Gossip Central

Stirring the Pot: Mixing It Up for 2022

 

Not so long ago from a kitchen set made on the stage of the John Drew Theater, New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant asked chef Anthony Bourdain what he likes to cook most at leisure with family and friends. “Flipping burgers in my backyard,” he replied, a good answer in a room full of Hamptonites accustomed to the informal dining associated with East End life. This episode of Stirring the Pot, Fabricant’s yearly series at Guild Hall came during a period when the famous culinary adventurer had logged a gazillion frequent flyer miles for his famous CNN Parts Unknown program. Having sampled a wide array of the world’s most exotic cuisine, he responded simply, a great punchline to a great interview, and with a sense of fullness, an audience got up satisfied as if following a great meal.

Similarly, interviews with other celebrity foodies were a fixture of the Guild Hall summer season: Marcus Samuelson, Jacques Pepin, Mario Batali, Carla Hall, Sam Sifton, and Eric Ripert, --Bourdain’s buddy who will return offering a demo in preparing ratatouille-- were a highpoint of Sunday mornings in August, but this year as Guild Hall undergoes its renovation, he will be cooking eggplant and veggies at Hayground School.

Marilyn Maye at Bay Street Theater: Ageless

Quip for quip, tune for tune, Marilyn Maye does not miss a beat. People will remember this one-night only performance at Bay Street Theater for a long time—this chanteuse, a queen of cabaret, elegant in her mid-90’s in a blond bouffant, and black sequined ensemble with bling at her wrist and throat, sang Cole Porter followed by Johnny Mercer with a bit of Sondheim –songs we all know and love: “I Get No Kick (from Champagne) . . .” flows into “I Concentrate on You” . . . goes to “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “Don’t Nobody Bring Me Bad News” before she launches into a story of staying in bed during the pandemic period when her date with Bay Street was, like everything else, cancelled. She watched old movies and ate gummy bears, she claimed, baiting the crowd. Not those, she gave a sly look, wait, maybe I should try those. Of course, everything she says comes with a jolt: she is 94 after all.

Hamptons Happening: Samuel Waxman Benefit Repairing the World

“How many people here have been touched by cancer?” asked CBS’s Chris Wragge. Hands shot up. In its 18^th year, Hamptons Happening celebrated the simple joys of being alive with the recognition of how, as Dr. Samuel Waxman put it, “Cancer is a disease of aging.” Still, it was a happy moment to know this truism in a beautifully appointed Bridgehampton tent with glamorously dressed Hamptonites some of whom were wearing high heels as they tread across the grass, the property of the Fishel family donated for the annual Samuel Waxman’s Cancer Research Foundation Benefit. 

One of this year’s honorees for “Distinguished Business Leader,” Bess Freedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens, took the message one step farther reminding everyone of Tikkun Olam, a Hebrew expression that translates to everyone’s obligation to repair the world, to make it better than it was when we arrived. This message resonates for more than health.

Anna in the Tropics at Bay Street Theater: On the Virtues of Adultery

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy knew something about women’s discontent in marriage. One of his greatest creations, the character Anna Karenina in his classic novel of that name, fuels the animus felt in the family in Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning play, Anna in the Tropics, now in production at Bay Street Theater. Set in 1920’s Tampa, Florida, the drama involves a Cuban-American family working in their cigar production factory. When a new “lector” arrives, a handsome young man who reads literature to the workers as they pull and wind the tobacco into smokable cylinders, his reading of Anna Karenina, all 1000 pages, makes a big impression—on both the women and the men. A huge turn-on becomes tragic.

As the play’s characters come under the spell of romance, Anna’s love for Vronsky in the Russian work, they examine their own marriages. Under Marcos Santana’s direction, the ensemble plays this conceit with few laughs, taking seriously the power of art to transfix. In the play, Christian Barillas is CheChe, who cannot get over his wife’s having left him with a “lector.” The reader becomes a catalyst for magic, as Moscow in the snow appears in the tropical windows while he reads. The character of Paloma, husband to Chiquita, one of the sisters working in the family business, does grow and change as a result of this literature. I caught up with the actor Guillermo Ivan who plays this husband, whose jealousy transforms him into a husband who listens, caring for his wife’s needs. On opening night, Ivan said he is now reading Anna Karenina—all of it.