Gossip Central

Next Fall on Broadway

One powerful message of the play Next Fall is contained in its title. Simply, don't put things off: life may not wait till next fall. Or, as one character Holly (Maddie Corman) says, “One minute you are doing the crossword puzzle, and the next you are here.”

Here is a hospital waiting room where Luke, a friend and employee at her flower shop, languishes in a coma after a hideous accident. As hope for Luke remains uncertain, we see him in flashback played energetically by Patrick Heusinger in this multilayered play by Geoffrey Nauffts and directed by Sheryl Kaller that had its world premiere in a sold-out Naked Angels production last summer. Extended several times, Next Fall --with its original ensemble cast --is now on Broadway in the intimate Helen Hays Theater. In the spirit of the title, see it now.

Waiting with Holly are several others: Luke's divorced parents, the racy Arlene (Connie Ray) and fundamentalist Butch (Cotter Smith), his agnostic Jewish boyfriend Adam (Patrick Breen), and another friend, Brandon (Sean Dugan), whose relationship with Luke is rather mysterious. The play deftly moves into scenes of Luke's life with these characters revealing his conflicts with his homosexuality (he prays after sex); his need to keep his life hidden from the aptly named Butch.

Especially poignant is Luke's relationship with Adam, a seeming mismatch, whose most immediate problem is, as non-family, his inability to see Luke at this critical time. The scenes that play out how they met, how Luke keeps the truth about Adam from Butch, are funny in the manner of Seinfeld episodes. Your laugh is bittersweet: these wonderfully drawn characters keep you painfully aware that the vibrant young man at center is in trouble.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

City Island: Close to Home

As it prepares its ninth season, it is noteworthy that several movies opening theatrically in the next few weeks premiered at last year's Tribeca Film Festival, among them Conor McPherson's “The Eclipse' and Bette Gordon's “Handsome Harry.” Another is a sweet-hearted gem named for its primary location, City Island.

“City Island” is set in the small fishing community, a part of the Bronx that feels remote from New York City, providing a backdrop for a family story where each member has something to hide. Andy Garcia leads a cast that includes Alan Arkin, Julianna Margulies, Emily Mortimer. His own daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido plays his film daughter, a college student who has a secret vocation as a stripper in a Bada Bing type bar.

Dominik said she refused to have her father on set for some of her scenes. Yes, there's one that any parent would find difficult: clad in a sequined bikini, the shapely Dominik pole dances upside down.

As written and directed by Raymond De Felitta, transgressions big and small are neatly and humorously confessed and forgiven. Screened this week at the Directors Guild Theater, the film exuded a good nature that spilled over into the party at Rouge Tomate where Griffin Dunne, Christine Baranski, Tovah Feldshuh, Sandra Bernhard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Ruben Blades,  Rodriguez Narciso, Vera Wang, and Hugh Jackman joined the cast for supper. Parker Posey and her friend Emma Tapley wore cute dresses, coincidentally designed by Cynthia Rowley who dined at a table nearby.

Julianna Margulies, this year's Golden Globe winner for her work in the CBS series, “The Good Wife” was having a good year indeed. Accolade after accolade, the actress perched on sky-high heels said, she promised her husband, it won't always be this exciting. Let me enjoy this now. You could say that “City Island” provides her a comic variation on the wronged spouse she plays on television, when she thinks her husband is cheating on her with a “Holly Golightly-” esque character played by Emily Mortimer.

New York may be the place to reinvent oneself, but on City Island people stay close to their roots. At the party, Andy Garcia shook hands vigorously with fellow Cuban American Narcisco Rodriguez and said, “I am so proud of you.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Looking for Richard at the Guild Hall Gala

Actor, writer, director Bob Balaban paced about the cavernous Cipriani 42nd Street, a wad of papers clenched in his hands, as only an accomplished professional with a speech to make could. One of the artists to receive Guild Hall's annual award for Lifetime Achievement, the bespectacled Balaban, who as a teen appeared in the classic “Midnight Cowboy,” flies off to Minnesota this week to act in a new film, “The Convincer” with Billy Crudup; the Bridgehampton part-timer also has a children's book series coming out, “The Creature from the 7th Grade.” 

But now he worried that the philanthropic crowd including Michael Lynne and his wife Ninah, Patti Kenner and her 99 year old dad, previous recipient Sheldon Harnick, and many other East Enders would not be amply entertained by his words, so he had a secret. Shhhh, said his wife Lynn Grossman, pulling me aside: Balaban enlisted The Flying Karamazov Brothers to perform their juggling act, first with a fish, then with a ukulele, and finally with the award itself. 

Wow. With the very funny Angela LaGreca as the evening's M.C., the benefit for this first-rate organization looked promising indeed. Previewing the summer season, Arts Director Josh Gladstone mentioned a new play directed by Tony Walton and starring Alec Baldwin.

Another award recipient for the evening, playwright Marsha Norman said she was working on a musical with Sheryl Crow. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Norman said she really wanted this Guild Hall award: “I always wanted to be in.” The third arts recipient, Richard Prince, never made it to cocktails.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Oscar Night: Off Site Views

Awards fatigue was almost forgotten at the splendid Oscar festivities at Gilt at the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue. Members of the American Academy of Motion Pictures who were not walking the red carpet at the Kodak Theater partied perfectly at home in New York, begowned and bejeweled, and if not surprised by the unfolding of honors for colleagues, sipped fine champagne and dined in celebration of the accolades their votes produced.

Movie legends Celeste Holm, Arlene Dahl, Shirley Knight, and Sylvia Miles escorted by painter Hunt Slonem, posed for photos and other film world notables: Mitchell Lichtenstein, Celia Weston, Courtney Hunt enjoyed specially created canapes: Mississippi style corn fritters a la The Blind Side, citrus-marinated yellowtail and blood orange ceviche for Inglourius Basterds-“served cold like revenge,” and matzo balls with chicken consommé for A Serious Man.

While the long telecast was a ceremonious end to the especially protracted award season, the results were remarkably predictable with wins for The Hurt Locker, Sandra Bullock, and so on. Actors Mo'Nique, Jeff Bridges, and Christoph Waltz won just about every important honor leading up to Oscars.  So, no surprise there.

The sheer poetry of Barbra Streisand's presenting to Kathryn Bigelow cannot be overlooked. Streisand's direction for Yentl (1963) and perhaps Prince of Tides (1991) should certainly have earned her Oscar distinction.

As to the one true surprise of the evening: Best Foreign Language Film was thought to be a battle between the Austrian The White Ribbon and French The Prophet. The Argentinian The Secret in their Eyes took home the statue. My spies, travelers in Argentina, emailed me that they were watching the ceremony at a modest Buenos Aires hotel, and there the locals partied proud.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

The Miracle Worker on Broadway

“No one expects you to perform miracles,” says the head of the Perkins Institute for the Blind sending his prized pupil Anne Sullivan south from Boston to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to a family where she is to become governess to an unruly blind and deaf girl named Helen Keller. The line gets a big laugh at the Circle in the Square Theater because, in this cherished, inspiring story of true events from 1880-well-known from the original 1959 play by William Gibson and a first-rate 1962 movie-of course work a miracle is exactly what she does. 

This revival of Gibson's play features a wonderful supporting cast of seasoned actors: Elizabeth Franzplays Helen's aunt, Jennifer Morrison, Helen's mother, and Matthew Modine in his Broadway debut rises to skeptical, curmudgeonly fervor as Helen's father. In a quasi-developed subplot with his son James (Tobias Segal), one wishes for more for these fine actors to do. 

The play, however, is really a pas de deux with the untamed, unruly wild child, Helen (a gifted Abigail Breslin, the bright light in the “Little Miss Sunshine” ensemble), making mischief and Anne (Alison Pillseen among other roles, in HBO's “In Treatment”) trusting that language will set the girl free. The key moment, when Helen at the water pump vocalizes the syllables, wah-wah, brings the house to tears. This straight-ahead period drama takes us through that miraculous leap of discipline and discovery, and, for that moment, it is thrilling.

A note: the Film Society at Lincoln Center will screen “The Miracle Worker” in their “Fierce & FabulousAnne Bancroft” Tribute on March 8, with special guest Patty Duke, the original Helen Keller to Bancroft's Anne Sullivan. 

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Miscast at the MCC Gala

The Golden Globe winning actress for her role in the CBS series The Good Wife, Julianna Marguiles, was honored at the MCC gala on Monday night. M.C. Mo Rocca quipped, she was playing Silda Spitzer, Elizabeth Edwards, and other political wives scandalized by their husband's bad behavior. By the time I got to the Hammerstein Ballroom, her tv husband in question, Chris Noth, was getting a drink at the bar while a crowd pondered the silent action. 

Dinner may have been great, but the best was yet to come, an annual revue featuring Broadway stars performing roles they would never ever get to play. So, Sutton Foster (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Drowsy Chaperone, and Shrek) sang “Maria” from West Side Story, Marin Mazzie belted “Where is the Life That Late I Led,” and opera singer Dennis Miller vamped  “Memories” as Cats' Grizabella. You get the picture. 

But here was one act calculated to be hard to fathom: Montego Glover who is currently starring as a Memphis soul singer in the hit show Memphis put on a tallis (she says she got it at Barney's) and diddle-diddle-dummed as Tevya in Fiddler: “If I Were a Rich Man.” Zero Mostel may have been dancing on that roof. This powerhouse performance went through it. 

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Oscar Watch: Documentaries

Non-fiction features, however entertaining, are traditionally not high on viewers’ radar, certainly not the most controversially debated at Oscar time as say “Avatar” vs. “The Hurt Locker,” even though what makes them strong may be controversial. This year “Food, Inc.” and “The Cove,” both Academy Award nominated, drove a heated debate on the ethics of what we eat. As one observer put it, sex used to fuel that kind of moral fervor. Today it is food But are we still talking about movies? Or good movie-making? So often documentaries are considered for the issues they raise, even by Oscar committees, rather than their art.

 

This year for non-fiction film honors, these fine works are joined by “Which Way Home,” a heart-wrenching view of Latin American boys hopping freight trains through Mexico to make it to the United States, “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” on a politically volatile piece of US history, and “Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country,” a Danish film by Anders Ostergaard about the 2007 uprising in Myanmar.

 

What makes this last unusual in a field that can be a frontier for innovation is that it is shot through the cameras of the independent journalist group, Democratic Voice of Burma. In fact, the very act of documenting the oppression of citizens and Buddhist monks protesting the country’s oppressive regime that had held them hostage for 40 years, suppressing foreign news crews and even the internet, was a subversive act. The act of smuggling the devastating footage of 30 anonymous and underground video journalists risked torture and life imprisonment. The art of putting all this material together involved not only assembling the footage, but showing how the footage was acquired.

 

An audience including documentarians Albert Maysles and Robert Richter, and Julie Taymor, Jane Alexander, and Gay Talese joined director Anders Ostergaard for a special screening hosted by HBO Documentary Films and Oscilloscope at MoMA recently. At dinner at Osteria del Circo, many marveled at the ingenuity of the filmmaking. When asked whether he thought he would win the Oscar, Anders Ostergaard smiled and said, “Dead monks vs. dead dolphins,” referring to the subject of The Cove. “No, I don’t think so.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura 

Brave New World: The Tempest at BAM

The distressed walls at BAM's Harvey Theater form a perfect backdrop for the deconstructed world of this excellent production of “The Tempest,” performed in a well-paced, intermission-less two hours and 15 minutes, in repertoire with “As You Like It.” 

According to the BAM notes, director Sam Mendes paired these plays for the Bridge Project's second season, conceiving of them as “a single journey.” If in the earlier play, characters retreat from unsettling politics to the forest, here they land shipwrecked on a distant shore.

As we first see Prospero (the ever intelligent Stephen Dillane), he dons a torn waistcoat and feather belt, an outfit befitting a homeless man as well as an exiled king, and struts and frets about a circle of sand, the center of the play's action. 

The slave Caliban (Ron Cephas Jones with long curled claws) emerges from that brilliantly conceived sand pit, as the ethereal Ariel (Christian Camargo) comes forth through the light, the first a man-animal, the latter a man-spirit, each subject to Prospero's command. In some of his incarnations-in a suit, evening gown, and wearing steel wings worthy of creatures in “Avatar”-Ariel carries the play's spectacle allowing Prospero's sorcery, the storm that forces others to this mini-kingdom: a fine ensemble including Prospero's usurping brother Antonio (Michael Thomas) and his posse, the comic pair Trinculo and Stephano (Anthony O'Donnell channeling W.C. Fields and Thomas Sadoski), and Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples (Edward Bennett), a proper suitor for Prospero's daughter Miranda (Juliet Rylance). 

As one of Shakespeare's “problem” plays, “The Tempest” challenges the usual categories: it is not really funny, although one bit where Caliban hides under a tarp already occupied by the suited Trinculo making a two-backed, four-legged beast--all sexual innuendo invited--is hilarious. Yet it does end happily as “As You Like It” does, with those who would wed together, and a ruler in place, more wise than vengeful.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura 

The Real Estate of Happiness

That sexy gap-toothed self-help guru of the Middle Ages, Chaucer's Wife of Bath, in her own quest discovered that what women want most is self-rule. Now in the Age of Autonomy for women, a new book The Nine Rooms of Happiness suggests desire has shifted. 

As written by Self Magazine editor-in-chief Lucy Danziger informed by the clinical expertise of Dr. Catherine Birndorf, what women want most is more than the slimmest waistline, the hunkiest lover, the highest paycheck and other perks of a fabulous career! More than the big picture, it's the little things that count.

Using the conceit of a house, the authors move from room to room, from the basement clutter to attic heirlooms suggesting that cleaning up the mess is really inner housekeeping. And, anyway, the journey is a matter of recognition: you are probably happier than you think.

Perched on the stairs overlooking the dining area of the Monkey Bar, Danziger proclaimed, if she were ever bat mitzvahed, this was it. Celebrants including Charlie Rose, Dylan Lauren, Hoda Kotb, and Evelyn Lauder sipped sparkling wine and munched on shrimp and sliders and red velvet cupcakes looking happy indeed. 

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Soul Man Sam Moore at the Highline Ballroom

In town for an AFTRA Lifetime Achievement Award, the legendary Sam Moore performed at the Highline Ballroom on Sunday night. The consummate showman began his set from a booth in the back, teasing the crowd with “Hold on, I'm Coming,” till the boyish 74 year old made his way to the stage.

A perfect concert followed, featuring a first-rate band, backup singers including a rocking Chrissy Poland, and his trademark tunes, “Knock on Wood,” “What I Want,” “I Can't Stand the Rain,” and “Blame it on the Rain,” until he sang “When Something is Wrong With My Baby” and someone shouted out: “Not here tonight.”

And then the unexpected: Sam called Ryan Shaw to the stage. Shaw had performed an opening set, remarking that he was honored that The Sam Moore even knew who he was. The music child of Ashford and Simpson, who just happened to be listening in, as was Steve Van Zandt, Shaw then performed with Moore and Valerie Simpson. “Soul Man,” “Dance to the Music.” The music from Shaft paid homage to Isaac Hayes and then Moore, Shaw and Simpson performed “You are so Beautiful” in tribute to Billy Preston. The show ended with Sam's “A Rainy Night in Georgia.”

As you congratulate Sam Moore on a great show and the award he so well deserves, he comes back, serious: “how about those fish 'n' chips you were munching on? I didn't get any.” I went home and played his CD, Overnight Sensation. I just didn't want the music to end.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura