Gossip Central

Vik Muniz at the Peter Marino Foundation: “When I See Garbage, I think of You”

Kicking off a series of intimate talks with artists, Brazilian painter/ collagist Vik Muniz captivated an art-loving crowd at the Peter Marino Foundation in Southampton. In conversation with Peter Marino, his daughter Isabelle Marino, and Bob Colacello. Muniz had an abundance of stories: Having grown up in a Sao Paolo favela, he learned to read when his grandmother taught him the shape of words at age 4. Baffled at his son’s vocation, his father first stepped into a gallery to see his son’s work and asked a patron, why did you buy this painting. Known for his unusual choice of art materials, such as chocolate syrup and peanut butter, he laughed asking everyone if they actually knew what goes into paint. Also famous for making art of junk, he is the main subject of Lucy Walker’s documentary, Wasteland, a story told at a giant dump site. Trying to pay him a compliment, someone said, “When I see garbage, I think of you.”

Perhaps the most outrageous story of all is how he funded his trip to America. Wearing a tuxedo, as he had just won an award, he came to the aid of a man who was being beaten to death, and was shot in the leg. The shooter paid his hospital costs, and more, to avoid involving the police. With many of his paintings adorning the space, a most special art venue, Muniz could reflect on having worked first in advertising. Comparisons with Andy Warhol were inevitable: his ideas about art production, making no distinction between commercial and fine art—such as the portraits Warhol was paid to do. As we all learned, Warhol used to draw his bullies. And flattered, they ended up protecting him.

The 66th Viennese Opera Ball: Do I Hear a Waltz!

As spectacular as many of the gowns worn by celebrities at the recent Met Costume Ball were, they had nothing over the extravagantly clad waltzing couples at the 66^th Viennese Opera Ball held at Cipriani 42 Street this week. An annual white tie gala, --floor length gowns for women, white tie and tails for men--the Viennese Opera Ball brings the culture of Austria to America, of Vienna to New York, featuring dinner, dance, and debutantes in the grandeur of this former bank. Connecting two continents, the glamorous night was created by Austrian expatriates, as a tribute to their former hometown Vienna and their host city New York.  After a long Covid break, this was one night to be out and about. 

Chair, Jean Shafiroff, never to be outdone, wore an ice blue layered tulle off the shoulder gown by Malan Breton, and President Silvia Frieser wore a stunning brocade by the same French designer who also donated a dress for the auction. Artwork by Fer da Silva was also auctioned. Wearing a tuxedo jacket that looked like Jackson Pollock dripped white paint on it, the artist created a heart installation used by many guests as a backdrop for photos. Leave it to an artist to extend the concept of white tie. The evening benefits Sloan Kettering Cancer Center through Denise Rich’s Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation for Cancer Research, and raised funds for the people of Ukraine.

Downton Abbey: A New Era: Celebrating with Julian Fellowes

Downton Abbey: A New Era hit the spot! The swell of music, a wedding, I was swept into fandom from the start, at times teary, at other times swooning, and laughing out
loud. Writer Julian Fellowes, brilliant at creating romance, never forgets the real estate. Downton is a place, a grand house where The Granthams, now family to me and millions of followers, have arrived at modernity, a delicious lapse between the two wars, and just before the Depression. Happy endings abound as the family braces itself for a surprise or two. Granny, the Dowager Countess—the always remarkable Maggie Smith—has inherited a villa in Toulon, in the South of France, from a former lover, allowing some of the Granthams to head to the beach to check out the joint, yet another palatial home. That leaves Downton to be managed by Lady Mary, the stern, lovely Michelle Dockery, as a film crew arrives at the dawn of talkies. Yes, it’s a little Singin’ in the Rain, turning a story we love into a larger story we love.

Only a grand premiere will do, an opera house for the grandest soap opera of the last decade: Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera was fitted with a movie screen for the occasion followed by a grand dinner at Tavern on the Green, allowing Fellowes to hold court in the garden. The head of two events, he was greeted by the casts of not only the Downton movie, but HBO’s The Gilded Age, a thematically related series of New York wealth and class--featuring the fine mansions along Madison. Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Dancy with his wife Claire Danes, Christine Baranski, Debra Monk, Louisa Jacobson (her mom is Meryl Streep), all stopped by his table.

Tony Awards Nominees for Grabs: Looking for Hugh Jackman

Celebrating the Tony nominations this year held special excitement: it’s the 75^th anniversary, the first in-person comeback after Covid, a year of re-emergence for shows shuttered in March 2020. Vaxxed, masked, Covid-tested, journalists met with the nominees in a return to Broadway-as-usual. A dozen or so sat at designated places in a room at the Sofitel Hotel in midtown, just a stone’s throw from the classic stages where many of the nominated would perform for the evening. Handlers offered stars as they worked the various outlets, as in, we have Hugh Jackman, do you want him? Duh. Who doesn’t want Hugh Jackman? Ok, you have two questions.

And so it went, as stars came in and out often yanked, and still, the event was like a master class in theater production, and a recognition of just how hard, and how special live theater is. Lessons are learned in passing. Allowed almost no time with Hugh Jackman, you may get the superficial, how he feels about being nominated. Great. But then, with Music Man choreographer Warren Carlyle, you find out “Hugh’s success is not an accident. He worked hard all through the pandemic, rehearsed for the Music Man revival for three years.” A quintessential Broadway vehicle, The Music Man is not perceived as a dance show. What changed? Two things, said Carlyle, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. “All the choreography is new, every step out of my head, nothing from past shows. I really went for it.”

Mr. Saturday Night: Billy Crystal Has “IT”

I’ll have what Billy Crystal’s having--stamina. In his show, Mr. Saturday Night, the comedian/ actor/ Oscar host sings and dances with flair, if not youthful energy. Shuffle, low-key moonwalk, at least the man—now in his ‘70’s-- has moves, which makes the show’s premise very funny. With a career on the skids, his character, Buddy Young, Jr., performs at old age homes, cajoling his audience, that is all of us at the packed Nederlander Theater, with ageing jokes. Because he is adept at his act, having had a hit show at the dawn of television, his jokes land. And with his family backstory, he asks his wife Elaine (a wonderful Randy Graff), his straight man/ manager brother (fine David Paymer), his daughter (excellent Shoshana Bean) and agent (terrific Chasten Harmon): did you see what I did? Explaining his timing, his verbal and visual diversions, he teaches a master class in comedy, a side plus to this highly entertaining show.

Alert: this is not a stand-up act, which you might expect from comics coming to Broadway—think Jackie Mason. Mr. Saturday Night has a narrative, maybe it’s corny: how Buddy met Elaine in the Catskills, his fraught relationships with just about everyone. But curmudgeons are loveable anyway, and when at the 1994 Oscars, he shows up on the In Memorium reel, well, you can imagine how that mistaken death kicks off some pretty funny bits. And, there’s a backup act too: a trio of stock types (Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzales, Mylinda Hull)—the recurring showbiz antics will be a nostalgic send-up for anyone who was watching in tv’s nascent years. It all makes for a fun night with laughs all the way.

Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga in Macbeth: Dressed to Kill

A highly experimental Scottish play bloodies the Longacre Theater on Broadway. As the audience takes seats, cooks brew in pots (cauldrons) on a set that resembles a downtown city loft. Smoke blowers create a dreamy, sinister atmosphere. One actor, Michael Patrick Thornton, takes center stage, greeting the crowd, asking them to whisper the name of the play, Macbeth, to ourselves as if to expel the superstition attached to Shakespeare’s popular tragedy. This year brought us Joel Coen’s movie, Macbeth in abstract, in black & white, and this one contrasts in its specificity, red spots everywhere. Partly that’s owing to this Lady Macbeth, a dynamite Ruth Negga with sharply defined finger waves, a tiny frame, a bullet of a personality challenging her husband’s manhood. Would anyone doubt the potency of Daniel Craig as Macbeth? He’s a happy camper at the outset and as his life becomes more and more tarnished in blood: is it just a problem of laundry or just a change of expensive pajamas?

Out out brief spot. That’s a lot of blood, spurting from a man hoisted upside down, a pig releasing juices for an odd stew. Suttirat Larlarb’s costuming makes a splash. Craig is most stained, in white t-shirt, fur coat, brocade jacket, silk loungewear with armored vest. Negga dressed in a gold gossamer tiered gown, looking like Cleopatra, never has blood on her hands, but she’s busy scrubbing the floors. Till those woods encroach, --that’s always the opportunity for Macbeth’s greatest and most innovative dramatic spectacle.

A Holocaust Symphony Premieres at Carnegie Hall

Photo:  Aylin Tekiner

The Holocaust continues to unravel secrets. During this period of remembrance, a symphony by a survivor from Salonica, Greece pays homage to his community, its creative artists, and a little-known pocket of wartime history. You know the joke: how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Way more than practice! The music took a very long and arduous route by way of Auschwitz, culminating last week in an evening featuring Renan Koen on piano and a symphony conducted by Maestro Gurer Aykal from Turkey. Entitled “Hymns from Auschwitz,” the program, sponsored by Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, was named for a newly composed piece by Elcil Gurel Goctu (b. 1979) for hazans, pianos, and orchestra, followed by the historic work, a symphonic postwar poem, whose composer Michel Assael (1918-2006) never heard his masterpiece performed.

As a researcher, renowned pianist Renan Koen was awed by the composers of Theresienstadt: how under the murderous conditions of the camp were they able to make art? Her work led to composer Viktor Ullmann who encouraged his fellow prisoners to write music before he was deported to Auschwitz, and murdered two days later. Michel Assael survived Auschwitz by playing in the orchestra there alongside Dr. Albert Menache who later wrote a memoir BIRKENAU (Auschwitz II): How 72,000 Greek Jews Perished. It may have been that Menache and Assael were performing when Ullmann was led to the gas chambers, as reported in the memoir. The music we were hearing at Carnegie Hall was Assael’s symphonic poem (1947-1948) inspired by Dr. Menache’s memoir.

How I Learned to Drive Comes to Broadway

Ewwww! That’s not my critique of Paula Vogel’s tight memory play, How I Learned to Drive-- rather the play, now having a Broadway debut after 25 years-- is brilliant. It’s the people: the family. At center, Uncle Peck and Li’l Bit (the sublime actors David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker) who originated these roles Off Broadway. You will wonder, what took them so long to get to Broadway? And you will marvel at how prescient the play is of the present moment. And then, you will realize just how normal and natural that “ewwww” factor really was all along.

Affable and courteous, Uncle Peck held Li’l Bit in his hand as she was born, he said, and from there he’s loved her every day, from that time, and when she was eleven, and he asked to unbutton her shirt as she sat on his lap. “Only if you want,” he said. And continues to say even when he courts her with gifts and encourages her martinis. And teaches her to drive. Which becomes a structural device marking scenes but also providing a nuanced and loaded language: avoid reverse gear and idling.

The Little Prince: An Intergalactic Journey on Broadway

Aerial feats, dance, a touch of Gaul—Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince at the Broadway Theater brings a beloved children’s classic to the stage with visual flair. Beginning as the book does with a crash landing in the desert, the show moves quickly from scene to scene as a boy in a yellow jumpsuit and yellow spiky hair from a nearby asteroid recounts his adventures to the downed aviator. Sort of a Candide meets Cirque de Soleil. 

One such encounter is with a beautiful rose (Laurisse Sulty), another with a wily fox (Dylan Barone), all of whom impart some wisdom to the boy (Lionel Zalachas). Chris Mouron, writer and co-director with the show’s choreographer Anne Tournie, does a fine job narrating these events. In green hair and tweetle-dum suit, she speaks with a heavy French accent, the story translated to English on both sides of the stage. My companion, 7-year-old Max Herman was grateful to be able to read her words, but was far more dazzled by a dancer with a toilet plunger, loving the spectacle—and proclaiming this part his favorite.

Ben Foster in The Survivor: The Camps Never Leave You

HBO launches its movie, The Survivor, with a lavish premiere just in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Barry Levinson’s latest stars Ben Foster as boxer Harry Haft, Auschwitz survivor and refugee. 

As Auschwitz stories go, Harry Haft’s exceeds the norm. Grasping his world in the camps and beyond in Brooklyn, Ben Foster, in the performance of the year, gets Haft --as boxer and as nightmare-ridden refugee-- in Barry Levinson’s adaptation of son Alan Haft’s book, The Survivor. Told in two-time frames, The Survivor pares down Haft’s experience: the Holocaust period in black & white when he is made to entertain the Nazis using his skill as a boxer. Nazi officer Dietrich Schneider puts him in the ring fighting fellow prisoners to their death. If you thought Billy Magnussen was “bad” in the recent James Bond movie, here he brings his super-bad game, “owning Haft,” as it were. In color, survivor Haft fights in the rings of Coney Island, fighting even Rocky Marciano, with one goal shaping his American existence. That is, to find Leah (Dar Zuzovsky), his love from before the war.

Picture Raging Bull meets The Pawnbroker. Imagine the violence, the searing impression of the blood oozing out of the fighters—with Haft so gaunt, so spent, you cannot even think of his having body fluids in his vividly depicted post-war visions, triggered even on his honeymoon when he marries Miriam, Vicky Krieps in a tender role. They go on as survivors do, having three kids, managing the past as best they can—singing “God Bless America” in Yiddish.