.
Simon Jones, my neighbor in real-life, is handsomely reassuring as the doctor, but himself doubted the veracity of the set as an English country living room, what with the furniture facing AWAY from the fire. He showed me an exercise tape that Angela made some
years ago("hardly Jane Fonda" he noted) that will be put out on DVD the end of the month, to help keep in shape for a longer life. I would urge everyone of a certain age, or even hoping to get there, to check it out. There is no arguing with a spirit that stays blithe on either side of that curtain.