Gossip Central

MJ: The Musical: The Art of Michael Jackson

If you love Michael Jackson, you will love MJ—it’s that simple. The musical limns the controversial performer’s rise to “King of Pop,” avoiding the more difficult challenges of his personality in favor of music and dance—it’s that simple. Not that the star’s dependence on pain killers is not a significant plot issue—it’s that plot is not really significant. You do hear the word accusers—once—but that particular untoward issue is not a part of Lynn Nottage’s book either. If you are of the mind that he should be cancelled, shove it. MJ is not about that, but about his art. 

Taking place in a rehearsal studio in 1992 Los Angeles, --along with an ensemble of talented singers and dancers—Michael Jackson is rehearsing for his “Dangerous” tour. A film crew follows him around, hoping to get more of his personal side in an interview. Everyone’s concern for his demons is out front, getting at his opioid consumption and how that’s wrecking the schedule, not to mention the budget—but wisely, the music and dance, everything you know and love, shapes the origin myth, with first-rate staging, and Christopher Wheeldon’s brilliant choreography and direction.

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man: “There Was Love All Around”

Harold Hill, a talented conman, who wants to swindle the Midwest town of River City, Iowa, had me at hello. That may owe to the fact that “The Music Man” is played by Hugh Jackman. Arriving on a train, bumping along with salesmen grousing about Hill’s wiles, Hill pays them no mind, singing and dancing his way into the townsfolks’ hearts. All except Marian, the librarian, who is onto him from the start. It does not take the signature “Seventy-six Trombones,” to know he will win her over too. That’s the stuff of the American musical, and especially a revival as juicy as this one is, at the Winter Garden Theater. It helps too that Marian is that darling of this classic genre, Sutton Foster, who when she is won over by Hill can cast a look of epiphany as no one else can.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story: Get Ready to Rumble

You will not have to ask, do we need yet another adaptation of this classic? With Leonard Bernstein’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics firmly implanted in your head, a memory of the 1961 Jerome Robbins’ choreography and Arthur Laurents’ book, prepare to be delightfully shocked at how much this new version of West Side Story feels new. Maybe it’s Tony Kushner’s masterful script that takes us first into an image of urban renewal, the ‘hood, a battleground for the Sharks and Jets, being right here in Hell’s Kitchen cum Lincoln Center (shot on a lot in Paterson, New Jersey), and the wisdom we bring knowing the future: everything must change.

But come back to that era: to the cars and shops declaring poverty, ethnicity, the warehouses, crumbling buildings—the boys styled like mid-century heroes, a bit of Marlon Brando and Jack Kerouac. Enter the sweet-faced Polack Tony for Anton (Ansel Elgort) and the Latina ingenue Maria (newcomer Rachel Zegler). Justin Peck updates the original choreography without upsetting Robbins’ vision. And then there’s Rita Moreno, the Oscar-awarded Anita in 1961, now near 90 and getting ready to be celebrated at the Museum of the Moving Image. A widow, perhaps an oracle to the young, as Valentina, Moreno bridges past and present: Spielberg has her singing “Somewhere,” and your heart aches.

Freda Payne at The Cutting Room: What Love Could Be –And Is

An apt locale for a book party for a famed pop singer, the Cutting Room filled with well - wishers for Freda Payne’s memoir, Band of Gold, last week. Co-writer Mark Bego flew in from Tucson, wearing the most outstanding jacket, a print of black & white with sparks of bold color. Yes, it was rock n’roll --without the music. And Payne, resplendent in red, greeted everyone with a kiss and hug. Of course, I knew Freda Payne’s most famous pop tune, “Band of Gold,” grew up with its sound in my ears, her great voice on the proto-feminist lyrics: Left on her wedding night, she laments, all that’s left is a band of gold—and memories of what “love could be.” It did seem like a turning point in 1970. For Freda Payne, a jazz vocalist of note, this was a breakout, flying high on the pop charts.

Up next for her is a new release, “Freda Payne: Let There Be Love,” featuring duets with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kenny Lattimore, Kurt Elling. With Johnny Mathis, her rendition of the Gershwins’ “They Can’t Take That Way From Me” is an inspiration. She is set to perform at Birdland on November 22.

Todd Haynes' The Velvet Underground at the New York Film Festival: Homage to a Bygone Era

Film at Lincoln Center had a grand plan for Todd Haynes’ new film, The Velvet Underground. They would bring extant founding members of the band John Cale, Maureen (Mo) Tucker, for a performance at the movie’s New York Film Festival opening. That, sadly, was not to be. The premiere, though, with a posh party at Jazz at Lincoln Center, celebrated the city’s creative energy from which the New York Film Festival emerged, and the music that influenced generations of artists to come.

A vivid portrait of the band, yes, The Velvet Underground is a deep dive into the historic artistic period of New York in the ‘60’s, especially showcasing the avant-garde filmmakers who shot evocative footage: Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas. The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh is a treasure trove of this rare material. The great Ed Lachman shot the interviews in 2018: Mekas at 96 was first.

The film is an homage to these underground filmmakers as well as to Lou Reed, whose teen years on Long Island, complicated sexuality and drug use provide the backstory for his artistic development. Studying poetry with Delmore Schwartz, Reed read Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Jr., and Arthur Rimbaud. Early on, he proclaimed he would be a rock star.

Hamptons Journal: Susan Stroman Weekend at Guild Hall: Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Brad Oscar, and Mel Brooks Zoomed, Little Dancer Preview

Starved for Broadway’s reopening, a happy crowd packed Guild Hall for an evening of clips and anecdotes about The Producers, the winner of the most Tony awards of any musical in history. On a panel introduced by choreographer Susan Stroman, a winner of 5 Tonys herself, the show’s stars Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and Brad Oscar quipped and reminisced about the play’s Chicago debut, and the run on Broadway, shut down for 3 days in the aftermath of 9/11, but then it was Rudy Guiliani who urged everyone to get back to work. People did not know whether it was appropriate to laugh, said Oscar. And of course, the show offered the audience a way to grieve less for a two-hour period, Stroman remembered. Nathan Lane performed, but scheduled for a vacation he decided to take, he joked, “If I cancel my vacation, the terrorists won.”

And so the evening went with Lane recounting his first encounter with Mel Brooks in a swimming pool at the Ritz in Paris. Anne Bancroft, finished with her swim, went up to her room, and Lane thought, Mel Brooks is in the pool with me instead of with Anne Bancroft. He also remembered that it was Harvey Weinstein, a backer at the time, who read the all-important New York Times review at the opening night party . . . “and then went off to pee in a flower pot” . . . conflating the producer’s crimes with another #Metoo accusee. Matthew Broderick remembered people coming to the door, every performance someone else would show up, Al Gore, for example. Lane said Bill Clinton came, shook hands, but kept his eyes on Cady Huffman, the show’s splendid Ulla. But they were all in awe when Gene Wilder, the original Leopold Bloom, stopped by.

Hamptons Journal: Bay Street’s Camelot, Robert Longo at Guild Hall, Diana Frank at Tripoli Gallery

Legends of King Arthur and his court are having a moment: The Green Knight in theaters, and out east, Bay Street Theater’s production of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot --under the stars! Now a classic, its signature song “If Ever I Would Leave You” sends a particular nostalgic chill—ah love—especially for the musical theater genre that Bay Street does so well! Remember the glorious revival of Annie Get Your Gun, Bay Street’s very last production before the COVID shut down? Or the intimate production of Evita a year before? With Camelot--outdoors—BayStreet’s setting conveys less castle and more country as Camelot wields its special charms.

King Arthur in this imagining is a fair and just ruler, looking for equal representation in his governance, hence the knights’ round table. His liberal ideas come after he meets and weds Guenevere; at first, a dated gender bias marks the musical’s first act, especially brow-raising in our current discourse on the roles of men and women. The king’s attitudes progress when Sir Lancelot enters the story, as Arthur (Jeremy Kushnier), “Jen” (Britney Coleman), and “Lance” (Deven Kolluri) sing about good leadership, marriage, and loyalty, all performances solid and square. But, in this three-way expression of courtly love, a stylized representation of king and his knight/ knight and the queen --where the younger pair fall in love at their own peril, heat would be good. But that does not come till the second act.

Hamptons Journal: Graham Nash in Montauk/ Longhouse/ Chuck Manion’s Paintings at Duck Creek

OM—though that’s not my mantra. Dan and Maureen Cahill hosted an event for the David Lynch foundation to support veterans by providing them with TM—transcendental meditation-- life changing according to most practitioners, some of whom attended the concert and sit-down dinner on a gorgeous property between the old and new highways leading into the town of Montauk, with an ocean view, a large vegetable garden, and a chicken coop. 

Milling about on the manicured lawn, drinking wine, munching on canapes, attendees—among them Drew Barrymoore in an oversized hat pulled down (I took her for Julianne Moore at first, who really does live in Montauk) and Paul Jarrod Frank, MD, author of The Pro-Aging Playbook—(can’t miss the irony of that)--the night recalled Edenic times. Bob Roth led a meditation.

David Byrne’s American Utopia: Spike Lee’s Documentary Brings Us to Our Senses

Back before the pandemic made everything stop making sense, David Byrne opened his American Utopia at Broadway’s Hudson Theater, the most entertaining show in town. Everybody knew it, and tickets sold like hot cakes. Of course, so much in America had stopped making sense prior to the unanticipated lockdown; as upbeat as American Utopia was, a sly critique marked every song in this unique musical, immigration, leadership, and Black Lives Matter. Now that Spike Lee has made a film of the staged performance, with the great Ellen Kuras’ cinematography, and now that the film has opened the Toronto Film Festival last week, and will be featured in the upcoming New York Film Festival before it airs on HBO in October, a new audience can have a close up view of the most exuberant, life affirming, and topical musical, just before our elections.

A Star-Studded Tribute for Stephen Sondheim at 90: He’s “Still Here”

To fete beloved Stephen Sondheim at 90 in song for two and a half hours, an A-list of Broadway stars zoomed in. Sure, you don’t get the wow production, the pageantry, the costumes and sets of a live musical, but what you do get is that up close emotion that the internet allows, as if you were seated a foot away from say Meryl Streep’s face as she carouses with Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald for a drunken rendition of “Ladies Who Lunch.” This is what the split screen was meant to do, just as Beanie Feldstein and Ben Platt’s duet from Into the Woods and Annaleigh Ashford and Jake Gyllenhaal from Sunday in the Park with George keeps them in the same frame, even as they, and we are, well, apart and elsewhere.