Gossip Central

Ann Roth Honored at NYWFT’s Designing Women

Even though she loves awards, Meryl Streep did not show up to introduce Ann Roth at last night’s New York Women in Film & Television’s Designing Women evening, where the legendary costume designer was being honored for lifetime achievement. At a Roth tribute at the Hamptons Film Festival in 2013, the actress who had been dressed as Julia Child by Roth, as well as Donna in Mamma Mia!, not to mention many other characters, flew in from the Midwest set of August: Osage County for the occasion. Not this time. The multi-Academy Award winning actress sent a message to the presenter, Roth’s daughter, Hannah Sorkin, noting “I love her unequivocally” and “I cannot imagine what it would be like to have Ann Roth as a mother.”

Nice Girl at the Labyrinth Theater

You can tell the play Nice Girl at the Labyrinth Theater is set in the ‘80’s because when a woman in a housedress enters the living room and flicks on the set, the television has Jane Pauley on the Today Show. Her daughter, Jo, follows, to make breakfast for her mother before going off to work. Jo (Diane Davis) is a nice girl, a term that could translate to good girl: she’s quit her scholarship to Radcliffe after her father’s death to take care of this mother (Kathryn Kates), and she’s a bit of a frump with no social aspirations. At her humdrum secretarial job she takes a lunch break with Sherry (Liv Rooth), the kind of girl you knew in high school, who always pushed you beyond your comfort zone. Big haired, made up, and loud, Sherry is devastated by a recent breakup. The guy she hoped to make a life with just told her he was married. Not as trampy as she looks, like Jo, she wants a better life than she thinks she deserves. “Everyone should fall in love,” she says, “It’s like voting. A right.” You can see Jo’s reluctance, but she and Sherry resolve to go out to some bars.

Permission: Spanking for Jesus at the Lucille Lortel Theater

Whatever special kinks spice up your sex life, the particular coupling of spanking and faith in Robert Askins’ play, Permission, will having you laughing, and googling Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD) at intermission. Who knew this was a real life church sanctioned practice? In its world premiere at the Lucille Lortel Theater, under the direction of Alex Timbers, the MCC production of Permission, penned by the Hand to God playwright, relies on the conceit that marital bliss can be found if the husband assumes authority in marriage by acting like a man, that is, disciplining his wife with a firm hand (or belt) on the butt.

Composer Elliot Goldenthal: American Ballet Theater’s Othello and Grounded at the Public Theater

This week’s opening of the American Ballet Theater’s Othello at the Metropolitan Opera House, a spectacular version of Shakespeare’s tragedy about the warrior king who succumbs to the manipulations of an ensign, and murders the love of his life, marks ABT’s commitment to newer works. As part of its 75^th anniversary ABT had been showing the early works of George Balanchine, Agnes DeMille, Jerome Robbins, among others, but with this Othello, first produced in 1997, with Lar Lubovitch’s choreography and Elliot Goldenthal’s music, the ballet in 3 acts verges more toward opera than to traditional ballet. And with Julie Kent, Marcelo Gomes, and Misty Copeland, ballet superstars, the work was thrilling. For the Academy Award winning composer, this is a highpoint in a stellar career scoring movies, and other works in many genres. Most recently, he created sound for Grounded, a one-woman show starring Anne Hathaway, and directed by Julie Taymor at the Public Theater. I had the opportunity to talk to Elliot Goldenthal prior to this opening, about his work on Othello and Grounded, his Symphony in G Minor, the upcoming film release of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the career honors he is about to be awarded in Poland. 

Megan Hilty: “Popular” at the Café Carlyle

On night two of her two-week not to be missed run, the Café Carlyle was packed with fans for Megan Hilty. Surveying the scene, Hilty spotted a girl front and center, and asked her what her favorite Broadway show was, hoping she would say Wicked. A debut for Hilty back in the day when she was an understudy, after the incomparable Kristin Chenowith left, Wicked launched Hilty, as it did Idina Menzel with whom she performed. Hilty went into her rendition of “Popular,” a hit from the show. Then again, all sentimental about little girls --Hilty and her guitarist husband Brian Gallagher just had one, naming her Viola Philomena-- the chance to sing a song for a little girl was clearly irresistible.

Mad Men: Don Draper’s America

Now that Mad Men has reached its endpoint, with critics dissecting its meaning and import, not to mention its influence and destiny during awards season, it is time to further point out its antecedents in literature. In a penultimate episode, the viewer could contemplate Don Draper’s demise by dropping from the windows of McCann-Erickson, as he took a look out and measured the window’s width, eying the vista sadly. The viewer could only conclude he would make this fatal jump. But in the finale, he’s seated in lotus position on a cliff at Esalin, chanting. The end of all his bad boy behavior, identity crises, marital troubles, ambivalence about the world, he’s on the West Coast far away from the business of advertising and family. Learning from Sally that Betty is soon to die of lung cancer, he is asked to stay away, finding out You Can’t Go Home Again, in the words of Thomas Wolfe, an American author of the early 20^th century who died at age 33 after completing only four novels. Of course that’s a lesson he’s learned again and again through seven seasons.

At Lunch with Melissa Rivers: “This Too Shall Pass”

Melissa Rivers was a perfect fit as honored guest at the annual Mamarazzi luncheon, hosted by The MOMS, Denise Albert and Melissa Musen Gerstein’s mother advocacy lifestyle brand. Not only one of the most famous of daughters, a mom herself, Melissa Rivers has a book out, The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation. While Joan Rivers died unexpectedly, as we all know, a consequence of  botched throat surgery, she still left her daughter clear instructions on what should happen should she die, and the reassurance that Melissa would get everything. That seems to include her mother’s hairdresser for the last ten years, Raymond Rosario, who deftly patted down Melissa’s sleek do, curling a stray strand, as she arrived at Juniper Bar, a chic Garment Center bistro.

Chita Rivera in The Visit: A Parable of Europe’s Lost Soul

As Claire Zachanassian, the richest woman in the world Chita Rivera makes an outrageous demand in Friedrich Durrenmatt’s 1956 “The Visit.” Now a show at the Lyceum Theater, with Terrence McNally’s book, John Kander and Fred Ebb’s music, and choreography by Graciela Daniele, whether or not The Visit wins its Best Musical Tony, the show is one of best on Broadway, a deeply satisfying 90 minute parable with historic dimension.

Blythe Danner and Sam Elliott: Hot in I’ll See You in my Dreams

Blythe Danner is a sublime and funny actress, as we’ve seen in the Meet the Focker comedies, and decades of movies and stage plays. In I’ll See You in my Dreams, she’s the femme fatale of the geriatric set, sure to make you rethink 70. Vibrant, with it, her character Carol sings karaoke, plays golf, and is appropriately terrified of rats. She’s lonely, but not desperate, and perfect for a smooth guy named Bill who she begins to date. The actor Sam Elliott, with a miraculous shock of white hair, gives this mysterious stranger his joie de vivre. He’s attentive to Carol and knows what he wants. Not only that, he takes her into the water in his cabin cruiser for moonlight dinner. When he near proposes, to get his feet wet, he says, she says, get out of that water, stunned but not disinterested. He’s a good catch and they have chemistry.

Adapting Wolf Hall: Mike Poulton Talks at the Morgan Library/ Contretemps at the PEN Gala

Playwright Mike Poulton spoke to a British contingent at the Morgan Library last week about adapting Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall, for the stage. Tony-nominated Wolf Hall, parts I and II, about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, his wives and politics, is now wowing audiences at the Winter Garden Theater. Poulton said he usually works on material when the author is dead. This time, he made an exception when he met Mantel, and they collaborated well together. Ah, a harmonious moment for writers!