Gossip Central

Marriage Contract

Sorg dech nicht! Don't worry! You don't have to know Yiddish to be tickled at the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene production of “Marriage Contract.” Directed by Motl Didner, Itzy Firestone and Suzanne Toren star as a husband and wife in Tel Aviv who, having married in the heady times of Kibbutz life, cannot find their “ktuba” (marriage license). They cannot even remember whether or not they were officially married. Their long term conjugal bliss is called into hilarious doubt when their daughter Ayala (Dani Marcus) plans her own marriage to Robert (Eyal Sherf), who must placate his mother's demands to ascertain that the upcoming nuptials are kosher.  The sexy, lonely widow next door (Mena Levit) accommodatingly complicates matters in a Feydeau-like farce. Och in vey! With supertitles in English and Russian, you will not miss a side-splitting moment. Last Sunday's opening was attended by Belle Kaufman, Sholom Aleichem's granddaughter as well as Dr. Ruth Westheimer. “This is just what I do, so I am thrilled to be here. You know, we Jews are lucky when it comes to sex. It is obeying the Torah, a mitzvah to eh, have intercourse on Friday night of Shabbat,” she announced delicately, “but only if you have a partner;” Dr. Ruth does not advocate sleeping around. And then the petite sex therapist launched into a joke involving a rabbi about to perform the mitzvah of “mishgall” with his rebbizen on Friday night. Feeling something amiss, the rabbi searches the bedroom and finds his student hiding underneath the bed. 'What are you doing here? Is this proper behavior to spy?' 'What I learn of Torah I learn from you' replied the student. “So, if you have a partner, make believe it is Friday.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Tennessee in New York

The bed looms large at the Broadhurst Theater, fluffy and pristine, inviting and untouched, center stage at the fine Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” That bed and what does and doesn't happen in it make for high stakes in Tennessee Williams' 1955 Pulitzer Prize winning play, focusing on a wealthy Southern family and how the plantation will be passed on to sons Brick (Terrence Howard) and Gooper (Giancarlo Esposito), its land as emblematic of a changing America as Tara in “Gone With the Wind.” “Mendacity,” bellows Big Daddy, played big by James Earl Jones, who knows about deceit. All bully and bluster, he lies to Big Mama, played big by Phylicia Rashad. Celebrating Big Daddy's birthday, they've not yet been told that the patriarch is dying of cancer; but Brick's wife Maggie (Anika Noni Rose) knows. She's keen on seducing her husband to produce an heir to rival Gooper's wife now pregnant with her sixth child. Preening in the play's first act, with one eye in the mirror and the other on that bed, Maggie is a chattering magpie to Brick's cool taunts. A former football hero with a broken leg, he's stiffened since his friend Skipper's suicide, and could care less about Maggie's concerns for land and power. He hates her guts. Dancing around that bed, the stars shimmy against one another, strangers in the night. For Tennessee, sex is a fragile affair.

Williams' mindset is glimpsed in a notebook at The Morgan Library accompanying the exhibition, “Close Encounters: Irving Penn Portraits of Artists and Writers.” The wall text beside Tennessee's photo from 1951suggests you visit the museum's second floor: there, his journal from 1955-58 is opened to one Saturday, his scrawl recounting an afternoon with a whore, no gender given, whose prowess in bed is praised but discomforting; after, the playwright suffered, how to pay for sex. In “Cat,” they pay big.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Cause Celebre

There's Broadway and off. And then there is the rare pleasure of way off, when mega talents bring their prodigious gifts to bear on giving to others. Last Tuesday night at the Players Club, the cause was prison reform and the celebres were in abundance: Marian Seldes read from Lillian Hellman's memoir, “Scoundrel Time,” about the 1950's when the playwright-as were so many screenwriters and theater people-- was interrogated before McCarthy's tribunal; Christine Ebersole  read “A Lady of Letters” by Alan Bennett. Scenes from Miguel Pinero's “Short Eyes” and John Herbert's “Fortune in Men's Eyes” focused on the experience of men in prison. And then there were those imprisoned. Cause Celebre is the brainchild of playwright Susan Charlotte, and a sister act to her Food for Thought Productions. When Charlotte decided to shine a light on prison reform she called   Mercedes Ruehl who coincidentally was corresponding with a two-time murderer, jailed for her remaining natural life. Rather than read from a script, Ruehl asked Guenevere Garcia to write down the story of her life. Where do I start, she asked. Start with “I was born . . . ,” recounted Ruehl. The graphic details of child abuse left no eye tearless, even the seasoned Oscar winning actress had to pause. Reflections of a man and woman who were in prison, conceived, directed and written in collaboration with performers by The Fortune Society's David Rothenberg, concluded the evening. Called “The Castle” for the upper  West Side home that has been created for former inmates as an intermediary residence, the play is to open at New World Stages later this spring. Two former drug addicts, Vilma Ortiz Donovan and Casimiro Torres tell intertwining stories of childhood, crime and punishment. This moving performance was a glimpse into how theater is created. Smiling and proud after recounting harrowing experiences, Donovan and Torres each concluded, “And, I am a taxpayer."

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Blindsight, Chicago 10, Miss Pettigrew

When you first meet Kyila, she fixes her attention on you, her intense gaze taking you in. It takes a beat to realize she is blind. Having studied English in the United Kingdom, this Tibetan teen is now a spokesperson for Braille Without Borders, an organization founded by Sabriye Tenberken, a German woman, blind since she was 12 who has dedicated herself to helping the blind in the most far-reaching places. She started a school in Llasa, traveling around Tibet enlisting blind children. As most Tibetans believe that blind people are possessed by demons or have committed some horrible crime in a past life, her efforts are doubly important, enabling blind children to affirm their lives at the same time as they are given the tools to work and establish themselves in their culture. After 9 years, now the first group of students are graduating and 6, including Kyila, were given the opportunity to climb Mount Everest in the company of seasoned climbers, some sighted some not. The film made of that excursion is one of the best of the year. With its oxymoron of a title, “Blindsight” actually describes the ability of a blind person to sense light stimulus he or she is unable to see consciously. Of course, metaphorically the term shows the extraordinary way that sight or vision can be achieved through other means. The film takes you through that journey: a gorgeously shot travel piece through a part of the world little known to Westerners-- especially resonant now as the news features Tibetans struggling with Chinese occupation. The film stays clear of those politics but as producer Sybil Robson Orr made clear at a recent special screening, permission to film was often a sketchy compromise, fortunately negotiated over drinks.
           Politics are at issue in “Chicago 10,” director Brett Morgan's take on that historical and hysterical time when protesters clashed with the police at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Juxtaposing archival footage with animation, the film emphasizes the theater of the courtroom as counter-culture icons such as Abbie Hoffman (Hank Azaria, also the voice of Allen Ginsberg), Jerry Rubin (Mark Ruffalo), David Dellinger (Dylan Baker), Bobby Seale (Jeffrey Wright) clash with Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Abbie). The filmmakers originally offered the role of Judge Hoffman to Dustin Hoffman (no relation to Julius or Abbie), but the job finally fell to Roy Scheider, his voice lending the appropriate authority to this his last role. This film is based on an ambitious idea that will rankle historians, but which Morgan feels has some bearing on events today.
          For a movie that is so deliciously effervescent it seems to have no relation to anything serious whatever, see “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.” Down on her luck Miss Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) finagles her way into a job with Delysia Lafosse (adorable, milky skinned Amy Adams) who is trying to reconcile her career advancement as a cabaret singer with the men she must bed to get there. Miss Pettigrew helps with Delysia's social calendar and counsels her wisely toward her one true love (Lee Pace). Along the way, Miss Pettigrew gets a make over and a man of her own (Ciaran Hinds, diabolically good in “The Seafarer” on Broadway). But what does this well-heeled businessman really see in Miss Pettigrew? Good sense and proper undies.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Blindsight (trailer)

Meat Loaf and May Pang: Blasts from the Past

Remember Meat Loaf? A beefy rocker with a mane who in the '70's performed the hit “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” with Karla DeVito. With his hands on her ass, the girl sings “Will you love me forever?,” he sings “Let me sleep on it. I'll give you an answer in the morning.” And in the background a sports announcer's voice calls out their every move. The excitement of that drama was recalled at the premiere of an excellent new documentary “Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise” directed by Bruce David Klein last night at the IFC Center, just a few blocks west of the Bottom Line in the village where Meat Loaf was a headliner in my youth. With a follow-up album to his hugely successful “Bat Out of Hell,” (selling more than the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper according to the film) Meat Loaf at 59 is still a dynamite performer, and the movie follows him and his band through the rigors of missed flights and lost luggage in a world tour starting in Canada. Only this time the girl is singer Aspen Miller, a brunette who seems too young to Meat Loaf critics, making the lovers look like a grandpa in a sweaty and unwanted grope with a teenager. In the process of sleaze control, the film shows Meat Loaf fitted for a wig so he can return to his youthful look as a parody of himself in those heady '70's. Doesn't anybody get, this is theater, asks the film. Overriding all, of course, is the music: a highlight is Dennis Quaid joining Meat in “Gloria,” Meat Loaf himself doing “I'd Do Anything For Love.” Melvin Van Peeples and Debby Harry attended the opening, as did Jerry Della Femina and Judy Licht. The topic of the day came up and Jerry shared that he did not think Eliot Spitzer should have lost his career, his marriage yes, but not his career. Meat Loaf, I might add, now 60, never looked better.
               Meantime further evoking the '70's, on Tuesday May Pang celebrated the publication of her photographs of John Lennon, taken during an 18 month period from 1973 to 1975 when the two were living together while the Beatle took a break from Yoko Ono. Cynthia Lennon, John's first wife, joined the packed crowd at the Cutting Room. Pang had encouraged John to reunite with his son Julian from that first marriage: pictures of father and son abound in this slim yet significant addition to the vast body of Beatles literature. “Instamatic Karma” features Pang's anecdotes and photographs of John relaxing and enjoying friends Mick Jagger, Paul and Linda McCartney, Ringo, Bowie, the much missed Keith Moon of The Who, and the still vivacious May Pang. 

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Rendez-vous with French Cinema

Interview with Claude Lelouch ( Beet.TV and Regina Weinreich)

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If you want to understand the French, their President Nicolas Sarkozy and his whirlwind marriage to model Carla Bruni, you need do no more than see their movies. Lincoln Center's Rendez-vous, one of the year's most popular festivals offers 15 films: each whimsical, charming, love obsessed in its own way. Last Friday's opening night belonged to Claude Lelouch's 41st film, “Roman de Gare,” which begins with a rather impossible woman being dumped at a rest stop by her fiancé. Lelouch, whose “A Man and a Woman” was awarded the 1966 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, said in an interview that he witnessed such a scene, and that set off one of his most accomplished screenplays, a thriller in which a famous writer of romances dies. He loves road trips, preferably alone, composing his scripts while he drives, speeding and talking into a tape. Lelouch admires most auteurs, that is, directors such as John Cassavetes and Woody Allen who are not slaves to other people's words.
          Even films with potentially darker themes are love obsessed. Noemie Lvovsky's “Let's Dance” features an elderly Holocaust survivor, a lively man who refuses to age, attends dancing school and falls in love, again, while his wife languishes in dementia and his daughter has vivid nightmares of murdering Hitler. In Cedric Klapisch's “Paris” several story lines of various relationships intertwine as a young man awaits a heart transplant in what can be seen as a love letter to the city, much in the manner of Woody Allen's “Hannah and her Sisters” paying homage to New York's special architecture. Christophe Honore's musical “Love Songs” has a major character's tragic death smack in its center, and yet, her boyfriend develops a new relationship out of his grief.  Ludivine Sagnier and Chiara Mastroianni star with Louis Garrel (so memorable in Bernardo Bertolucci's “The Dreamers”) as Alex Beaupain's score accentuates a ménage-a-trois, among other tender moments. Garrel and Honore, attending the Rendez-vous's luncheon yesterday at Bar Boulud, said they were most surprised at the American Q&A's, that audiences were concerned about sexual orientation: did the characters know they were gay? Were they bi? In France, said Christophe Honore, no one ever questions that.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

John Adams on HBO

The great achievement of the new 7-part HBO miniseries to begin on March 16 is that it gives history a human face. That face belongs to Paul Giamatti, whose grimace in “Sideways” changed the fate of merlot forever. In the episode premiered Monday night at MOMA, John Adams leads Congress into making the definitive decision to declare independence. Sage Ben Franklin (Tom Wilkinson) and Adams help Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane who stars in the soon to be released “Fugitive Pieces”) compose the famous Declaration providing the term “self-evident” as in “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” and I must say that I enjoyed the sly humor of their editing process, but also shed a tear at seeing true integrity in the soft-spoken David Morse as George Washington, so fine in “The Seafarer” on Broadway, here accessorized with a bulbous nose, as he accepts “the honor” of leadership. Laura Linney plays Abigail Adams whose scenes inoculating the Adams children against smallpox so gruesome and heartrending, parallel on the domestic front the difficult options  facing her husband and our country. The segment was a reminder of pride in our democracy that few have experienced in a long time. Based upon the book by David McCollough, the miniseries is directed by Tom Hooper, and produced by Tom Hanks. Taking the podium, each one emphasized the art and language of this work, every detail, each wig and wagon authentic to the period. Among those in the packed theater were Mike Nichols, Hanks' director for Charlie Wilson's War, and actors Candace Bergen, Peter Gallagher, Mamie Gummer. All stayed for supper, Thanksgiving fare lit by colonial lanterns, appropriate to a celebration of the founding fathers.
               Meantime, a few blocks away, Mel Brooks was holding court at the Rainbow Room, where Guild Hall was presenting their Lifetime Achievement Awards to Brooks, playwright Joe Pintauro and artist David Salle. Among the well-wishers munching on caviar and blinis and sipping mimosas were 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin and filmmaker Albert Maysles. Brooks said he was contemplating the difficulties of opening “The Producers” in Austria, Hitler's home turf. Don't ask. You had to be there.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

John Adams on HBO (trailer)