Gossip Central

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Final Season: Tits Up!

In fact, two tits up! The stunning final season makes for a picture of life as a stand-up comic for Mrs. Maisel and her agent Susie, or Susan, depending on your history with her. Our heroine is now gainfully employed: she’s a writer on the evening’s popular celebrity television talk program, The Gordon Ford Show. The season flips through time periods, juxtaposing Midge’s rise to comedy superstardom with her rookie warm-up to fame. Both Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) and Susie (Alex Borstein) learn on the job, the hard way. Mutually dependent, they have each other’s backs—except when the mob’s involved—becoming an object lesson in female friendship. Working on television, on a popular evening talk show, Midge writes for Ford, and though there’s a taboo on actually getting on the show if you are a writer, well, you can guess that Midge gets there. And, having delivered a great speech to her boss about how if she slept with him, she would never know if she got the job by her talents or some casting couch. It’s a proto-feminist monologue that would work in our day.

Susie becomes a famous agent, roasted at the legendary Friars’ Club. Danny Strong gives an outstanding performance as a rival agent, and fills everyone in on her backstory. Susie’s sister gushes and soaks up the air in the room, refusing to leave the podium. [An aside: Show biz being what it is, she played by Emily Bergl, the very actress who is currently on Broadway playing Sean Hayes’ Oscar Levant’s wife in Good Night, Oscar, a drama that similarly offers a glimpse of television’s salad years.] As to the Friars, the whole set up is a piece of New York history, playing out in real time; faced with financial ruin, the Friars’ Club is about to end if someone doesn’t come up with a way to save it—soon.

The Fears: Triggers and Trauma in a Safe Space

In his theater production debut, Steven Soderburgh brings us Emma Sheanshang’s The Fears, performed off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Theater. On trend, this ensemble work takes place in a room, with a window, and with hangings of the Buddha; this is a safe zone for the psychically injured, akin to a consciousness raising group space. A lively cast of characters is led by a neo-hippie-ish facilitator to deal with their triggers. The title The Fears made me think of the ancient Greek play, The Furies, which externalized the emotional explosions thin-skinned types experience in volatile families—think of the House of Atreus alone where sons are served up to fathers for dinner. Of course, without calling the characters trauma survivors. The personae in The Fears form something of a fiery family itself, --and that window: it faces onto a courtyard with a lot of commotion outside. Everyone has issues.

Still, where is anyone safe from trauma? Each character, from Maia (Maddie Corman), the leader who keeps taking room tone, to Suzanne (Robyn Peterson) who offers solace in snacks of crispy seaweed, to bossy Rosa (Natalie Woolams-Torres), to exasperating Fiz  (Mehran Khaghani), and Katie (Jess Gabor), a most fragile Goth girl, gets a big sorry past, as do the new girl, Thea (Kerry Bishe) and her boyfriend. She just happens to be living with Mark (Carl Hendrick Louis). Director Dan Algrant keeps the tirades and banter flowing.

Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, and Candice Bergen in Book Club: The Next Chapter

A four female post-pandemic road trip, Book Club: The Next Chapter, defies the current trends toward diversity and inclusion and yet manages to be silly enough to be just what we need: a big laugh against the backdrop of scenic Italy. One can argue that rich older white women are in a class that needs to be seen and heard.

When first seen, in Zoom squares, wine glasses in hand, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen ponder the finer points in books and quickly move on to escape (high end) lockdown as Covid restrictions allow. Jane Fonda as Vivian, recently engaged with a giant rock on her finger, will have a bachelorette bash in Italy with her besties. Candice Bergen’s Sharon, a retired judge is a pill, doing what older women do: find excuses for not embracing new adventure. Needless to say, she becomes the most outrageous of the lot in some clever plotting by writer/director Bill Holderman featuring travel mishaps: loss of luggage (we’re talking Louis Vuitton), misplaced ashes, a flat tire, and a night in jail. On the plus side: a steamy night on a boat in a Venice canal, kneading of dough, and yes, a wedding in Tuscany.

This week’s premiere and afterparty at Tavern on the Green echoed the movie’s joyful release from the pandemic. Diane Keaton wore stripes and a signature hat. In the film, kooky as Annie Hall was, her character, Diane, favors dots and a flared silhouette. Partiers included Tovah Feldshuh, Candace Bushnell, Clive Davis, Carol Kane and Judd Hirsch (stars of iMordecai, the most adorable rom-com of the year), David Rasche (mum on Succession’s surprising series’ end), Ted Danson, Diane Sawyer, and many others toasting to all four stars!

It’s TONY Time: Meet the Nominees

“Mazel tov.” You could hear Ben Platt in the Sofitel Hotel corridor congratulate Jessica Hecht, both nominated for Tony Awards. She was leaving the press room at the annual “Meet the Nominees” event, and he was entering. Starring in one of the two most Jewish plays on Broadway—Platt plays Leo Frank in the stunning revival of Parade—he spoke about how important this musical was to him, having grown up actively Jewish, and especially now as antisemitism in America is not simply a thing of 1913. The other most Jewish play is Leopoldstadt, a brilliant work by Tom Stoppard, examining an unexplored piece of the playwright’s history in Nazi-occupied Europe. Both plays received multiple much-deserved nominations. No one from Leopoldstadt stopped to say hello, but that’s the way with the “Meet the Nominees” day, you never know who will come by. Best to take frequent bathroom breaks. The corridor may be where you will see Sean Hayes as he’s led off to be photographed. Or glimpse Jessica Chastain.

Or you may be lucky to get J. Harrison Ghee in blouse and midi skirt, with rhinestone-trimmed velvet slippers, looking divine as you would expect from the actor playing Daphne in Some Like It Hot. Dressed for the occasion, Ghee spoke of the joy of having the mother of a trans kid thank him for the representation. Or Beowulf Boritt, nominated for Best Scenic Design of a Musical, go into detail about how they spared no expense in the look of New York, New York: using the techniques of old school Broadway, they got a Ukrainian painter who had relocated to Amsterdam to hand paint 12 backdrops. Video would have been so much cheaper but the actors would not have looked as good. In my favorite scene, construction workers tap dance on a steel beam high above the street; the beam, he said, actually had a steel surface, so heavy it was a nightmare to get it on and off stage.