Gossip Central

Hamptons Journal: McArthur Binions at the Peter Marino Foundation, the LongHouse Gala, and Daniel Humm at Guild Hall

The work is detailed and geographic, tonal, you might say, like bop graffiti on brick in a Detroit abandoned building. The artist, McArthur Binions, in fact, comes from Detroit but spent a lot of time in New York meeting Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis, moving on to Chicago where he now lives and works. Artist Rachid Johnson was his student, so favored that he became part of the family, taking care of the kids. At a recent "Brunch with Bob," at the Peter Marino Foundation, he told a packed crowd awed by Binions' art, Binions refused to sell his work at the time, proclaiming it would be worth a lot someday. And Johnson who knew him only in that school setting as his teacher, thought, "This guy is crazy." Yeah, as the saying goes, crazy like a fox. This was the talk's great takeaway.

In the foundation gardens for brunch, Prudence Fairweather asked McArthur Binions if he had ever met her husband, John Chamberlain. Oh yes, that was at the Fanelli Bar. He had a large vial of cocaine. I ask, did he share? "Yes he did. It was very good."

A who’s who of artists show up at the LongHouse gala every year. The evening, honoring Kenny Scharf and Tony Bechara, is always an homage to Jack Lenor Larsen, its founder, and a celebration for nature enthusiasts who love the combo of gorgeously curated outdoor art in the leafy setting: Robert Wilson, Ned Smyth, Joan Semel, mingling among many others. The much-awarded “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” costumer Donna Sakowska said she’s been living in Paris developing a ballet series called “Etoile” with the Palladinos.

Sigourney Weaver in Christopher Durang’s Whimsical Take on Chekhov: Celebrating Theater at Lincoln Center

Some of the original cast of Christopher Durang’s Vanya, Sonia, Masha, and Spike brought this theater gem to life for the Theater at Lincoln Center gala this week, where the show began over a decade ago, before it made its logical move to Broadway’s Golden Theater winning a TONY award for Best Play. Now, taking over the Vivian Beaumont stage on a set designed for the current production of Uncle Vanya, this Chekhovian mash-up retains its brilliance, even gaining some according to Sigourney Weaver, reprising her role as Masha, a narcissistic actress returning to her ancestral home in Bucks County, PA, in time for a neighborhood costume party.

Whenever I am blue, I can snap out of it conjuring Sigourney Weaver’s image as Snow White. Act I is a sendup of Chekhovian tropes with prescient views on real estate and familiar philosophical exclamations like “I’m in mourning for my life!” In Durang’s whimsical mix master, here directed by Bartlett Sher with a scant three-day rehearsal time, the tragic—and neurotic-- circumstance of everyday life turns to high hilarity.

Weaver’s character, Masha, in fact a superstar action hero like Weaver herself (think Alien, Avatar), makes for a most vulnerable Snow White, too tall, her lips too thin, mistaken for Norma Desmond, BoPeep, a Meissen figure. Coming home to the house in which she was raised with her boy toy, Spike (Billy Magnussen in the original but in this production a fine David Hull); this cougar is at the cusp of keeping up the sexual acrobatics, humping him, while suffering this shallow hunk’s wanderlust.

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?

Jennifer Holliday at the Carlyle Café

Tony award winning Jennifer Holliday makes her debut at the Café Carlyle, not far from where she starred on Broadway as Effie in 1981 in “Dreamgirls.” Singing “I’m Still Here,” Holliday channels ancestors—Barbra Streisand among them-- in a set that features selections from the American songbook. But more, she evokes a prior Café Carlyle resident, the legendary Elaine Stritch, who made this Stephen Sondheim “Follies” hit her signature song. Holliday now makes it her own, and ends her generous set with her “Dreamgirls” anthem, “And I’m Telling You—I’m Not Going.”

Great news! At 63, Jennifer Holliday in a magenta sequined sheath, uses the intimacy of the Carlyle stage to sing about love, and honor her muses, Michael Bennett and Marvin Hamlisch. Their advice brought her to the standards that make this show so special—“Taking a Chance on Love,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “In a Sentimental Mood,” “Caravan,” “Body and Sou,” to name a few. Working in a jazz idiom –scatting like Ella Fitzgerald and mixing in her R&B chops-- she’s backed by an excellent band: music director Shedrick Mitchell on piano, Eric Wheeler on bass, Charles Haynes on drums, and Jarien Jamanla on sax.

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.

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.

Remembering Brice Marden in Tangier

You know the old adage: I would have paid more attention had I realized how important it was. In 1983 when I taught a summer writing workshop in Tangier with Paul Bowles at the American School of Tangier, the School of Visual Arts, under the leadership of founder Silas Rhodes invited a distinguished faculty that included Brice Marden. With reverence for the history of Tangier as an artists’ mecca, Marden and his family, his wife Helen Marden, their two girls, Mirabelle  and Melia (5 and 3), and an au pair, were given the room Henri Matisse occupied when he resided at the Villa de France Hotel. I lived in the room next door. The view was over the sumptuous gardens which Matisse painted in his modernist style. Marden’s abstract style, lyrical blocks of color and sinewy lines did not seem suited to palm foliage and flora, nor to the colors but he surely absorbed the vibe. At breakfast on the terrace, the girls seemed extraordinarily well behaved. Having already met the man I would marry, my fears about life as a wife and mother were allayed by seeing this family living free to travel and explore. Helen, an artist who had waitressed at Max’s Kansas City, would say, to acclimate to a culture, eat their yogurt and onions, and drink their wine.

At times, Brice and Helen, and whoever was teaching—that could be photographer Mary Ellen Mark, or graphic designer Milton Glaser, or type designer Ed Benguiat, or journalist Pete Hamill, would meet at the hotel bar. Because Brice was a fan of the beat writers, we had a connection through the poetry—I had written on Jack Kerouac and knew William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, all of whom spent time in Tangier. And, we smoked kif together. Later, after our time in Tangier, he did a series (1989-91), an homage to the Chinese poet Han Shan named for his “Cold Mountain” poems. Han Shan, famously a reclusive drunk, was the inspiration for Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and poems by Gary Snyder. On a random evening Brice and I had dinner at the Claridge, a classy joint on the main boulevard, Louis Pasteur. Visiting Tangier in July, I had Brice on my mind as I passed the former restaurant now a bar and a bit run down. Sadly, Brice Marden died on August 9.

Unscripted: The 76th TONY Awards

The Writers’ strike was on everyone’s mind at the 76^th annual TONY awards on Sunday night. Opening with a gorgeous dance number on the expansive United Palace Theater stage, the TONY show was its own Broadway show on upper Broadway that is, in the heights, Washington Heights. We do know that Lin-Manuel Miranda has enormous influence in the theater community, and he also has some inspiring ideas. Ubering in, guests missed Radio City Hall for a moment but took in the glamor and glitz of this spectacular venue. TONY host Ariana DeBose welcomed everyone in her own language of movement, with that exuberant dance opening, breathless as she welcomed everyone, acknowledging writers— the lack thereof, --and saluting Puerto Rican day. This was the quintessential New York night.

Pre-televised, some awards for lighting and sound design were given out, with a wonderful tribute to John Kander whose New York, New York is now wowing audiences. Beowulf Borritt won Best Scenic Design of a Musical for that show, explaining how the sets were hand-painted, not video screened in his acceptance speech. Both Kander (96) and Joel Grey (91) were celebrated with Lifetime Achievement Awards—Grey receiving his from his daughter, Jennifer Grey. A star from the very start of his career, winning his first TONY for Cabaret (and an Oscar for the movie), Grey was the son of a Yiddish actor which goes far to explain his pre-pandemic production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. He said, you never know when something you are offered that you don’t think is right for you, is actually right, such as Anything Goes in which he starred with Sutton Foster.

Many such legendary figures were on hand. When Leopoldstadt won for Best New Play, writer Tom Stoppard joined the cast and crew onstage; similarly, when Parade won for Best Musical Revival, writer Alfred Uhry spoke, followed by the “In Memoriam” reel accompanied by Juaquina Kalukango, last year’s winner for Paradise Square, singing “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from Phantom of the Opera. Without saying so, the performance was a nod to Andrew Lloyd Weber who would not have a Broadway show in production for the first time in decades. Even though Funny Girl was not eligible this year, Lea Michele’s “Don’t Rain on my Parade,” was irresistible. And Will Swenson, starring as Neil Diamond in A Beautiful Noise, led a sing-along to “Sweet Caroline.”

Guild Hall Celebrates Peter Marino: Renaissance Man

“I hate it,” architect Peter Marino exclaimed surprising even himself, as he noted Gotham Hall, a cavernous former bank on Broadway, decorated for the 350 guests arriving for a tribute to him, and to art collectors Tom Roush and LaVon Kellner. This was Guild Hall’s winter gala, celebrating too the venerated East Hampton art institution’s emergence from a long renovation. Can it be that Peter Marino, clad in his hard-to-miss signature head-to-toe leathers and silver rings, all his own designs, is oddly demure? A video featured his many achievements and talents: architect, painter, sculptor, potter, gardener, collector with an impeccable eye. It finally took the Israeli artist Michal Rovner, a longtime friend, to underscore his bold innovations with a telling anecdote: In Tokyo, at the opening of a Chanel store he designed, he found the perfect use for the building’s façade, projecting her art on it.

This was not a boast. An internationally renowned multimedia artist, Rovner will be featured at Peter Marino’s art foundation housed in Southampton, as part of a series, “Brunches with Bob,” the Bob being writer Bob Colacello who was part of Marino’s entourage, with his daughter Isabelle Trapnell Marino, who, despite her valuable input quips, she’s the “Vanna White” of the conversation series. The culture-packed room also included Michael Halsband, just back from his opening of his iconic sparring Basquiat/ Warhol photos at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, April Gornik, Blythe Danner, Lisa Perry, Iris Smyles, Alice Aycock, and many more to honor their East End neighbors, Tom Roush and LaVon Kellner. A retired doctor, he used to treat many artists when they occupied lofts in Soho, before they became big names.

Julie Benko at Birdland: No Rain on her Parade

Photo: Kevin Alvey

Birdland became Preservation Hall North as Julie Benko marched her band on stage for a set called Euphonic Gumbo. The performance, inspired by the French Quarter of New Orleans, was hardly a random soup, but more of a well thought out, scenic visit to the Crescent City, beloved by Benko and her husband, jazz pianist Jason Yeager who makes her arrangements of classic tunes entirely fresh for her.

It helps that the seven-piece band includes first rate players: including Michael O’Brian on bass, drummer Jay Sawyer, Andy Warren on trumpet, Evan Christopher on clarinet and Ron Wilkins on trombone. Mixing up the music and her story-telling, Benko created a quiz with prizes that include Café du Monde chicory infused coffee, her CDs, and a return to her next Birdland gig—all great because, as she demonstrates amply, she is a master at the cabaret genre, her theme enabling her to provide a history of the beloved Louisiana city, as well as lovely renditions of the tunes.

Remembering Aline Kominsky-Crumb

The Crumb documentary is ruining my life, complained Aline Kominsky-Crumb in 1993, as Terry Zwigoff’s biopic about Robert Crumb, her husband, gained acclaim, becoming a darling on the festival circuit. “Next thing you know, we’ll be invited to the Jerusalem Film Festival.” All of this drama was played out in a comic strip that appeared in The New Yorker magazine. Festival director Leah von Leer saw an opportunity and wrote to the Crumbs. “Your nightmare has come true. You are officially invited.”

Nominated for an academy award for best documentary feature, Crumb was a revealing look not only of this famous cartooning couple but Robert’s unusual family, capturing his highly eccentric and artistic brothers just before one committed suicide. Passionate for jazz, Robert had a huge record collection. Vinyl filled a room. Fearing an atmosphere of violence in their area of California, where gun ownership was de rigeuer, the Crumbs left for the south of France and lived in a multistoried house carved out of the rock on the banks of the Vidourle.

This much I knew when I encountered Robert and Aline in the lobby of our hotel in Jerusalem; I too came with a film, a documentary about the writer/composer Paul Bowles who lived in Tangier. “Did your records make it across the Atlantic?” I asked him as a way of saying hello. The Crumbs and my family—my husband Bob Salpeter, our two daughters, and my mother aged 73 and a survivor of Auschwitz --hung out. While Aline and I gabbed away getting to know one another—we had grown up in the New York City boroughs, finding our escape to Manhattan; we had ties to the Soho Weekly News-- Robert was helping my mother navigate the streets, gentle as could be. Aline dubbed her own mother Blabette, but genuinely liked mine grasping her spirituality.