Gossip Central

Hamlet: Farsi Not a Prerequisite

Few sights are as chilling as the ghost of Hamlet, Sr. in silhouette moving slowly through the arabesque in Waterwell’s excellent production of Hamlet at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture. Wearing a tall hat befitting an Arab prince, this figure has presence and authority, a Hyperion among satyrs, to riff on his son’s description, especially as compared to Claudius, the king’s brother who, looking a bit like the town tailor, rendered him a specter by pouring poison in his ear. Hamlet’s burden is to avenge his father’s murder. No spoiler here. Almost everyone is familiar with the plot of Shakespeare’s play; however, in language spiced with Farsi, the creative team – particularly, the star Arian Moayed who adapted this play and director Tom Ridgely-- mixes themes of identity and geography with the familiar Freudian spin. Set in pre-WWI Persia, the play’s political leap into modernity, its cycles of violence, progress and reactionary force, parallel Persia becoming Iran.

Bernadette Peters Goes to the Library: The New York Public Library Spring Dinner

Among the many joys of this year’s New York Public Library Spring Dinner held in the Celeste Bartos Auditorium of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the spacious hall where Salman Rushdie, while still in hiding, gave a reading and talk, and where French intellectual Bernard Henri Levy beseeched some brave woman to have sex with GW Bush to encourage his impeachment, if that’s all it would take, was a performance by Bernadette Peters of “There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame” from South Pacific, and “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods, that Stephen Sondheim classic. Peters revealed: though she comes from Queens, N. Y., the first time she came to this, the NYPL’s gorgeous central branch, was for the recent opening of another Sondheim revival, Sunday in the Park with George.

Antonia Bennett’s Sings Songs of Love at Café Carlyle

Touring with her father Tony Bennett since she was a little girl, Antonia Bennett learned a thing or two about performing. For her impressive debut at the Café Carlyle, she sings classics from the American songbook backed by a first rate jazz band, with Spike Wilner on piano, especially good on a jazzy “Tea for Two,” Paul Nowinsky on bass, and Anthony Pinciotti on drums. A demure redhead with a lovely voice, Antonia Bennett introduced George Gershwin’s  “Nice Work If You Can Get It:” “I love to sing this as a love song, but it’s about prostitutes.” The audience ate it up. Tony Bennett and his wife Susan, seated near the stage in this intimate room, cheered his daughter on. He had tweeted, he loved May anticipating Antonia’s special Café Carlyle run.

A Carolina Herrera Fashion Show at the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation Annual Luncheon

As noted in the past: It is a truth widely held, that ladies who lunch are wont to shop. And so a fashion show to benefit the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation has become an annual luncheon event. The options for lavish spending were displayed at Andrea Stark’s penthouse apartment last Wednesday, featuring models wearing Carolina Herrera’s dresses currently available in her Madison Avenue boutique. While the designer was not present, her right hand man Rudy was, with Emily Rubenfeld, president of Carolina Herrera. For guilt free spending, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation benefits from a portion of the sales. The doctor’s wife Marion was particularly pleased with this effort in helping the foundation grow in its efforts to fund researchers worldwide. And William T. Sullivan, the newly appointed Executive Director, assured everyone, the doctor, a consummate practitioner, was where he’s needed most, working.

Kate Hamill as Becky Sharp: Vanity Fair’s Scheming Non-Feminist

The Bedlam Theater’s production of Vanity Fair at the Pearl Theater is a romp celebrating life’s vagaries, the ups and downs of fortune’s wheel. Kate Hamill is its mastermind, manipulating William Makepeace Thackeray’s words as playwright, and everyone else as Vanity Fair’s star Becky Sharp, down on her luck child who makes it big in marriage and money, only to lose it all again. As she did so brilliantly last year with her adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Hamill injects the right amount of wink-wink at the audience through pauses when the cast breaks into contemporary dance. And then these able performers return to their intertwining plots of who weds whom and to what degree of betrayal and misery. Class and money make the man. It’s all too funny!

Dr. Jill Biden Speaks at GLSEN Respect Awards

A young woman greeted me on the first day of class, looking at me hard to see if I could place her. Indeed, I had seen her before, in another class two years prior, as a young man. Not only do I remember you, but I remember your writing, I said, happy to have this student return to take my course in creative nonfiction. And through several months, writings that revealed her journey, the physical and emotional aspects of her transition, emerged, not only creating a body of fresh work for her, but that made it okay for others to express what may not have come out otherwise—i.e. a woman who loved women balancing who she is with her Catholicism and strict Spanish family. In each of these cases, and others, I felt proud that The School of Visual Arts where I have taught for four decades was safe and nurturing, with supportive faculty. This is New York City, after all. And I wondered how others in America fared, where in every state, no one can stop same sex couples from marrying, and where basic LBGTQ rights are now rolled back under the present regime. I attended the GLSEN Awards, held at Cipriani 42 Street, and found out.

Mommy Dead and Dearest: Matricide in the Heartland

Gypsy Rose Blanchard is now serving a ten-year sentence in prison for conspiring to kill her mother Dee Dee, knifed to death in June 2015 in Springfield, Mo. by Nicholas Godejohn, a boyfriend Gypsy met on the Internet. He will be tried this week, while Gypsy seems twice imprisoned. As Erin Lee Carr’s documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest, to air tonight on HBO tells Gypsy’s story: from the time she was an infant her mother claimed she was sick. The list of illnesses seems impossible to fathom for one person alone, including cancer, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and mental retardation. Wheel chair bound, her head shaven, Gypsy depended on Dee Dee for everything, and they were inseparable, traveling on a donated trip to Disneyland, living in a free house, a single mom taking advantage of the misfortunes of a child with extreme medical issues. Interviews with doctors, lawyers, sheriffs, and family help to unravel the truth of this tawdry tale, with the added twist of some kinky texts between the young lovers prior to the murder. Even the sight of Dee Dee in bed, in a blood-smeared gown, does not arouse a whit of sympathy.

Robert De Niro Can Do Anything: HBO’s The Wizard of Lies Premieres at MoMA

Honoring Robert De Niro at this year’s Chaplin Award Celebration at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Monday, actor after actor acknowledged that he could do anything, referring to drama, comedy, and other film genres. Could Robert De Niro top an already amazing career? By Thursday, another brilliant performance premiered at MoMA: As Bernie Madoff in the HBO movie, The Wizard of Lies, he is the consummate con artist.

Rama Burshtein Makes a Match: The Wedding Plan

As she accomplished in her stunning debut film Fill the Void, Rama Burshtein’s The Wedding Plan takes the viewer into the marriage practices of a hermetic society, offering an intimate, if fictional view, of how matches are made in Israel’s Haredi community. Yes there are matchmakers at work in The Wedding Plan, but its comedic conceit is that the optimistic, intuitive, and outrageous protagonist, Michal (Noa Koler) attempts to make the match herself, giving herself three weeks till the last day of Chanukah to find her groom.

Who should marry whom is an appealing subject for any culture—witness the popularity of all things Jane Austen. The American born writer/director turned deeply religious presents this world without irony, or any filter by which to judge it. I caught up with Rama Burshtein at Locande Verde in the tumult of an Israeli delegation of filmmakers celebrating Israel’s vibrant film industry, part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Chita Rivera at the Café Carlyle: Putting on her Vamp

Broadway musical legend Chita Rivera takes the narrow strip of stage at the Café Carlyle, maneuvering her sequined body strategically so she won’t end up in your vodka tonic. Nobody moves like Chita Rivera. The consummate showwoman, she gives a great, not to be missed night, starting with “A Lot of Living to Do.” For her West Side Story medley, in honor of its 60^th anniversary, she tells of Leonard Bernstein teaching her the role of Anita, and sings “A Boy Like That,” and “America.” With stories galore, and memories of performers who inspired her, such as Rosemary Clooney from whom she learned she could just stand there and sing, and then of course defying that she shimmies through “Sweet Happy Life,” advising, “It’s great when your spirit and body get together.” When she sings “Where Am I Going?” from Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ Sweet Charity, you feel grateful to have her right here, coquettish as three hookers, “Camille, Collette, Fifi” and wistful singing the ups and downs of Jacques Brel’s “Carousel.”