Gossip Central

Salman Rushdie in Public

In one of the great Curb Your Enthusiasm vignettes, Larry David wanted to make a musical called “Fatwa,” the word itself giggle-worthy. But the fatwa on Salman Rushdie was no joke. Last week a lone, determined man got past light security at Chautauqua, a famous writers conference and knifed the author of Midnight’s Children and an Islam-offending novel called The Satanic Verses. As the story goes, without having ever read the book, the Ayatollah declared a bounty on Rushdie who had imagined mortal qualities in the prophet Mohammed. A translator was murdered in the ensuing outrage. 

Meanwhile, Rushdie had been in hiding in safe houses in England and the States for decades. In the 1980’s, someone sent the book to the American writer Paul Bowles who resided in Tangier, and worried about his expatriate status there if the authorities found out he possessed such a book. One year a hushed event brought the writer to the New York Public Library’s main branch for a PEN forum, an affirmation of freedom of expression; many celebrated Rushdie and the daring it took to pull this off. Needless to say, security was tight. And over time, Salman Rushdie let his guard down.

Cyndi Lauper in the Hamptons: Girls Just Want to Have Great Reproductive Health Care.

That was Cyndi Lauper’s message when she gave a rare charity performance at Northwell Health’s 4th annual Summer Hamptons Evening (SHE) which raised nearly one million dollars for the Katz Institute for Women’s Health. Playing only five songs, clad in a leopard print summer suit, the rocker/ activist proclaimed her disgust at watching “women’s civil rights stripped away. Safe access is for our health,” she affirmed launching into “She Bop,” “Time After Time,” “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “True Colors,” and a song that spoke to the moment, “Sally’s Pidgeons.” Bringing action to words, Lauper’s own charity, True Colors United, works to bring an end to homelessness among LGBTQ youth. This fall, she will launch a new foundation to bring OB-GYN care to women in need across the country. And still: a hit on Broadway with Kinky Boots, she is now composing for a new Working Girl musical, collaborating with playwright Theresa Rebeck. Her dedication is limitless, as is her heart.

The evening at Vicki Moran Furman’s stunning Watermill estate and emceed by Rosanna Scotto, featuring Drs. Tara Narula and Stacey Rosen speaking on the importance of heart health for women, was held in a poolside tent decorated in pink, a quintessential production by Lawrence Scott Events.

Ragtime at Bay Street Theater: Listen to Mother

The heart of the dazzling revival of Ragtime at Bay Street Theater is Mother, a character of enormous compassion. As played by Lora Lee Gayer, she’s a lovely presence who saves an abandoned black baby and his mother Sarah (Kyrie Courter), and navigates her well-to-do New Rochelle family through the vagaries and scandals of early 20^th century American life. Mother is part of an ensemble with talented actors performing the roles of Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman (Victoria Huston-Elem), Evelyn Nesbit (Cathryn Wake) and Booker T. Washington (Davon Williams), to name just a few of the famous personages populating E. L. Doctorow’s historic novel Ragtime, the musical’s epic source. Limning the current cultural territory of “Black Lives Matter,” the plight of the working class, and of newly arrived immigrants, Bay Street’s production seems especially fresh from beginning to teary-eyed end. Mother singing, “We Can Never Go Back to Before,” becomes an anthem for change-- in her marriage, and to the hopes and dreams of Americans—such as the play’s Coalhouse (Derrick Davis) seeking equality, justice, and democratic values. 

At Ragtime’s ebullient opening night, the audience leapt to their feet as the ensemble took their bows. Of course, it seemed to all that Ragtime’s intertwining stories were timeless, with love and compassion the only curing force. With music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, book by Terrence McNally, and under Will Pomerantz’ expert direction, Ragtime underscores—no pun intended: the power of a great night of theater holds its own curing magic.

Idris Elba Stars in Beast: An Old-Fashioned World Premiere at MoMA

No one will ever fall asleep at a screening of Beast, a new movie directed by Baltasar Kormakur and starring Idris Elba who goes mano a eh, mano with a rogue lion. Very Hemingway. Man against beast. He’s protecting his daughters in the wilds of Africa, a place that is at once beautiful with animals running free, and fraught with the dangers of poachers interfering with the natural law of the jungle. The Lion King this is not. 

You really can’t blame the lions—mangy, miserable creatures-- for being beasts after being hunted and raped, so to speak, by evil, greedy humans—certainly the film’s hands down villains. You might call this movie an adventure thriller with many of the trappings of a gasp-worthy horror story: a giant paw piercing the glass of a disabled jeep, a family cowering inside. A soundtrack that punctuates the suspenseful momentum. The family’s backstory creates a rich buffer for the formulaic genre. No beasts were hurt in the making of this movie. The fiercest among them were CGI.

Hamptons Journal: Longhouse’s Artistic Legacy as the East End Expands as a Destination for Fine Art

Wood stitched with wire does not sound like an ideal way to structure an outdoor shed, but that’s what Steven Ladd and his brother William Ladd used to create one of the masterful works showcased at this year’s Longhouse Benefit. As Steven guided visitors through this piece, open on both ends, he explained how he learned to sew using his grandmother’s sewing machine, and in fact, the upstate New York resident wore slacks and a shirt that he had made himself. It defied the imagination to think how that textile practice might be translated to their sculpture titled “Right Here, Right Now.” Similarly, Taiwanese artist Cheng Tsung Feng invited celebrants into an airy bamboo pavilion, “Fish Trap VI.” The spirit of Longhouse founder Jack Lenor Larsen could be felt in these works on this annual occasion with Robert Wilson, Nathan Lane, Alice Aycock, and many others celebrating his legacy at the best art party of the summer.

Newer art venues in Montauk flourish: The Ranch, the site of the famed Deep Hollow Ranch, where for years a summer concert would bring hoards to the East End, to be seated on haystacks and hear, for example, Paul Simon one year, The Eagles the next, and James Brown. Repurposed barns featured Frank Stella’s sculpture at the early part of summer. His larger pieces were spread out on the immense, now grassy field. Currently, in The West Barn, hangs, Jo Messer’s “Whale Tail,” a presentation of nine new paintings of women emphasizing limbs and gesture in incongruous position saturated in monochromatic palettes. The exhibition title comes from “a resurgent trend of hiking a g-string thong above the waistline as overt provocation.” Yes, provoke it does.