Gossip Central

Tony Awards

Let me confess: I am a sucker for award shows, the Oscars' hammy fashion parade and all. At the Tony's it's a sea of strapless and dark suits, and last night, Whoopi Goldberg in every costume she could find. OK, she was fun as Mary Poppins and multiple Whoopi doing “A Chorus Line” means more is more. If the awards reflect a kind of artistic right, justice was served in honoring the three principles in “Gypsy:” Boyd Gaines, Laura Benanti, and Patti Lupone. Performing the signature “I Got a Dream” number to Louise, in a scene just after Baby June walks out of the act, doing that thing she does with her shoulders that says I don't care when she really really cares, she is the best Mama Rose since Ethel Merman, and that's over powerhouses like Bernadette Peters, Bette Midler, and Tyne Daly. But Arthur Laurents told me opening night: This is the best “Gypsy.” At 90, one of the show's creators, who happens to have directed this production, should know. A contender for Best Actress in a Musical, Kelli O'Hara is adorable as Nelly in South Pacific, but no match for Mama. The Musical Revival category was particularly strong this year. I only wish the marvelous “Sunday in the Park with George” could have won Best Musical Revival alongside “South Pacific.” I am sure opera singer Paulo Szot is pleased he made the jump to the American musical theater. I still hear him this morning in a sublime, sonorous “Some Enchanted Evening” although “This Nearly was Mine” is my favorite of his solos--and that reverberation is no hangover. While I often agree with Ben Brantley of The New York Times, he was especially good in yesterday's paper on the subject of Best Play. While August: Osage County picked up the award-as well as this year's Pulitzer-there is something off about a play deploying EVERY explosive in the dysfunctional arsenal. You do, however, feel a jolt.

Regina Weinreich 

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

John Waters' Cry Baby/ Tribeca Film Festival

Don't cry for me, John Waters! Your over-the-top tour de gross-out has hit mainstream, proving what your pal William Burroughs used to say about acceptance, if you stick around long enough . . . Commercial success may of course come at the price of losing edge, but in your case, edge may be overrated. On Broadway Hairspray and now Cry Baby are huge hits, showing how edgy meets marketplace: with exuberant choreography, the crinkle of crinolines, slick pompadours, padded rumps. When New York Magazine features you as a subversive gone MOR, your pencil thin mustache loses its twitch. Divine's shit eating ending in “Pink Flamingos,” the stray dog eating a lesbian's discarded “bone” from a botched sex change in “Desperate Living”! Ah, those were moments of high satire. In “Cry Baby,” set in Waters' beloved Baltimore, the outcast, misunderstood teens sing of kissing with tongues, going down in the marshes. Anyone who has seen “Grease” is familiar with this territory of preppies vs. hipsters, with “Cry Baby” adding a bit of social consciousness: not only do the lovers (James Snyder and Elizabeth Stanley) meet at the anti-polio picnic, but the rebel-with-cause cried himself out when his parents were wrongly executed as arsonists. Wow! Talk about the '50's!
               When you become an authority-that's the ultimate acceptance. Where was John Waters the night I saw his play? He was partying at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “Squeezebox!” with directors Steve Saporito and Zach Shaffer, the likes of Debbie Harry,  Lady Bunny, Misstress Formika, Michael Musto, John Cameron Mitchell, and the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. The doc about Don Hill's legendary boite turned trans-sex disco for a night/week is actually quite moving, with lots of heart as the real-life characters finally finding a place to fit in. Waters is also called upon to expound on the art scene in another festival favorite, “Guest of Cindy Sherman” directed by Sherman's ex, Paul H-O. So please, give John Waters an honorary doctorate!

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Gypsy

On opening night, Broadway producer Ted Hartley stood on the corner of 8th Avenue and 47 Street looking for the giant tour buses that would take the star-studded audience to Chelsea for the “Gypsy” after party. A ten-minute standing ovation at the St. James Theatre not withstanding, he worried how the economy would affect this new production of the legendary show. (A visit to the Lincoln Center branch of the New York Public Library will give you a sense of the history; the exhibition of choreographer Jerome Robbins' memorabilia includes a “Gypsy” strip drop.) Of course, no one can predict how the future looks, but now starring Patti LuPone as Mama Rose, clearly a role she was born to do, this is the show to see. With her monster chops --that must convey uber-mom Rose's fragility and overbearing obsession-LuPone comfortably inherits a tradition begun by Ethel Merman. The cheering crowd, a former Rose, Angela Lansbury among them, included Lauren Bacall, Marisa Tomei, about to open in a new production of  “Top Girls,” Marty Richards, Liz Smith, Celia Weston, Stephen Root, funny in George Clooney's Leatherheads opening this week; designer Zac Posen came with Stella Schnabel who told me her father is now scouting locations for his next movie in Morocco.
             One person was confident. Arthur Laurents wrote the original book in 1961 based upon Gypsy Rose Lee's 1959 autobiography. At 90, he has directed the new production. We caught up with him having a pre-show cocktail next door with David Saint, the artistic director of George Street Playhouse, with whom he is planning to direct “West Side Story” later this year. Mr. Laurents assured me he was not 91 as reported. He also claimed, this was the best “Gypsy” ever. And who could argue otherwise?

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

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

Stew, on Broadway

When it opened downtown at the Public Theater last May, the exuberant, “Passing Strange,” had audiences laughing at the intelligence and wit of its book and bobbing their heads to clever variations on traditional guitar-driven rock. Many critics including me knew that this blast of fresh energy would make a b-line to Broadway vying for some big honors, but in several interviews Stew, the black, bald, big-bellied, bespectacled M.C. and the show's originator dispelled such thoughts by saying this move was simply not the inventive journey he had in mind for his rock concert cum bildungsroman. The coming of age of a black musician/song writer, the story is Stew's own. He looks on amused, skeptical, disapproving, interrupting with musical riffs of his own as a younger self (Daniel Breaker) grows and matures. Aided by an excellent cast performing multiple roles, Stew-that's the performer's real name-- and his musical collaborator Heidi Rodewald take this wellworn genre to a new place, reviving a classic rock idiom with a nod to bluesy rhythms, gospel, crooner tunes, and such disparate sources as Gilbert and Sullivan and Kurt Weill. A product of LA, the young artist goes from middle class to bohemian, to Amsterdam hash houses, to Berlin cabarets, before his inevitable return home; the portrait includes heady (often drug feuled) lessons from preachers, politicos, prostitutes and pornographers: “We are all freaks depending on the backdrop” becomes a mantra.
          The show has such buzz, Diana Ross attended a preview as did “Seinfeld” alum “Kramer” Michael Richards. The irony of this comic --who's had some bad press after using some racial slurs coming to this show, after all, the story of a black man's quest for identity-was not missed.
          And so, confronting Stew on “Passing Strange's” opening night at the lavish after party at Espace, after a thrilling performance at the venerable uptown Belasco Theater attended by Edward Albee, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Marshall Brickman, Debby Harry of Blondie, Spike Lee, Rosie Perez (all the way from Brooklyn with a broken toe), Martha Plimpton, among the stellar cheering crowd, I said, “I thought you were too cool for Broadway.” “Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “Don't worry,” I said, “you're still cool.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

The Seafarer

In the post-holiday present, “The Seafarer” is like a belated Christmas gift. The pleasure is seeing this small morality play, written and directed by Conor McPherson, turn into a mythic-scale tale of redemption. You ask, who wants to get inside the heads of five Irishmen with hangovers verging on their next bender? The idea is as unappealing as the body functions that go awry in a boozy loss of control. As “Joy to the World” is heard in the sitting room of a modest house in Baldoyle, near Dublin, Sharky (David Morse) descends the stair just as his elder brother Richard (Jim Norton) emerges from behind a chair, having spent the night working off a stupor. He's blind, and the toilet one-liners abound. Enter his buddy Ivan (Conleth Hill), who has been kicked out of his house by the Misses. Enter a nimble Nicky (Sean Mahon), who brings over a dapper and dour visitor Mr. Lockhart (Ciaran Hinds), and the excellent ensemble is ready for rounds of poker-and drink. Before too long, the mysterious stranger reveals his mission. Reminding Sharky of an unfortunate incident two decades prior, he's here for payback: “I want your soul,” he breathes with Mephistophelean menace. The play's title, from the Anglo-Saxon poem best known in Ezra Pound's translation, provides the universal resonance. These are sailors in only a slang sense. Sharky's reprieve at the play's end underscores the resilience of “the seafarer,” the man on life's journey whose endurance, un-buoyed, suffering and lonely, is his salvation.

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

The Homecoming and August: Osage County

“Members of the same family always hate one another,” says Paul Bowles, the American writer who also composed incidental music for such Broadway fare as Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” and Lillian Hellman’s “Watch on the Rhine” in the early 20th century. In the documentary about him titled “The Complete Outsider” newly out on DVD, the line gets a knowing laugh. Nowhere is this dark truism more evident than in two plays now garnering well-deserved raves from critics and audiences. Harold Pinter’s compact Petrie dish of festering psyches, “The Homecoming,” lays bare the inner lives of an all-male family in a sitting room in North London, when one son (Gareth Saxe), now a professor of philosophy in the U.S. returns with wife in tow. One whiff of Ruth (Eve Best) and, from the patriarch (Ian McShane) to his brother (Michael McKean), and other sons (Raul Esparza and James Frain), ego gives way to repressed animal hunger. Best was the best (sic) part of last season’s “Moon for the Misbegotten,” all movement across the great expanse of the American plains. Here her body is all restraint, but registers no less freely in head tilting, eye rolling, and the celebrated extension of a leg that had the New York Times critic Christopher Isherwood creaming on the paper’s pages. In “August: Osage  County” Tracy Letts’ Weston family residing in an inventively imagined 3-story house in Oklahoma, go at one another with “killer” instincts. Their weaponry: one-liners, barbs mastered so effectively and memorably t-shirts emblazoned with the snappiest: “The world is round. Get over it,” and “All women need makeup,” are sold in the Imperial Theater lobby.  The play starts with poetry from T. S. Eliot, “Life is long” and ends with “And then you’re gone,” providing the epic sweep, but oh what comes between! The language gives way to the unspeakable: let’s say that despite a genealogy offered in the Playbill, you cannot assume a character is related to another in quite the way you expected. Surprisingly, you laugh all through this 3-hour dysfunction-fest, and ask, how can bad behavior be so good?

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Black Nativity/Yellow Face

The rousing musical “Black Nativity” cannot be beat for sheer exuberance. Taking off from Langston Hughes's gospel song play and performed at the Duke Theater on 42nd Street, this Classical Theatre of Harlem production is set in 1973 Times Square when the populace in the neighborhood, dubbed The Deuce or The Devil's Playground with its pimps, prostitutes, and pickpockets, evokes the mood of the 1997 Cy Coleman musical, “The Life,” more than present-day Disney “Mary Poppins” just down the block. The unstoppable Andre De Shields heads the superb cast of dancers, singers in the traditions of Motown and Stax, joined by the Shangilia Youth Choir of Nairobi, Kenya. The mix of these musical genres creates a sensational entertainment; in retelling the story of Jesus's birth, the show reminds us that the Christian themes of salvation, redemption, and universal good will do not stop with holidays. With a nod to today's Africa and the travails of the Sudanese among others beset by unspeakable violence, the company asks: would Jesus be crucified today?
        Downtown, at the Public Theater, the world premiere of David Henry Hwang's “Yellow Face” is a more cerebral entertainment, addressing the vexing problem of racism in the casting of “Miss Saigon:” should the actor Jonathan Pryce, after all a white Brit, have originated the lead role meant for an Asian? Dramatizing his own protest of that event, Hwang creates a polemical theater melding fact and fiction, drawing from the news and people of the time on a bare stage. Clever and surprising, this work is a reminder of the formidable role that race and ethnicity play in our culture. The fine actors replicate the gender/race blind ideal: with Noah Bean as author surrogate, Francis Jue in multiple roles, and Anthony Torn wittily playing “The Announcer” and “[Name withheld on advice of counsel].” After the show, when asked to what extent this work is autobiographical, the playwright said, “Issues of race are egg-shelly. I am a writer and in the end, it's all about me.” His wife, Kathryn A. Layng, also performs multiple roles, sometimes a man and most notably her mother-in-law. So what does she think of herself so portrayed? “She says I've improved,” reported Layng.

Regina Weinreich                            Graphic Design: SalpeterVentura

Last Licks: Summer 2007

Billy Sullivan's knockout show of paintings and photographs at Guild Hall featured portraits of '70's downtown art world denizen: Cookie Mueller, famous for acting in the early gross out now classic films Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living, two of John Waters's works before Hairspray “normalized” him for Broadway and Hollywood. Waters never lost that pencil thin mustache though, a sure sign that his subversive side remains, however dormant. Who knew he would become so conventional? Before she died of AIDS, Cookie wrote a memoir describing the making of Pink Flamingos-which also starred Mink Stole and other underground stars, of how Divine's shit-eating ending was shot-yes that was real dog do do. An excerpt appears in “The Outlaw Bible of American Literature” (Thunder's Mouth). Meantime, Sullivan is doing the poster for this year's Hamptons International Film Festival.
John Waters is, I'm sure, a big fan of Charles Busch as am I. His over the top performance in Bay Street's revival of “The Lady in Question,” a play he wrote in 1989, was surprisingly nuanced and funny. Charles Busch as actor is all gesture: his face in false lashes registers split-second reactions; his body propelled by the swing of an arm, his slender hips in slight swivel, he sashays with grace in heels that would give most women pause. As writer, Busch cleverly reinvents a camp vehicle channeling Charles Ludlum, the brilliant playwright lost to AIDS in the early '80's, who was unforgettable in his send up of Maria Callas in his Theater of the Ridiculous production..

Vered Gallery exhibited some work from Michelle Marie: paintings of trees with geometric shaped leaves and a sculpture using the same mathematical motif. Sounds brainy over arty, right? Turns out Michelle Marie created her own algorithm for the series. You would never guess from looking at her, slight and big haired like a beauty queen, she'd be so into science. Raised in Atlanta she is in fact the child of a beauty queen and scientist and has three sisters-growing up was sort of Little Women, she told me-and she's also cut a hit record and had her work adorn Tiffany's windows. At dinner at Le Flirt, over filet mignon, French fries, grilled chicken, pasta, potato, rice--not a bad dish in the house--Patrick McMullen snapped away and R. Couri Hay vamped outrageously. But it is not called Le Flirt for nothing. Michelle Marie was making eyes with a gorgeous guy across the table, her husband it turns out, who courted her by buying her art.

To benefit the East Hampton Library, Alec Baldwin showed up at a private dinner party honoring Gail Levin, noted art historian and biographer of Edward Hopper and Judy Chicago. Seems that he's writing a book of his own, about his messy divorce and the legal system.

                                                                                  Regina Weinreich

Elvis at the Lapin Agile

Yesterday, on the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis's death, all you could hear on NPR radio was chat about Elvis and his impact on our culture. Professors and music mavens of all sorts weighed out his influence and his influences, deciding whether or not he stole the spotlight from Chuck Berry and the like, whether or not he was a true artist or simply an icon and a brand. Coincidentally, Steve Martin's clever play, “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” newly revived, opened last night at Guild Hall (in their temporary venue at LTV);  Elvis takes center stage in the company of such luminaries as Picasso and Einstein in a charming debate on the major intellectual and cultural trends of the twentieth century. Set in 1904 at a Montmartre pub/cabaret, the play portrays each on the verge a breakthrough, an idea that will change perception forever.
          Who after all had the greater impact? You could say that the hip-swiveling “visitor,” the ghost of Elvis arriving in a cloud of smoke held sway, even after some deftly created projections of Picasso's famous 1907 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon vied for attention with the galaxy. (Einstein published his theory of relativity in 1905.)  The exceptionally fine cast includes director Josh Gladstone as Einstein. A master eye roller, Gladstone gives Einstein a ditzy tousled air as he arrives at the wrong bar knowing that the woman he is to meet will make the same mistake. Joseph de Sane portrays the bear-like Picasso: “I have been thinking about sex all day,” he repeats. Elvis (Nick Fondulis in especially furry sideburns) was not wearing blue suede shoes, but the turquoise lizard roach kickers did the trick: his image evoked a future where fame will have much less to do with talent, accomplishment and “brains.” The actresses, Kate Mueth playing a smart bar maid, and Ann Moller in a variety of wigs and hats supply the much needed women's angle in this testosterone heavy encounter where Gaston (Gerard Doyle), another patron with a prostate problem is also obsessed with sex. Kameron Steele looks especially dapper as Sagot who arrives with a large camera on a tripod he acquired “from a Japanese tourist.” Kudos to costume designer Amy Ritchings and her fine team: Emily Havlik, Jane Salpeter, and Irma Escobar.
                August is a month of losses, from the world renowned legendary artists: Max Roach, jazz man extraordinaire whose innovations made the drums a voice of their own, Elizabeth Murray, abstract painter whose joyful, cartoon inspired colors graced the walls of MOMA in a 2006 one-woman retrospective, and to the lesser known but well-loved Humphrey Bogart, the sweetest springer spaniel to have gathered sticks among the surfers in Ditch Plains. They will be missed.

                                                                        Regina Weinreich

Passing Strange at the Public Theater

Now that Tony nominations are announced with two main contenders-Spring Awakening and Grey Gardens-- having cut their teeth off-Broadway, this is a good time to look at what's happening in the theater provinces, that is non-Broadway venues. At the Public Theater where I first saw A Chorus Line-and we all know what's become of this musical legend-- a new musical, Passing Strange, has audiences laughing at the intelligence and wit of its book and bobbing their heads to clever variations on traditional guitar-driven rock.
     A black, bald, big-bellied, bespectacled M.C. introduces himself as Stew. His is the voice of authority: what follows on a bare stage is an inventive journey, a rock concert cum bildungsroman. The coming of age of a black musician/song writer, the story is Stew's own. He looks on amused, skeptical, disapproving, interrupting with musical riffs of his own as a younger self (Daniel Breaker) grows and matures. Aided by an excellent cast performing multiple roles, Stew-that's the performer's real name-- and his musical collaborator Heidi Rodewald take this wellworn genre to a new place, reviving a classic rock idiom with a nod to bluesy rhythms, gospel, and such disparate sources as Gilbert and Sullivan and Kurt Weill. A product of LA, the young artist goes from middle class to bohemian, to Amsterdam hash houses, to Berlin cabarets, before his inevitable return home; the portrait includes heady (often drug feuled) lessons from preachers, politicos, prostitutes and pornographers: “We are all freaks depending on the backdrop” becomes a mantra. Passing Strange (the title comes from Othello) has all the imagination and originality that the energetic but cliché-ridden In the Heights lacks. At the performances I attended, each of these new plays garnered standing ovations, so my critique will rankle some fans of the Latino soap opera. But for me the work that matters is what pushes the medium. Passing Strange is simply thrilling and I expect to see it uptown vying for some big honors.

                                                                              Regina Weinreich

Inherit the Wind

                While his one-time wife Tammy Grimes wowed the crowd at the Metropolitan Room last night, Christopher Plummer wowed the courtroom and the estimable audience at the Lyceum Theater’s opening of the 1955 drama “Inherit the Wind.” Mike Wallace, Jill Clayburgh, Joan Rivers, Fran Drescher, Blair Brown, and Annabella Sciorria saw Plummer in a performance so good it is sure to earn him the Best Actor Tony—again (he won for “Cyrano” in 1974 and “Barrymore” in 1997). As lawyer Henry Drummond he paced and pondered, strutted and whooped defending a Hillsboro(read Smalltown) schoolteacher’s use of  Darwin’s Origin of the Species in the classroom. His worthy opponent in court is the streamlined Brian Dennehy (the actor’s lost 60 pounds), playing Matthew Harrison Brady, a Bible thumping defender of the faith. What’s at stake of course is freedom of thought. Young Conor Donovan, an actor to watch, plays a fresh faced student whose mind may be corrupted by such teaching. While the play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee must have resonated during the McCarthy period, it now at first seems didactic and dated. But as Plummer’s Drummond, snapping his suspenders, moves through his oratory, blowing Dennehy’s Brady away, a whiff of current events lingers. During intermission, the theater’s lobby became an informal court debating the ethics surrounding Don Imus’ recent verbal transgressions. The lessons of “Inherit the Wind” hold sway.

                                                                                                                  Regina Weinreich