Gossip Central

Bob Balaban Directs Blythe Danner, Edie Falco, Alec Baldwin for 2024: The Pursuit of Happiness at Guild Hall

Begging the question: is it too soon to laugh about the pandemic year, 2020, a collection of short plays by masterful playwrights, did just that in a one-nighter at Guild Hall, directed by Bob Balaban. That was July 2021. Now for July 2024, as we ponder where we are in an arguably post-pandemic year, Balaban assembled a collection of short plays to consider “The Pursuit of Happiness” starring Alec Baldwin, Edie Falco, Blythe Danner, Jim Bracchitta, Steven Wallem, and Richard Kind.

Baldwin kicked off the staged reading with “Mr. Happiness” by David Mamet, a Dear Abby meets Miss Lonelyhearts, an advice guru which he performed with a stagy voice only Alec Baldwin could muster. Blythe Danner, for a Neil la Bute piece from his “10 x 10 Monologues,” about a woman of a certain age contemplating her current plan to go off for a weekend with a handsome stranger, said after in Guild Hall’s green room, that she merely read it straight, not trying to act at all. The result was so wistful and moving that even this playwright’s words which are often not respectful to women came off as a true insight into the female psyche.

Lynn Grossman’s play “The Keepsake” took on the subject of memory and its lapses during the COVID era. As performed by Richard Kthis was the longest and most direct evocation of the virus and its aftermath, still uncharted. Grossman said she wrote the play with Richard Kind in mind as perfect to perform its manic ins and outs of memory and ending with a recitation of a Shakespeare sonnet.

Remembering Audrey Flack

At the end of Audrey Flack’s new memoir, With Darkness Came Stars, published when she was 92, she takes stock of a life well lived:

I am lucky that my mind remains clear and sharp, filled with ideas for new art. The creative spirit is running strong and I continue to work.

These words, and the fact that Flack’s mother lived to 100, gave the impression that she would always be there, encouraging artists of every kind, dispensing wisdom on every subject, exuding enthusiasm in her belief that art can heal. Her recent death at age 93 from a torn aorta was a great shock.

A noted pioneering photorealist, abstract expressionist, and sculptor, she was controversial in every genre. As a photorealist, her work featured lipsticks, mirrors, beads shining bright as the chrome veneers of the men’s autos. Flack’s very subjects, Marilyn Monroe to ç1 as Cleopatra, to teary eyed macarenas, were seen as secondary to the men’s “reflections on metal surfaces.” Excluded from a show, she knew women were being written out of the history of art. Her dealer Ivan Karp told her flat out: “Paint cars and trucks and I’ll make you famous.”

Flack went her own way. Airbrush was a no-no but she experimented anyway, and favored figuration when abstract expressionism was all the rage. Against the feminist grain, her bejeweled goddess statues were deemed kitsch, totally out of phase. Flack observed the art world from the inside: And she told her stories in the memoir and through her songs written for her “History of Art” bands. She played the banjo.

Jackson Pollock was a favorite subject, but not the only one. Often drunk, the male artists come off as boorish; the women subservient, and catty, always second place. Flack opines on who’s a feminist (herself) and who is not (Elaine DeKooning and Alice Neel) and tells juicy stories describing the artists’ loft scene, galleries and gallerists, liaisons. In one, she’s instrumental in introducing Jackson Pollock to Ruth Kligman, an aspiring artist, instructing the voluptuous young woman to the far seat at the Cedar Tavern’s bar.

Michael Stuhlbarg in Patriots: Bye Bye Boris

If you were weaned on Russian literature: Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, you know exactly what nourishes the Russian soul—beyond vodka and borscht. Patriots, Peter Morgan’s play about the rise of Vladimir Putin at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, explores that pull through an oligarch’s power, and what happens when he loses it by his own hubris. A math prodigy, Boris Berezovsky (Michael Stuhlbarg) rises and maintains his wealth wheeling and dealing and situating those he manipulates in prominence. One such individual is Vladimir Putin (Will Keen), a nobody placed strategically until he becomes “president.” Eventually, fate finds Berezovsky exiled in London. While he is not poisoned to death as others in exile are, he simply cannot live outside his homeland.

Stuhlbarg displays Berezovsky’s ample appetites in a robust performance. Act II begins with him fishing in the Caribbean. Banquets look like bacchanals—native dance, available women. Restraint is shown by his colleagues Roman Abramovich (Luke Thallon) who does what he must to stay in power’s favor; ditto for Professor Perelman (Ron Guttman) with whom Berezovsky spars in matters of math and politics. Morgan’s book is smart, philosophical as these historic figures are given voice. Yeah, it must have been good to be outrageously rich in Russia’s 1990’s.

Bernadette Peters’ Joke: Posh Meets Borscht Belt as Guild Hall Returns to the Rainbow Room

Guild Hall Academy of the Arts President, the painter Eric Fischl got to hone his comedy chops at this year’s spring gala, fashioning a speech on a string of cliches—thanks to A. I. That set the night off in good spirits, against The Rainbow Room’s customary spectacular panoramic views of the city now fogged in, but as Board Chair Marty Cohen observed, “When it comes to Guild Hall, there’s no such thing as bad weather.”

Sure enough, we were expecting no shows but most showed: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sunny Hosten, Fern Mallis, April Gornik, Ross Bleckner, Rufus Wainwright, and the robust theater crowd to celebrate Daryl Roth. That included her son Jordan Roth, head of Jujamcyn, clad in an elegant ensemble accessorized with his grandmother Sylvia’s matching clutch. He opened his speech with, “My mother loves gay people.” That broke the ice, as a proud, even gleeful son spoke of Roth’s collection of 13 Tony Awards and counting.

She had just signed Julianne Margulies and Peter Gallagher to a show adapted from Delia Ephron’s Left on Tenth she’s hoping to stage in the fall, with Susan Stroman—also present-- directing. As I congratulated her, Roth pulled me aside to say, she has yet to find a theater. Ah, the perils of producing!

Her pal Bernadette Peters took the stage and before singing two numbers from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods told a joke about a frog who, upon getting a kiss from an elder gentleman, promised to turn into a gorgeous blond who would make love to him every night for the rest of his life. The man took the frog home and went to bed, explaining that at this point in life he preferred to have a talking frog.

The jokes did not end there. Howard Marks, who with his wife Nancy were also honored, with a Special Award for Leadership and Philanthropy told one about a boy who got a part in a school play. His mother asked, what part? The Jewish husband. Her reply: Couldn’t you get a speaking role?

Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People

If the players were not dressed in late 19^th century fitted jackets, and the Circle in the Square stage not set as the interior of a fine Norwegian home with old school furnishings, you might think An Enemy of the People was a pandemic era drama of science vs. profit. Jeremy Strong--vulnerable as he was as Kendall Roy in Succession-- as Dr. Thomas Stockmann, wants to alert the small town of serious, life-threatening bacteria in the water. His brother Peter—Michael Imperioli as a thuggish Sopranos bully who happens to be mayor, wants to suppress the information so that the people do not suffer the economic decline, from thriving baths about to enrich the community. Dr. Fauci seems so present, as does a narcissistic leader bent on denying scientific research. Amy Herzog has trimmed Ibsen’s original work to good effect and under Sam Gold’s superb direction An Enemy of the People feels like a parable for this time.

As in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the ostensible drama whether it relates to the dynamic of saving people’s lives vs. preserving the opportunities for the rich or marriage and its tenuous relationship to true love, the real threat is the sheep-like dumbness of a citizenry that does not think for itself.

ORIGIN Premieres at Alice Tully Hall: A Docu-Drama of Ideas About Societal Divisions

At the swank premiere of Ava Du Vernay’s new film ORIGIN at Alice Tully Hall last week, made evident: this director is fearless. Taking Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, a 2020 best-selling book by Isabel Wilkerson, DuVernay created her own genre, taking the lessons of the book, folding them into the narrative of the writer writing the book, and adding elements ripped off the headlines.

The film starts with the actual soundtrack of Trayvon Martin’s murder, significant because this horrible killing put the situation of innocent black men at risk on the proverbial map. But on the geographic map, DuVernay’s reach brings together key far flung places—Germany, India, the United States, to show how caste, not race, drives the methods of subjugation, dehumanization, humiliation, creating cultural divisions, separating target groups from equal status.

Lately, research into the Nazi agenda illustrates how antisemitism of the 1930’s was informed by the study of how Americans constructed slavery. Filming in Berlin, DuVerney’s fictional Isabel, in a fine performance by Aunjanue-Ellis Taylor visits the famed Jewish Museum archive. The film transitions to a story of a Nazi party member who refused to signal “heil” because he was in love with a Jewish woman. Having stripped Jews from citizenship, confiscated their property, murdered them, the concentration camp system seems a logical consequence of this ideology—if you claim supremacy--no matter how baseless, heartless, inhumane, and self-serving.

The caste system in India works on a similar level of dehumanization. Focused on the Dalits (“Untouchables”), the film shows men neck deep in sewage, made to clean without the use of tools, with their bare hands—it’s an image you cannot unsee.

The story of artist Al Bright makes for a riveting mini-movie, when as a 9-year old he was not permitted into a swimming pool with his teammates. That he was led around the pool on a rubber float, repeatedly told not to touch the water, is hilarious in its pointlessness, if it were not a sad reminder of the basic stupidity of segregation.

Barbie at the Peninsula: A Doll Rules

In the doll metaverse, Barbie is queen. A party at the posh Peninsula Hotel brought together her movie creators with members of the Academy to anoint her with awards. The movie about her has had world domination in sales. Even in Morocco, where I saw it when it was released in July along with Oppenheimer—famously creating the “Barbenheimer” unit—it was a hit, I was happy to report to Margot Robbie, who spear-headed the collaboration with Mattel and starred, and Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, scriptwriters with Gerwig directing. The phenomenon spoke of girl power, and what men have to do to measure up. So where was the movie’s primary Ken, Ryan Gosling?

Ryan Gosling made the movie a musical, his song and dance numbers major entertainment a la La La Land. Mark Ronson filled me in on creating the movie’s sound: he just followed Greta’s script. There wasn’t even supposed to be music, but fortunately she, a major music maven, and fan, was keen on creating a sound. Eschewing the pink cocktail of the evening—a prosecco with cotton candy, Ronson said he was overstuffed from Thanksgiving with family, and following a routine, waking at 7 to write. How do you follow up on Barbie? Ronson is writing a book on DJing in the ‘90’s.

“What would I do without acting!?,” exclaimed F. Murray Abraham at the party, agreeing, his White Lotus character should be continued into the next season. “Didn’t you love the writing,” he asked. “I would follow Mike White’s writing anywhere,” he said, so happy to be working. Next up: he’s the husband in the Broadway production of The Queen of Versailles, based on Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 excellent riches-to-rags documentary, with Kristin Chenowith as his wife.

Harmony on Broadway: The Pre-Show Schmooze

The Ethyl Barrymore Theater was abuzz: Michael Feinstein, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Lorna Luft were among the theater elite at Harmony’s opening night. Sutton Foster said she was ready to be evil, stepping in to bake meat pies as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Judd Hirsch sat with Marilu Henner, the Taxi team to appear on The View later this week. Remarking that she last saw Chip Zien, Harmony’s narrator, on July 15, 1974—exact in her memory as she has one of those special gifts—"It was an audition,” Henner said. All this before the evening’s star, Barry Manilow, arrived.

Memory is a key ingredient of Harmony: The Holocaust’s mantra, Never Forget—echoed, asserted—but in a musical! Yes, Barry Manilow wrote the songs for this show, many years in the making about a hugely successful sestet of singers in Europe as Hitler was on the rise. Are the songs of the Comedy Harmonists ones that the whole world will sing—yes, many will live on, material for vocalists everywhere. First-rate Broadway tunes are not the only reason to see Harmony. Accompanied by his longtime lyricist Bruce Sussman, and director/choreographer Warren Carlyle, Manilow framed a tale well-timed for this moment, a memory play that insists upon an individual’s reckoning with totalitarian regimes and war. Bad things happen when bystanders say nothing.

Chip Zien’s character –based on the real-life cantor in California called Rabbi who recently died at age 98--escaped the Nazis, the only Harmonist to live to old age. Survivor guilt is the occasion for telling the past, mulling over the possibilities for a different ending. Harmony starts with the group’s auditions, youthful aspirations, and love. Beowulf Borritt’s sets form backdrops for the entertainers’ singing their way through Europe, and for the repression of Jews. But the danger, palpable now, will pass, right? Two of the Harmonists marry, Rabbi to Mary and “Chopin” to Ruth, a Bolshevik activist and a Jew. A joyful double wedding, disrupted by thugs breaking glass, recalls a Fiddler on the Roof scene. At the height of fame, they came to New York and might have performed with Josephine Baker. Onstage, in a fantasy, they do.

A highlight is a duet sung by the wives, Mary (Sierra Boggess) and Ruth (Julie Benko), “Where You Go,” after their husbands try to persuade them to leave, hoping to ensure their safety. The song, referencing the Old Testament’s Book of Ruth, resonates of the fragility of love, and their dire choices. Foils, the Catholic Mary sticks with Rabbi (his younger self Danny Kornfeld); Ruth lets Chopin (Blake Roman) know that while she may leave—better for him as a non-Jew, she will haunt him always. Played by Benko, she’s an irrepressible memory.

Tangled Up in Tulsa: Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine

Everyone remembers their first Dylan concert. Mine was historic: When Dylan switched guitars, from acoustic to electric, when crowds stormed the stage in protest. No, this was not the more famous concert in Newport. This was a few days later, in Forest Hills. A friend and I, two immigrant teens took the subway from Brooklyn to Queens to find America. Up until that day, Dylan was to me an anti-war poet/ a scratchy singer in the manner of Phil Ochs. But that day the Dylan fans were waging their own war against HIM, booing, unseating, moving forward as a mob.

It was clear: Dylan mattered. But the question was, did the rage matter to him? If it did, he took the advice of The Beatles, who advised, ‘Don’t worry about the fans, they will come back.’ And, of course, the rest is, as they say, history.

Cut to Tulsa, May 2022. The opening of The Bob Dylan Center. Why Tulsa, everyone asked. Because his archive could be housed right next door to his hero’s Woody Guthrie. Parties, music, academic meetings marked the occasion. Visiting, I could see a photograph from the concert of my youth amid the incredible collection of guitars, vinyl, notebooks, artwork—memorabilia of a creative life. And now readers of Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, edited by Mark Davidson and Fishel, can revel in their own nostalgia and more in this elegant, meaty tome—a chronology of the archival Tulsa haul, a backstory for a great biography. The publishers at Callaway took the step of creating a lengthy and helpful index.

To the photos with EVERYONE: Joan Baez, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Robertson, Allen Ginsberg, Barack Obama, footage from D. A. Pennebaker, torn ticket stubs, song lists, lyrics, stuff, add smart essays by Greil Marcus, Lucy Sante, Raymond Foye, Richard Hell limning Dylan’s writing process from foundational tapes to recordings and artifacts. Read a facsimile of Dylan’s essay on Jimi Hendrix. Peter Carey’s grim look at Tulsa’s racial divide, how the famed riots serve up classic Dylan material. A section on Dylan and the Beats illuminates the formative literature and influence that would lead to song themes and his novel Tarantula. Michael McClure, Peter Orlovsky, as well as Ginsberg were certainly on his road, but Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was a main attraction when he first arrived in the Village for the free-wheeling character based on Neal Cassady, whose amorality he would later reject.

Yoshiki at Carnegie Hall: The Unexpected Pleasures of Loss

The international superstar, Yoshiki, celebrated a 10^th anniversary “World Tour with Orchestra 2023 ‘Requiem,’” its final leg at Carnegie Hall this week. Displaying awesome musical chops at piano and drums in the separate genres of classical and rock, Yoshiki, clad in red lame coat, dedicated the tour to the passing of his beloved mother who raised him after his father’s suicide when he was 10. The drums, he explained to his many fans—some clad in full kimono and obi bearing flowers to throw onstage--, allowed him to express the extremes of his despair. Even after he performed for Japan’s emperor, his mother would ask whether or not he had slept the night before, had he eaten breakfast. He missed these nurturing flourishes even when his hands were imprinted in cement at L. A.’s Chinese Theater. Launching a clothing line in Paris and a new champagne with Pommery, he misses her mothering more.

He also dedicated some songs to two bandmates who committed suicide, and for much of the concert he admonished the audience to cherish every day. “We are here,” he kept saying, also acknowledging the pain and suffering in our world. Conductor Ward Stare led the full orchestra featuring many strings, underscoring a sorrowful tone even when the sounds soared. Singers Beverly and Ai Ichihara added to the emotional experience. After Intermission, Yoshiki, now in silver lame, performed Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake accompanied by dancers from the American Ballet Theater. Three screens projected family photos and clips from his film debut as director, YOSHIKI: Under the Sky. The next day the film, to be released this month, was screened in full at the Roxy Hotel, followed by a performance at Django.