Gossip Central

Wayne Shorter at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center

Greeted by a standing ovation, Wayne Shorter and the band he’s been playing with since 2000 took the stage on Friday night for the first of two sold out concerts at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center: Brian Blade on drums, John Patitucci on bass, Danilo Perez on piano, with Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophone. For the next hour and forty minutes the quartet performed a set evocative of familiar material from this legendary composer, some phrases from Footprints, but not quite. Accumulated and contextualized by what went before, the music was intellectually rigorous. At first the listener had to grasp the abstraction of the composition, how an element of surprise is found in this structure. I actually had the feeling that the music had no center, just fanciful engaging riffs. As John Patitucci performed, draped over his bass, he became the center, and so on. Then Blade on his snare and Perez on piano would pick up a thread. Not until an encore when the group played a variation of Joy Ryder, did each instrument talk tightly to the next.

Two by Tennessee: Streetcar Named Desire at the Broadhurst and In Masks Outrageous and Austere at Culture Project

Rumor has it, Tennessee Williams used to sit in the back of the theater for performances of his Streetcar Named Desire, and laugh hysterically when in the end, Blanche would be escorted out on the arm of a doctor en route to the insane asylum. Following his lead, two Tennessee Williams plays in town, the revival of Streetcar at the Broadhurst on Broadway, and the world premiere of his last experimental work, In Masks Outrageous and Austere at Culture Project, may cause a laugh riot.

Clybourne Park on Broadway: There Goes the Neighborhood

Now on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theater after a stunning debut two years ago, Bruce Norris biting Pulitzer Prize winning drama Clybourne Park begins in 1959 with a couple leaving their Chicago home after many years. Under Pam MacKinnon’s expert direction, Russ (Frank Wood) sits in a lounger eating Neapolitan; his wife Bev (Christina Kirk) debates the geographic origin of this ice cream’s name, an agreeable three-tier assemblage of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. The colors, while distinct white, brown, and pink, work well together. This savvy play, about race and our unease with the matter, suggests we might do the same, live side by side, and illustrates how we don’t, neither in the midcentury nor today.

Steal the Chandeliers: John Oliver at the Museum of the Moving Image Dinner/ Christopher Hitchens Remembered at Cooper Union’s Great Hall

Well, The Daily Show funnyman John Oliver did not exactly recommend stealing the six rather heavy looking, grand crystal chandeliers at the St. Regis Hotel, but he did refer to them a few times, as emblematic of the posh surroundings at the same time that he advised the gown and tuxedo clad crowd to follow the British’s lead when it comes to stocking their museums. “Steal as much as you can. It works for us,” he joked. “Then you won’t have to have a benefit dinner.” Honoring Philippe Dauman, Chief Executive Officer of Viacom, Randy Falco, President and Chief Executive Officer of Univision Communications, and George Kaufman, Chairman of Kaufman Astoria Studios, Mayor Michael Bloomberg included this Museum of the Moving Image event in his rounds, pointing out that the city had 50 ½ million tourists last year: “We are the media capital of the world.” Perhaps keyed to the Queens-based museum’s recent exhibition of Jim Henson’s legacy, he said: I took Kermit to a Yankee game and offered to buy him popcorn. He’s a cheap date. The frog said, I’ll just go out in the field and catch some flies.

Peter and the Starcatcher’s Uptown Voyage

Perhaps the most inventively preposterous play ever to hit Broadway is the prequel to the Peter Pan story, Peter and the Starcatcher, at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. Opening on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, this fanciful lark features two ships at sea, two trunks, one filled with sand, the other, eh, you must believe, stardust. Animated by pirates, lost boys, sea captains, a mermaid chorus, a nanny, and a girl, the play adopts clever uses for kitchen gadgets: you will see your veggie steamer in a new light, not to mention your hand juicer. That is if you have a hand, which as you may recall is a problem for a certain pirate. Here, an accident becomes an opportunity for a gag. Says the pirate to Pan, “You have singlehandedly singlehanded me,” and so on for groan-and-guffaw-worthy one-liners.

Girls Just Wanna Have: HBO’s Girls and Mary Harron’s Moth Diaries

Grounded in a current day realism about sex, friendship, and work for recent college grads, HBO’s much touted series Girls, airs this weekend. To focus on one aspect of its satire, in Girls, sex is free and freely given, an unsatisfying service by the girls, done with bewildered cads, happy to get what they can. Is this hooking up the logical extension of what Erica Jong extolled in her landmark 1973 novel Fear of Flying: “the zipless fuck?” Freed, women should pull down their pants at whim the way men do, right? For women who grew up with these “joys of sex,” watching Hannah (Lena Dunham of Tiny Furniture fame who also writes and directs) and her twenty-something pals is an untoward vision of what many suspected back in the day, that liberation did not necessarily bring enlightenment. Viewers can watch Hannah’s guy (Adam Driver) enter her from behind, with not much going on for her.

The Best Man: Gore Vidal’s Patriot Act

While Republicans evaluate the electability of Mitt Romney vs. Rick Santorum, the revival of Gore Vidal’s witty 1960 play, The Best Man, comes to Broadway. At the Gerald Shoenfeld Theatre, dressed up as convention headquarters, this Cold War era take on how Americans nominate our presidential candidates, the man in gray, a mere shape behind a scrim gets the prize, but he does not necessarily win. Observers of the political discourse will be amused, and reminded that the platitudes, empty promises, manufactured scandals, and colorful personalities even in dismaying blandness have been with us for a long time. Only now, media has brought them to us faster.

Tracie Bennett: The Pot of Gold at Rainbow’s End

Do not miss Tracie Bennett as Judy Garland. The petite frame, boyish chestnut do, twitchy gesture, agile thrashing, lusty bravado, pouting tantrums, and powerhouse voice, Tracie Bennett has the “Over the Rainbow” girl down.

End of the Rainbow, coming to Broadway’s Belasco Theater upon the heels of Whitney Houston’s sad demise, illustrates with great verve and great music: the untoward journey of the famous can be glamorous and grim. Focused on Judy Garland’s last comeback in 1968, Peter Quilter’s play under Terry Johnson’s expert direction, features the star in a triangle with her fifth husband, a much younger Mickey Deans (Tom Pelphrey), and her adoring piano accompanist, Anthony (Michael Cumpsty), in many ways a stand-in for her legions of gay worshippers. This cast—with Jay Russell in a variety of roles-- is exceptional, as are the band and William Dudey’s sets, a suite at the London Ritz, and the Talk of the Town nightclub where at times Ritalin, liquor-feuled performances hit notes high and low. You would not be unhappy just listening to Bennett’s Garland on the American songbook: “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Just in Time,” “Smile,” “For Me and My Gal,” “The Man That Got Away.” She brings the house down with a heartbreaking “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and that’s aside from the Harold Arlen/ Yip Harburg classic by which all remember her most.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center Honors Catherine Deneuve

  
“I’m the only presenter who slept with Catherine Deneuve,” said Susan Sarandon in a tribute speech at Alice Tully Hall on Monday night when the French actress was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2012 Chaplin Award. The ensuing clip from The Hunger (1983) shows the iconic Deneuve kissing her co-star’s hardened nipples. That was one of the movies I had to be a certain age to see, said Chiara Mastroianni about her feted mom; in a moment of public sharing, she begged The Umbrellas of Cherbourg star never to sing; when Chiara was little, her mother’s importance grew when she saw her in a photo with Miss Piggy. The picture now hangs in Deneuve’s bathroom.