Gossip Central

Burt’s Buzz and Elena: Documentary Premieres

Burt of Burt’s Bees, honey-bee pollen and beeswax skin care products sold in supermarkets and pharmacies all across American, really exists, and he even looks just like the illustration on the yellow packaging: a bearded Walt Whitman type with shades and hat. Amazing! As the documentary about him, Burt’s Buzz, reveals about the originator of this brand, an unambitious hippie who resides in Maine, Burt has little use for money, gadgets, internet, the trappings of modernity or contemporary life. He does, however, like land, the more forested, the better. Somehow, beguiled by a woman with designs named Roxanne Quimby, he founded a multi-billion dollar business, and now gets a small fraction of the proceeds. Oh well. Burt Shavitz attended this week’s Crosby Street Hotel premiere of Burt’s Buzz, directed by Jody Shapiro, with Isabella Rossellini as executive producer. After the screening, his golden retriever appeared on Skype and Burt got him to bark hello. I guess he does like some technology. The delighted crowd was treated to giftbags of Burt’s Bees summer sun products, not a moment too soon.

Andy Warhol/ Seeing Red at Guild Hall

One line gets a big laugh at Guild Hall’s production of Red, the play screenwriter John Logan wrote about the painter Mark Rothko: in his studio, superbly created on the John Drew Theater stage, Rothko (Victor Slezak) pontificates to his new assistant (Christian Scheider) about the empty soul of commercial art. In a hundred years, he says, no one will think the work of Andy Warhol of any importance. If the play is to be believed, Rothko was indeed a small-minded man, competitive with Jackson Pollock in abstract expressionism, deriding Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol, and others in the pop genre. The play’s occasion is a commission that will make him a lot of money, to create art for The Four Seasons, a new restaurant in Philip Johnson’s Seagram’s building. In fact, in its rotation of art, East Hampton’s Roy Nicholson’s work has graced the Four Seasons walls, to be replaced this past year by Robert Indiana’s. As directed by Stephen Hamilton, in Red, Rothko’s conflict about this commercial endeavor vs. his artistic integrity is high stakes, as is his generosity as a human being.

Pre-Tony’s Broadway Tasting: Stars in the Alley

Even before I got to Schubert Alley, a tad late of course, the sounds were rocking Broadway. Audiences were treated to a free sampling of numbers from the best of the best accompanied by a terrific orchestra, before the performers, dressed in street clothes departed for their respective shows, just in time to gear up for the matinees. Bryce Pinkham from A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder was the first voice I heard, just the welcome I needed. Nominated for Best Actor in a Musical, he’s up against his co-star Jefferson Mays; it’ll be a tough choice for voters. The show is frontrunner for Best Musical. The superb Les Miz revival features Nikki M. James as Eponine; her solo had the crowd in thrall, even those who were chowing down inside Junior’s.

LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman at The Classical Theater of Harlem

The subway may be an edgy experience on a good day, but the 1964 encounter between a black man and a swivel hipped white woman, at the center of LeRoi Jones’ allegory, Dutchman, may terrify today’s rush hour straphanger. As mounted by the consistently wonderful Classical Theater of Harlem in tandem with National Black Theater, this 50th anniversary production of Dutchman, is the most gripping 45 minutes in town.

Katie Couric and Laurie David Are Fed Up: You Are What You Eat

The skinny is this: See the documentary Fed Up for consciousness awareness regarding food. Katie Couric and Laurie David have joined forces with director Stephanie Soechtig to shine a light on the realities of the food industry’s sabotage of our health and safety. The simple idea that in our weight crazed country, people can be obese and undernourished at the same time, that labeling food is skewed so that representations of sugar content are hidden, that eating less and exercising more are not the key to weight reduction success, or to health, unless we pay very close attention to what we put in our mouths. Fed up yet?

Gloria Steinem: Reluctant Icon Honored at the New York Women’s Foundation Annual Breakfast

Introducing Gloria Steinem at this year’s New York Women’s Foundation breakfast to the 2,200 guests at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, Abigail Disney recounted the story of Steinem addressing the future “Masters of the Universe” at the all-boys Collegiate School. If you treat women with respect and kindness, and not as objects, you will get the best sex in your life, Disney repeated. And, think of your father. Think of the kind of father you would like to be, and how you can get there. In many ways the anecdote illustrates why Gloria Steinem matters. Yes, Steinem still has “IT,” an ageless beauty, but that is the least of her accomplishments, compared to the values she imparts and exemplifies. When asked to whom she will pass the torch, Steinem says, I’m keeping the torch, and using it to light
other torches. And in that packed room, she touched everyone.

Steve Tyrell’s Nod to “Beautiful” at the Café Carlyle

Now in his tenth year performing at the Café Carlyle,
Steve Tyrell started his set this week wondering why audiences rarely ask for songs by the songwriters’ names, only by the crooners who made them famous. And so began a show organized around a history of the American songwriter: “Taking a Chance on Love,” Vernon Duke’s tune with John LaTouche and Ted Fetter’s lyrics, Harry Woods’ “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Try a Little Tenderness” and “What a Little Moonlight Can Do.” He sang Isham Jones-Gus Kahn’s “It Had to be You,” and Sammy Cahn’s “It’s Magic,” spontaneously pointing his mike at a woman in the first row who gamely completed the refrain.

Belle: An Austenesque with a Racial Twist

The name of this utterly charming movie conjures images of
the Disney cartoon feature with a brunette cartoon star singing in the
library. Dido Belle, however, was a real life mixed race woman, smart
enough to have had a career in the law, but for 18th century England,
she went far. The talented Amma Asante’s movie is an Austenesque
comedy of manners, keenly involved with who shall marry whom, and
whose fortune is more plump than so and so’s social standing, but
here’s the delicious twist: Belle is desirably financially endowed,
but as a mulatto, and illegitimate, she is of dubious position.
Thoughtful and daring, she influences an important decision, changing
the course of British history.

Here Lies Love: Imelda Marcos Back at The Public Theater

Early on in this exuberant immersive dance extravaganza,
the young Imelda Marcos in a tattered frock sings of a time when she
had no shoes. Of course, when she rose from local beauty queen to be
The Philippines’ first lady, shoes became her trademark of excess,
only enhancing her epic myth. Now back at The Public Theater after a
several month hiatus, ever so slightly tweaked, the play about her,
David Byrne’s Here Lies Love retains the energy, superb acting,
singing and dancing of last year’s staging, and is the season’s
must-dance event.