Gossip Central

Salman Rushdie in Public

In one of the great Curb Your Enthusiasm vignettes, Larry David wanted to make a musical called “Fatwa,” the word itself giggle-worthy. But the fatwa on Salman Rushdie was no joke. Last week a lone, determined man got past light security at Chautauqua, a famous writers conference and knifed the author of Midnight’s Children and an Islam-offending novel called The Satanic Verses. As the story goes, without having ever read the book, the Ayatollah declared a bounty on Rushdie who had imagined mortal qualities in the prophet Mohammed. A translator was murdered in the ensuing outrage. 

Meanwhile, Rushdie had been in hiding in safe houses in England and the States for decades. In the 1980’s, someone sent the book to the American writer Paul Bowles who resided in Tangier, and worried about his expatriate status there if the authorities found out he possessed such a book. One year a hushed event brought the writer to the New York Public Library’s main branch for a PEN forum, an affirmation of freedom of expression; many celebrated Rushdie and the daring it took to pull this off. Needless to say, security was tight. And over time, Salman Rushdie let his guard down.

Cyndi Lauper in the Hamptons: Girls Just Want to Have Great Reproductive Health Care.

That was Cyndi Lauper’s message when she gave a rare charity performance at Northwell Health’s 4th annual Summer Hamptons Evening (SHE) which raised nearly one million dollars for the Katz Institute for Women’s Health. Playing only five songs, clad in a leopard print summer suit, the rocker/ activist proclaimed her disgust at watching “women’s civil rights stripped away. Safe access is for our health,” she affirmed launching into “She Bop,” “Time After Time,” “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “True Colors,” and a song that spoke to the moment, “Sally’s Pidgeons.” Bringing action to words, Lauper’s own charity, True Colors United, works to bring an end to homelessness among LGBTQ youth. This fall, she will launch a new foundation to bring OB-GYN care to women in need across the country. And still: a hit on Broadway with Kinky Boots, she is now composing for a new Working Girl musical, collaborating with playwright Theresa Rebeck. Her dedication is limitless, as is her heart.

The evening at Vicki Moran Furman’s stunning Watermill estate and emceed by Rosanna Scotto, featuring Drs. Tara Narula and Stacey Rosen speaking on the importance of heart health for women, was held in a poolside tent decorated in pink, a quintessential production by Lawrence Scott Events.

Ragtime at Bay Street Theater: Listen to Mother

The heart of the dazzling revival of Ragtime at Bay Street Theater is Mother, a character of enormous compassion. As played by Lora Lee Gayer, she’s a lovely presence who saves an abandoned black baby and his mother Sarah (Kyrie Courter), and navigates her well-to-do New Rochelle family through the vagaries and scandals of early 20^th century American life. Mother is part of an ensemble with talented actors performing the roles of Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman (Victoria Huston-Elem), Evelyn Nesbit (Cathryn Wake) and Booker T. Washington (Davon Williams), to name just a few of the famous personages populating E. L. Doctorow’s historic novel Ragtime, the musical’s epic source. Limning the current cultural territory of “Black Lives Matter,” the plight of the working class, and of newly arrived immigrants, Bay Street’s production seems especially fresh from beginning to teary-eyed end. Mother singing, “We Can Never Go Back to Before,” becomes an anthem for change-- in her marriage, and to the hopes and dreams of Americans—such as the play’s Coalhouse (Derrick Davis) seeking equality, justice, and democratic values. 

At Ragtime’s ebullient opening night, the audience leapt to their feet as the ensemble took their bows. Of course, it seemed to all that Ragtime’s intertwining stories were timeless, with love and compassion the only curing force. With music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, book by Terrence McNally, and under Will Pomerantz’ expert direction, Ragtime underscores—no pun intended: the power of a great night of theater holds its own curing magic.

Idris Elba Stars in Beast: An Old-Fashioned World Premiere at MoMA

No one will ever fall asleep at a screening of Beast, a new movie directed by Baltasar Kormakur and starring Idris Elba who goes mano a eh, mano with a rogue lion. Very Hemingway. Man against beast. He’s protecting his daughters in the wilds of Africa, a place that is at once beautiful with animals running free, and fraught with the dangers of poachers interfering with the natural law of the jungle. The Lion King this is not. 

You really can’t blame the lions—mangy, miserable creatures-- for being beasts after being hunted and raped, so to speak, by evil, greedy humans—certainly the film’s hands down villains. You might call this movie an adventure thriller with many of the trappings of a gasp-worthy horror story: a giant paw piercing the glass of a disabled jeep, a family cowering inside. A soundtrack that punctuates the suspenseful momentum. The family’s backstory creates a rich buffer for the formulaic genre. No beasts were hurt in the making of this movie. The fiercest among them were CGI.

Hamptons Journal: Longhouse’s Artistic Legacy as the East End Expands as a Destination for Fine Art

Wood stitched with wire does not sound like an ideal way to structure an outdoor shed, but that’s what Steven Ladd and his brother William Ladd used to create one of the masterful works showcased at this year’s Longhouse Benefit. As Steven guided visitors through this piece, open on both ends, he explained how he learned to sew using his grandmother’s sewing machine, and in fact, the upstate New York resident wore slacks and a shirt that he had made himself. It defied the imagination to think how that textile practice might be translated to their sculpture titled “Right Here, Right Now.” Similarly, Taiwanese artist Cheng Tsung Feng invited celebrants into an airy bamboo pavilion, “Fish Trap VI.” The spirit of Longhouse founder Jack Lenor Larsen could be felt in these works on this annual occasion with Robert Wilson, Nathan Lane, Alice Aycock, and many others celebrating his legacy at the best art party of the summer.

Newer art venues in Montauk flourish: The Ranch, the site of the famed Deep Hollow Ranch, where for years a summer concert would bring hoards to the East End, to be seated on haystacks and hear, for example, Paul Simon one year, The Eagles the next, and James Brown. Repurposed barns featured Frank Stella’s sculpture at the early part of summer. His larger pieces were spread out on the immense, now grassy field. Currently, in The West Barn, hangs, Jo Messer’s “Whale Tail,” a presentation of nine new paintings of women emphasizing limbs and gesture in incongruous position saturated in monochromatic palettes. The exhibition title comes from “a resurgent trend of hiking a g-string thong above the waistline as overt provocation.” Yes, provoke it does.

Stirring the Pot: Mixing It Up for 2022

 

Not so long ago from a kitchen set made on the stage of the John Drew Theater, New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant asked chef Anthony Bourdain what he likes to cook most at leisure with family and friends. “Flipping burgers in my backyard,” he replied, a good answer in a room full of Hamptonites accustomed to the informal dining associated with East End life. This episode of Stirring the Pot, Fabricant’s yearly series at Guild Hall came during a period when the famous culinary adventurer had logged a gazillion frequent flyer miles for his famous CNN Parts Unknown program. Having sampled a wide array of the world’s most exotic cuisine, he responded simply, a great punchline to a great interview, and with a sense of fullness, an audience got up satisfied as if following a great meal.

Similarly, interviews with other celebrity foodies were a fixture of the Guild Hall summer season: Marcus Samuelson, Jacques Pepin, Mario Batali, Carla Hall, Sam Sifton, and Eric Ripert, --Bourdain’s buddy who will return offering a demo in preparing ratatouille-- were a highpoint of Sunday mornings in August, but this year as Guild Hall undergoes its renovation, he will be cooking eggplant and veggies at Hayground School.

Marilyn Maye at Bay Street Theater: Ageless

Quip for quip, tune for tune, Marilyn Maye does not miss a beat. People will remember this one-night only performance at Bay Street Theater for a long time—this chanteuse, a queen of cabaret, elegant in her mid-90’s in a blond bouffant, and black sequined ensemble with bling at her wrist and throat, sang Cole Porter followed by Johnny Mercer with a bit of Sondheim –songs we all know and love: “I Get No Kick (from Champagne) . . .” flows into “I Concentrate on You” . . . goes to “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “Don’t Nobody Bring Me Bad News” before she launches into a story of staying in bed during the pandemic period when her date with Bay Street was, like everything else, cancelled. She watched old movies and ate gummy bears, she claimed, baiting the crowd. Not those, she gave a sly look, wait, maybe I should try those. Of course, everything she says comes with a jolt: she is 94 after all.

Hamptons Happening: Samuel Waxman Benefit Repairing the World

“How many people here have been touched by cancer?” asked CBS’s Chris Wragge. Hands shot up. In its 18^th year, Hamptons Happening celebrated the simple joys of being alive with the recognition of how, as Dr. Samuel Waxman put it, “Cancer is a disease of aging.” Still, it was a happy moment to know this truism in a beautifully appointed Bridgehampton tent with glamorously dressed Hamptonites some of whom were wearing high heels as they tread across the grass, the property of the Fishel family donated for the annual Samuel Waxman’s Cancer Research Foundation Benefit. 

One of this year’s honorees for “Distinguished Business Leader,” Bess Freedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, took the message one step farther reminding everyone of Tikkun Olam, a Hebrew expression that translates to everyone’s obligation to repair the world, to make it better than it was when we arrived. This message resonates for more than health.

Anna in the Tropics at Bay Street Theater: On the Virtues of Adultery

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy knew something about women’s discontent in marriage. One of his greatest creations, the character Anna Karenina in his classic novel of that name, fuels the animus felt in the family in Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Anna in the Tropics, now in production at Bay Street Theater. Set in 1920’s Tampa, Florida, the drama involves a Cuban-American family working in their cigar production factory. When a new “lector” arrives, a handsome young man who reads literature to the workers as they pull and wind the tobacco into smokable cylinders, his reading of Anna Karenina, all 1000 pages, makes a big impression—on both the women and the men. A huge turn-on becomes tragic.

As the play’s characters come under the spell of romance, Anna’s love for Vronsky in the Russian work, they examine their own marriages. Under Marcos Santana’s direction, the ensemble plays this conceit with few laughs, taking seriously the power of art to transfix. In the play, Christian Barillas is CheChe, who cannot get over his wife’s having left him with a “lector.” The reader becomes a catalyst for magic, as Moscow in the snow appears in the tropical windows while he reads. The character of Paloma, husband to Chiquita, one of the sisters working in the family business, does grow and change as a result of this literature. I caught up with the actor Guillermo Ivan who plays this husband, whose jealousy transforms him into a husband who listens, caring for his wife’s needs. On opening night, Ivan said he is now reading Anna Karenina—all of it. 

James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni: Lesson in Survival: 1971 at the Vineyard Theater

A young poet, Nikki Giovanni interviewed an elder statesman of letters, James Baldwin, on television in 1971. Enacted, voiced onstage at the Vineyard Theater, Lessons in Survival: 1971, joins a series of plays produced at this downtown venue that makes use of actual words uttered in real life situations to create a theatrical experience: Tina Slatter’s Is This a Room and Lucas Hnath’s Dana H. Deirdre O’Connell won the Best Actress in a Play Tony Award for her performance, after the work transitioned to Broadway. Bringing true words to theater turns out to infuse otherwise merely remarkable events with even greater power. 

Calling Baldwin (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) Jimmy, suggesting an informality that seems unimaginable today for such an austere figure, Giovanni (Crystal Dickinson) first wants to know why he expatriated to Paris for much of his writing life. To anyone’s ears, then and now, the loaded question would trigger a discussion of the largest subject in American history, the subject of slavery, and though 1971 was well after the emancipation of African Americans, the untoward legacy is foremost still in today’s reckoning for both blacks and whites.