Gossip Central

Danny Meyer Talks Tipping and the Economics of Shake Shack at Guild Hall

Refusing to call his many restaurants a vast empire, Danny Meyer in conversation with Florence Fabricant last Sunday at Guild Hall, referred to his Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Untitled at the Whitney, The Modern, Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard, Marta, Maialino, and the popular Shake Shacks, to name a few, as his collection. This talk was part of a series called “Stirring the Pot,” featuring famous chefs, in a program curated by The New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant for Guild Hall.

Natalie Portman: Evoking “Slavic Melancholy” in A Tale of Love and Darkness

Adapting Amos Oz’s best selling book, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Natalie Portman, who also directed and starred in this Hebrew language film, created a deeply moving poetic movie, resonant of the immigrant experience. Told from the point of view of a boy named Amos, the story is Amos Oz’ imagined story of his mother’s suicide at age 38, after a life of dislocation and disappointed dreams. Leaving Eastern Europe after everyone she ever knew was murdered, living in British occupied Palestine, a place of perpetual violence, daily life overcame Fania’s romantic dreams for the new land, even after marrying and having a son. And even after the State of Israel was declared by the UN. Oz thought he was telling a story that would be read by citizens in a tiny corner of Jerusalem, and was astonished that his book became a worldwide hit. The story resonated with Portman who was born in Israel to a family that had a parallel history of leaving the horrors of genocide.

East Hampton Library's Authors Night: Poets, Parties, Pretty in Pink

A fan of the foodie memoir, I was eager to find the book 32 Yolks at this year’s East Hampton Library's Authors Night. Needless to say, a formidable line had already formed in front of le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert, and his stack of books. Before asking for one for me, I decided to take a spin around the long tables to see authors poised to sell and sign; I browsed past presidential historian Douglas Brinkley and his book on FDR, Richard Zoglin, back with Hope in paperback, Vivian Gornick, a hero of mine at The Village Voice back in the day, past the throng around Gwyneth Paltrow, Dr. Ruth, Dick Cavett, and his lovely wife Martha Rogers seated half a tent away alphabetically.

My Fair Lady at Bay Street Theater: Eliza Finds “A Room Somewhere"

Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 Pygmalian and Gabriel Pascal’s 1938 film, the Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady gets a smart revival under Michael Arden’s expert direction at Bay Street Theater. You know the story: a lowly flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, morphs from guttersnipe to goddess aided by the elocution lessons of one Henry Higgins and his sideman Pickering, to familiar songbook classics. But even in the best fairy tales, transformations have consequences both good and bad, as we learn from this thoroughly entertaining chestnut.

Guild Hall’s Garden as Art Tour: Water Vistas

“You don’t need chemicals to have a great garden,” Edwina Von Gal, Garden as Art chair, addressed a clutch of visitors to the first stop on this year’s Guild Hall Garden as Art tour. As she did in years past, Von Gal emphasized Guild Hall’s commitment to environmental preservation, with a program focused on bringing key science to the beauty of nature.

Troilus and Cressida in the Park: Manly Men Make War Not Love

Projectile blood is just one spectacle in Shakespeare’s problem play, Troilus and Cressida, as staged at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, a fine Public Theater production directed by Daniel Sullivan. Written around the same time the bard penned his most famous tragedy Hamlet in 1602, T&C features warriors waging battle in the Trojan War, and as in Hamlet, the play asks the question, what makes a man? In Hamlet, after the hero’s death, Fortinbras, loosely translated as a French “strong in arms,” takes over. Might makes right, right? The more obscure T&C’s message is more muddled: Strong arms do not necessarily make for good men. The high body count is not worth the loss. And love, as in the kind young Troilus has for Cressida, does not elevate. In modern dress, and performed by an exceptional cast, including John Glover, Corey Stoll, John Douglas Thompson, Max Casella for his comic relief, and with a hunky Bill Heck as Hector and Andrew Burnap as his younger brother Troilus, this male ensemble shows men doing what men do.

Caroline Hirsch on the phone: Taking Comedy Seriously at Guild Hall

The name Carolines is synonymous with comedy. All year, Caroline Hirsch produces shows at her club Carolines on Broadway, several comedy festivals and some one-off shows such as her upcoming evening Carolines @ The Beach at Guild Hall on August 5. On a recent Friday, I caught up with Caroline by phone, en route to her home in Watermill. She stops at Exit 70 for phone meetings, at a parking lot where this doyenne of laughs knows there’s a good signal.

Hamptons Journal: Robert Wilson: Art with Edge at the Watermill Center / Adrian Nivola at The Drawing Room

Against a wall proclaiming “Make America Great Again” in blood red, an electric chair did not seem out of place. Not for nothing was the Watermill Center’s annual gala called “Fada: House of Madness.” Created by Pussy Riot, the work augured the ironies of installations throughout Robert Wilson’s foundation’s ample grounds. Even though rain threatened the evening’s anarchy, bronze angels spouted eerie wisdom and monitors flickered in the woods.

Leona Lewis in Cats: Welcome Back to the Junkyard

Comparisons to the original long-running 1982 musical, Cats, will be inevitable, but even if you have never seen Cats before, as I have not, the revival of Cats at the Neil Simon Theater is simply splendid. I remember when it opened back in the day and so many viewers pondered, what’s the story? Just cats in radiant display, all kinds, cavorting on John Napier’s brilliant set, back alley debris in relief, and ensemble showstoppers and ballads, now part of the canonical Broadway songbook. But Andrew Lloyd Webber, who incidentally has three plays on Broadway—(Phantom of the Opera and School of Rock) as I write, with Trevor Nunn, who directed, managed to fashion a completely moving show from songs based on T. S. Eliot’s 1939 Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, creating a poet’s layered vision of mortality, transcendent and glorious.