Gossip Central

Fat Ham: A Backyard Wedding Leading to the Tony Awards

Fans of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet will find James Ijames’ audacious reimagining, Fat Ham, a hoot. Set in a backyard barbeque, the play starts with a white-suited jive ass (Billy Eugene Jones) arriving in a whirl of sulphurous smoke to tell his son, a juvenile brooder called Juicy (Marquis D. Gibson in the performance I attended), about the wrong that’s been done him at the hands of his brother and wife. Well, we get every spectacle but those damned “incestuous sheets.”

Along the way, as the characters sashay and butt butts celebrating a suspicious marriage onstage at the American Airlines Theater, we even get some soliloquies such as the one that asks, “what is this quintessence of dust?” On the way to revenge, Fat Ham delivers much existential dread in this house in North Carolina, a “liminal space between the past and the present with an aspirational relationship to the future that is contingent to your history living in the South, . . . inside the second decade of the 21st century,” according to a program note. James Ijames is clearly repurposing whatever lay “rotten in the state of Denmark!” 

Tweaking Shakespeare, both Juicy and his “love” and childhood pal, Opal (Adrianna Mitchell) are queer; as a sort of Polonius, Rabby (Benja Kay Thomas) and “Gertrude,” now Tedra (Nikki Crawford) are excellent beefing up the female side of the story. But it isn’t until the staid, conservative Larry (Calvin Leon Smith) morphs into a dancing god that the show hits its spectacular stride, becoming an outsized Las Vegas (or Broadway) revue. What a play within a play!

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Final Season: Tits Up!

In fact, two tits up! The stunning final season makes for a picture of life as a stand-up comic for Mrs. Maisel and her agent Susie, or Susan, depending on your history with her. Our heroine is now gainfully employed: she’s a writer on the evening’s popular celebrity television talk program, The Gordon Ford Show. The season flips through time periods, juxtaposing Midge’s rise to comedy superstardom with her rookie warm-up to fame. Both Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) and Susie (Alex Borstein) learn on the job, the hard way. Mutually dependent, they have each other’s backs—except when the mob’s involved—becoming an object lesson in female friendship. Working on television, on a popular evening talk show, Midge writes for Ford, and though there’s a taboo on actually getting on the show if you are a writer, well, you can guess that Midge gets there. And, having delivered a great speech to her boss about how if she slept with him, she would never know if she got the job by her talents or some casting couch. It’s a proto-feminist monologue that would work in our day.

Susie becomes a famous agent, roasted at the legendary Friars’ Club. Danny Strong gives an outstanding performance as a rival agent, and fills everyone in on her backstory. Susie’s sister gushes and soaks up the air in the room, refusing to leave the podium. [An aside: Show biz being what it is, she played by Emily Bergl, the very actress who is currently on Broadway playing Sean Hayes’ Oscar Levant’s wife in Good Night, Oscar, a drama that similarly offers a glimpse of television’s salad years.] As to the Friars, the whole set up is a piece of New York history, playing out in real time; faced with financial ruin, the Friars’ Club is about to end if someone doesn’t come up with a way to save it—soon.

The Fears: Triggers and Trauma in a Safe Space

In his theater production debut, Steven Soderburgh brings us Emma Sheanshang’s The Fears, performed off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Theater. On trend, this ensemble work takes place in a room, with a window, and with hangings of the Buddha; this is a safe zone for the psychically injured, akin to a consciousness raising group space. A lively cast of characters is led by a neo-hippie-ish facilitator to deal with their triggers. The title The Fears made me think of the ancient Greek play, The Furies, which externalized the emotional explosions thin-skinned types experience in volatile families—think of the House of Atreus alone where sons are served up to fathers for dinner. Of course, without calling the characters trauma survivors. The personae in The Fears form something of a fiery family itself, --and that window: it faces onto a courtyard with a lot of commotion outside. Everyone has issues.

Still, where is anyone safe from trauma? Each character, from Maia (Maddie Corman), the leader who keeps taking room tone, to Suzanne (Robyn Peterson) who offers solace in snacks of crispy seaweed, to bossy Rosa (Natalie Woolams-Torres), to exasperating Fiz  (Mehran Khaghani), and Katie (Jess Gabor), a most fragile Goth girl, gets a big sorry past, as do the new girl, Thea (Kerry Bishe) and her boyfriend. She just happens to be living with Mark (Carl Hendrick Louis). Director Dan Algrant keeps the tirades and banter flowing.

Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, and Candice Bergen in Book Club: The Next Chapter

A four female post-pandemic road trip, Book Club: The Next Chapter, defies the current trends toward diversity and inclusion and yet manages to be silly enough to be just what we need: a big laugh against the backdrop of scenic Italy. One can argue that rich older white women are in a class that needs to be seen and heard.

When first seen, in Zoom squares, wine glasses in hand, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen ponder the finer points in books and quickly move on to escape (high end) lockdown as Covid restrictions allow. Jane Fonda as Vivian, recently engaged with a giant rock on her finger, will have a bachelorette bash in Italy with her besties. Candice Bergen’s Sharon, a retired judge is a pill, doing what older women do: find excuses for not embracing new adventure. Needless to say, she becomes the most outrageous of the lot in some clever plotting by writer/director Bill Holderman featuring travel mishaps: loss of luggage (we’re talking Louis Vuitton), misplaced ashes, a flat tire, and a night in jail. On the plus side: a steamy night on a boat in a Venice canal, kneading of dough, and yes, a wedding in Tuscany.

This week’s premiere and afterparty at Tavern on the Green echoed the movie’s joyful release from the pandemic. Diane Keaton wore stripes and a signature hat. In the film, kooky as Annie Hall was, her character, Diane, favors dots and a flared silhouette. Partiers included Tovah Feldshuh, Candace Bushnell, Clive Davis, Carol Kane and Judd Hirsch (stars of iMordecai, the most adorable rom-com of the year), David Rasche (mum on Succession’s surprising series’ end), Ted Danson, Diane Sawyer, and many others toasting to all four stars!

It’s TONY Time: Meet the Nominees

“Mazel tov.” You could hear Ben Platt in the Sofitel Hotel corridor congratulate Jessica Hecht, both nominated for Tony Awards. She was leaving the press room at the annual “Meet the Nominees” event, and he was entering. Starring in one of the two most Jewish plays on Broadway—Platt plays Leo Frank in the stunning revival of Parade—he spoke about how important this musical was to him, having grown up actively Jewish, and especially now as antisemitism in America is not simply a thing of 1913. The other most Jewish play is Leopoldstadt, a brilliant work by Tom Stoppard, examining an unexplored piece of the playwright’s history in Nazi-occupied Europe. Both plays received multiple much-deserved nominations. No one from Leopoldstadt stopped to say hello, but that’s the way with the “Meet the Nominees” day, you never know who will come by. Best to take frequent bathroom breaks. The corridor may be where you will see Sean Hayes as he’s led off to be photographed. Or glimpse Jessica Chastain.

Or you may be lucky to get J. Harrison Ghee in blouse and midi skirt, with rhinestone-trimmed velvet slippers, looking divine as you would expect from the actor playing Daphne in Some Like It Hot. Dressed for the occasion, Ghee spoke of the joy of having the mother of a trans kid thank him for the representation. Or Beowulf Boritt, nominated for Best Scenic Design of a Musical, go into detail about how they spared no expense in the look of New York, New York: using the techniques of old school Broadway, they got a Ukrainian painter who had relocated to Amsterdam to hand paint 12 backdrops. Video would have been so much cheaper but the actors would not have looked as good. In my favorite scene, construction workers tap dance on a steel beam high above the street; the beam, he said, actually had a steel surface, so heavy it was a nightmare to get it on and off stage.

Viola Davis Honored at Film at Lincoln Center’s Chaplin Awards

The newly minted EGOT, Viola Davis, is having a moment. More than one speaker at this week’s Film at Lincoln Center’s gala noted what distinguishes Davis in the awards world. Now she can add the Chaplin Award, presented to a film artist for film career achievement. By all measure, Viola Davis has had an astonishing career. Clip after clip, in big and small movies, she melts into character, never looking the same, whether she’s the mother Mrs. Miller looking respectable in hat and gloves in Doubt, the housewife Rose giving Denzel Washington the what for, or festooned in war gear as in The Woman King, in housemaid apron as in The Help, or the grieving wife in Widows, or gaudily made-up and hefty as Ma Rainey. When words come, she delivers every speech as if it were Shakespearean, with Oscar worthy gravitas.

I said as much, reviewing her most recent movie, AIR. Playing Michael Jordan’s mother, a woman so fierce in her demands for her son, she elevates a business negotiation with Nike, making it a speech about knowing one’s worth. Scripted or not in Ben Affleck’s movie, this recognition of self-worth was precisely how the Chaplin Award tributes—from Jayme Lawson, Meryl Streep, Gina Prince-Bythewood, George C. Wolfe, and Jessica Chastain—might be summed up.

My favorite speech of the night came from Meryl Streep, not only because she’s naturally funny, but because she actually went through a scene from Doubt telling precisely how Davis works—not told in Davis’ memoir, Finding Me. Playwright/ director John Patrick Shanley was putting them through their paces on the scene when Streep as a nun confronts Davis as Mrs. Miller about the priest who is taking liberties with her son. As scenes go, this one is through the roof emotional as Davis tries to explain how her abused son needs male guidance, no matter what. Take after take, Davis was giving her all and Shanley wanted to keep going. Seeing Davis go to a heart wrenching place each time, Streep asked Shanley, what are you doing? He did not like the way a leaf in the background was blowing. Davis nailed it every time she was asked.

Sean Hayes in Good Night, Oscar: Hallucinating on Demerol and Demons

Unreliable and often hospitalized and drugged, if Oscar Levant hadn’t been a musical genius, he might have been a bum. At least that’s how he’s portrayed by a terrifically transformed Sean Hayes at the Belasco Theater in Good Night, Oscar. Themes of mental illness being all the rage right now, Levant is a dynamic subject, beloved by his wife June (Emily Bergl who does a stunning turn here and on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and popular talk show host Jack Paar (Ben Rappaport), despite Levant’s many issues. (Now we have names like OCD, bipolar disorder, although severe depression worked then as now.) Many who saw him as a talk show guest, or on his own television show, knew him as a brazen comic and a raconteur. Being very funny in the early years of television, he was responsible for immigrants learning the language just to get his jokes. He was a wit, when such a thing had cache.

Glimpses of television in those golden years are a highlight of Good Night, Oscar, as they are of the series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, now in its last season. Midge Maisel breaks through on The Gerald Ford Show. Hired as a writer, she finagles her way to “the couch” –not the casting couch but the couch where guests are interviewed by the host. In playwright Doug Wright’s conception of this single night when Oscar was scheduled to appear on Paar’s program and he has not yet left the hospital, Oscar Levant was all couch, cracking wise and off color as can be, unless he was seated at the piano when he would play George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” —even his auditory hallucination of the maestro (John Zdrojeski) who died at age 38, approves. Yet what haunts Levant even more than that smoky vision is his musical writer’s block, his anxiety of Gershwin’s influence. When does he get to play his own compositions? Putting himself down constantly, he despaired he was a mere clown.

Ben Platt in Parade: Lynching a Jew in the American South

Looking mild-mannered, even Evan Hanson-ish, Ben Platt plays the real-life historic figure Leo Frank, a Jew who was lynched in the early 20^th century in Atlanta. Lynching, a gruesome act of violence performed in the American South, illustrated by Billie Holiday’s “strange fruit,” is not the customary way of doing away with Jews as we think of it. Still, this really happened. As the musical Parade—yes musical—moves on to its climax, we see how justice works when zealous prosecutors force witness testimony serving their agenda, however racist. And, when an antsy mob takes over. Or maybe that’s the easy excuse for getting rid of “others.” Chilling, riveting entertainment, Parade, now revived at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre is so fiercely good, a highlight of this Tony award season, it defies you to turn away.

Leo Frank from Brooklyn as conceived in Alfred Uhry’s excellent script and music, written with Jason Robert Brown, seemed secular enough to endure the south with its worship of confederate ideals. The play opens with a celebration of those who fought and died for this land. Anyone wondering about sources for white supremacy, see it here, in the exuberance of those who fought the war—the civil war of course. Leo Frank’s story takes place some fifty years after, with aging soldiers, soil still blood-soaked, and blacks finding their way. A proverbial fish out of water, Frank manages a factory. A little girl not yet fourteen working there, is murdered. Accused and found guilty, innocent Frank is set to die. Prodded by Frank’s wife Lucille, a stunning performance by Micaela Diamond, the governor commutes his sentence, and that’s when the mob hits, completing their blood lust, as Frank says the “Shma,” (Hear O Israel, the Lord is One) prayer to God, questioning what purpose this death serves HIM. Very Job-like—it’s a heartbreak.

Guild Hall Celebrates Peter Marino: Renaissance Man

“I hate it,” architect Peter Marino exclaimed surprising even himself, as he noted Gotham Hall, a cavernous former bank on Broadway, decorated for the 350 guests arriving for a tribute to him, and to art collectors Tom Roush and LaVon Kellner. This was Guild Hall’s winter gala, celebrating too the venerated East Hampton art institution’s emergence from a long renovation. Can it be that Peter Marino, clad in his hard-to-miss signature head-to-toe leathers and silver rings, all his own designs, is oddly demure? A video featured his many achievements and talents: architect, painter, sculptor, potter, gardener, collector with an impeccable eye. It finally took the Israeli artist Michal Rovner, a longtime friend, to underscore his bold innovations with a telling anecdote: In Tokyo, at the opening of a Chanel store he designed, he found the perfect use for the building’s façade, projecting her art on it.

This was not a boast. An internationally renowned multimedia artist, Rovner will be featured at Peter Marino’s art foundation housed in Southampton, as part of a series, “Brunches with Bob,” the Bob being writer Bob Colacello who was part of Marino’s entourage, with his daughter Isabelle Trapnell Marino, who, despite her valuable input quips, she’s the “Vanna White” of the conversation series. The culture-packed room also included Michael Halsband, just back from his opening of his iconic sparring Basquiat/ Warhol photos at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, April Gornik, Blythe Danner, Lisa Perry, Iris Smyles, Alice Aycock, and many more to honor their East End neighbors, Tom Roush and LaVon Kellner. A retired doctor, he used to treat many artists when they occupied lofts in Soho, before they became big names.

Chantilly Bridge: Director Linda Yellen Makes her own Boyhood

If The Golden Girls weren’t a sitcom, or if The Big Chill was an all-women cast, it might look like Linda Yellen’s new movie Chantilly Bridge, a bringing together of old friends for a reunion. A thirty-year jump from Yellen’s movie Chantilly Lace, “Bridge” features the same actresses, all with big careers: JoBeth Williams, Jill Eikenberry, Lindsay Crouse, Helen Slater, Talia Shire, Patricia Richardson and Ally Sheedy. We haven’t seen them in a long time because in film life as in real life, older women are simply not seen. To the point, their lives matter.

Chantilly Bridge opens with a quote about the function of bridges to connect the living with those departed. The characters come together to hug, mourn, remember, console, and deal with the matters that death brings—disposal of ashes, dispensing of “things,” discussion of lives lived, the demands of friendship, and of aging. There’s hardly a guy in the whole film.