Gossip Central

Laura Benanti Off-Broadway at the Café Carlyle

With more than a wink, the poised Laura Benanti portrays herself as a child show tune nerd recounting highlights from her stellar career with comedic flair. You could say this Tony Award winner’s show at the Café Carlyle, Tales from Soprano Isle, glimpses her life backwards: songs from her recent hit musical, She Loves Me, to her very first Broadway role as Maria in The Sound of Music. And after introducing her accompanists, music director Todd Almond and bass player, Brian Ellingson, including the “drummer girl” she is carrying—yes, she was big with child under her red sheath (in case you didn’t notice), Benanti pays homage to her music teacher mom, to Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, and Tori Amos, with ample anecdotes, including a wild night of double vodkas with Patti Lupone.

Judith Light in Neil LaBute’s All the Ways to Say I Love You: WOW!

“What is the weight of a lie?” asks Judith Light in Neil LaBute’s dramatic monologue, All the Ways to Say I Love You, at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The question weighs in like The Merchant of Venice’s pound of flesh in this MCC theater production: it refers to an outsized guilt in this one woman tour de force. In her recent Broadway role in Therese Raquin, Light is the object of guilt, a mother betrayed for her money. Here the guilt is all hers, for a sexual dalliance with a palpable result, a secret that weighs in on her lean frame, that she divulges, but to whom?

Rebecca Hall in Christine: “If it bleeds, it leads”

Christine, Antonio Campos’ new movie from a script by Craig Shilowich may be the Room of the current season: an indie film that breaks out onto the main awards stage. A riveting portrait based on the disturbing, true story of Christine Chubbuck, a newsroom reporter in 1974 Sarasota, Florida, the movie stars Rebecca Hall in a career-defining role, with a superb supporting cast including Tracy Letts as newsroom boss, Michael C. Hall as a colleague, J. Smith-Cameron as Christine’s mother, and Hall’s real life partner Morgan Spector as her doctor. Alina Cho, who spent time on television before landing in publishing, hosted a recent screening, admitted that she benefitted from not knowing the movie’s climax, but for those who may remember the shocking headlines, I will cut to the chase: fed up with the newsroom imperative to find more and more shocking stories, and battling some mental illness, Christine took her life on air.

Remembering Edward Albee in Montauk

This weekend, just after Edward Albee’s death at 88, the Montauk Library displayed books of his prodigious work in theater: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Zoo Story, Three Tall Women, Seascape, A Delicate Balance, volumes of the collected plays, to name just a few. A longtime resident of Long Island’s East End, Albee had a house on Montauk’s old highway, and a foundation for artists in residence called the Art Barn. When he was in town, Albee collected the mail at the post office, and delivered it to his artists. A champion of many arts institutions, he attended charity dinners and contributed to local causes. Among the greatest of our American playwrights, a list that includes Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, Edward Albee was a link to a bygone Broadway theater world, beyond the purview of our current mall of Disney characters and tourist trade.

Command and Control: An Interview with Filmmakers Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser

Attention must be paid: our nuclear arsenal may present a clear and present danger. In a new documentary Command and Control, filmmakers Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser make a compelling case about a potential disaster that few are talking about, illustrated by the story of the Titan II near miss in 1980 in Damascus, Arkansas. But rather than incite fear, their documentary based on Eric Schlosser’s book, entertains like a thriller. I had a chance to talk to them about bombs, filmmaking, and activism last week, before their Film Forum opening.

Oliver Stone’s Snowden: Toronto Film Festival from Afar

On Friday night, Oliver Stone’s new movie, Snowden, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Early reviews were embargoed until then. But I can tell you, from the reaction of a tony crowd at a summer screening in East Hampton, let the award season begin with this movie. Peggy Siegal introduced Oliver Stone, providing a bit of the JFK director’s resume: the 3 time Oscar winner adapted the script for Midnight Express (1978), and won for Best Picture and Best Director for Platoon (1986). His second Best Director award came for Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Stone makes important films, and his new one addresses and challenges our ideas about national security, and whether or not Edward Snowden is a hero.

Spamilton: An American Parody at the Triad: Getting Off on Broadway

You don’t have to see Hamilton to have side-splitting fun at Spamilton. All that is required is that you love Broadway. In fact, a running gag in this 70-minute spoof goes: you are not snagging tickets to Hamilton, even if you are Bernadette Peters or Liza! Yes, when it comes to the democracy of Hamilton, getting in is an equal opportunity leveler. Spamilton, the offspring of Forbidden Broadway conceived by Gerard Alessandrini who also directed, plays with a central conceit: what Camelot was to the Kennedy’s, Hamilton is to the Obamas, fodder for pillow talk.

Clint Eastwood Triumphs with Sully: “No One Dies Today”

Clint Eastwood is a California man but his new movie Sully is a love letter to New York and the best of this city. Based on the true story we all know as the “Miracle on the Hudson,” Sully recounts the heroic actions of pilot Chesley Sullenberger, safely landing a failing United Airlines plane on the icy Hudson River, saving all 155 people on board. Coming upon the heels of the excellent American Sniper in the Eastwood oeuvre, Sully is one of Eastwood’s finest, as it emphasizes some wrinkles in the quick-to-declare-a-hero department when Sullenberger’s life saving action was challenged. What is the takeaway for a story we thought we knew? Forget the logic of simulators and false reenactments. Go for the human.

Aspects of Minimalism at Guild Hall: Dan Flavin’s Neons and More

For Guild Hall curator Christina Strassfield, a show on minimalism was a no brainer. Currently on view in two large galleries, stark works in sand colors, geometrics, in brown felt material, in bright neon, the exhibition displays art from the collection of Bridgehampton resident Leonard Ruggio, whose passion is minimalism, a midcentury movement that challenges our notions of the types of materials can be used in art, and in fact our traditional notions of beauty. Minimalism contrasts with the extravagant collages of the previous show featuring the photography of Peter Beard, and was historically a contrast to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, begging the question, is less more?

Rolling with Laughter at Bedlam ’s Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility provides the source for the hilarious, entertainment,Sense and Sensibility, in a sassy theatrical production at the Gym at Judson. The gossipy world of Austen’s 18^th century English shires is fraught with shrewd news of who will be engaged to whom, scandal aside, and most important, at what level of financial means with chatter funnier and wiser by far than any Kardashian take on their social scene.