Gossip Central

Jessica Lange in Paula Vogel’s Mother Play: A Mom on Broadway

In a Marilyn Monroe styled wig, Jessica Lange in character as Phyllis swans around her apartment in a hot pink satin robe, self-healing. What other actress can hold your attention for the time it takes to put on some music, fix a snack, just hang out? She’s gorgeous and riveting, even if abandoned by her alcoholic husband, lonely, and poor. Mother Play, by Pulitzer Prize winning Paula Vogel at the Hayes Theater, and directed by Tina Landau, is quasi-autobiographical. Raising two kids, a single mom, we know, is rough. One minute Phyllis cannot buy groceries to feed her son Carl (Jim Parsons) and daughter Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger); another, she’s hit a second-hand store and come out with a Chanel. Making sacrifices—well, she has her limits!

Those limits include living in cockroach infested apartments from which she manages to be evicted once she complains. Hence the subtitle: A Play in Five Evictions. New York City audiences will appreciate a chorus line of roaches projected onto the walls, even though the setting is Washington D.C. over several decades. Phyllis may not be the most devoted mother but she has aspirations for her children. Those do not include the fact that they are gay. In one scene at a disco when she attempts to make peace with Carl’s sexuality, she loses it upon seeing Martha kissing a woman.

While many of the play’s themes of sexual liberation, AIDS, recall bygone eras, the family story resonates. As the vivid Phyllis loses her panache, Martha affirms the deeper values of compassion and love. In rich performances, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger are TONY-nominated, as is the play and Jessica Lange.

Rachel McAdams’ Broadway Debut in Mary Jane: A Mom on Broadway

Amy Herzog’s play Mary Jane demands that we slow down, take in the drama of the day-to-day. Opening with Mary Jane--the movie star Rachel McAdams as Everywoman--in the kitchen of her Queens apartment with the super, Ruthie (Brenda Wehle) clearing a stubborn pipe. Their conversation, the stuff of existence starts with the body, how trauma is stored in our cells. The familiar banalities that affirm life also make existence tedious. Mary Jane has removed the child protective bars from her windows as baby Alex, known only by the beeps of his life support. will not be wandering anywhere near a dangerous opening. So, this no-no follows the caring logic of a devoted mother. Ruthie, bending the rules, has to pretend not to notice.

As Mary Jane moves toward the bedroom to check on her son, sometimes a little easy-going skip to the door is reminiscent of McAdams’ character in WEDDING CRASHERS. The swagger of her MEAN GIRLS Regina George is far away. As Mary Jane in a Broadway debut, McAdams breathes through the difficulties of caring for an ill child, politely thanking everyone for their help. Even Kat (Lily Santiago), the music therapist who comes to the hospital when Alex lands in emergency pediatric care. Too little too late, Kat sings “The lion sleeps tonight,” and Mary Jane loses it till the song becomes “Bluebird, bluebird, through my window.” Triggers are kept at bay.

You get used to the rhythms of this all-woman production directed by Anne Kauffman. All actors do double duty --except for McAdams who is onstage for all of its 90 minutes. A Buddhist priest, Tenkei (Brenda Wehle again) ministers to Mary Jane, who answers “?” to the hospital’s question about faith. Slipping on white scrubs over her jeans, Mary Jane listens. A spotlight illuminates her.

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.

Jeff Bridges Brings his Dude-ness to Lincoln Center: The Chaplin Awards

Named for the first recipient, Charlie Chaplin, this yearly Film at Lincoln Center honor was the place to be this week to honor Jeff Bridges. Of the Bridges family of actors—with dad Sea Hunt’s Lloyd Bridges, mom Dorothy, big brother Beau Bridges, and sister Cindy, Jeff famously would not embrace being an actor until his 10^th movie. Blase, is not the word; “relaxed” was on every presenter’s lips.

Those included Barbara Streisand, videoed in to pay tribute to Bridges. She directed and starred with him in THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES. Because she loved that he insisted on dancing with her every night of shooting, she made that the ending of the movie.

Beyond “relaxed, add:” “He’s a good man.” Coming from Sharon Stone, that’s a lot. At last year’s NYWFT Muse Awards luncheon, the Basic Interest actress spoke at length about the horrors of men in the industry back in the day. Offering only kudos to Bridges, she said she saw him in STARMAN and wondered if such a kind being would fall her way from the sky. She starred with Bridges and Nick Nolte in a Sam Shepard Play, and felt lucky to be with such good men.

Rosie Perez raised a glass from the Alice Tully Hall stage, in remembrance of a drink she did not have with him when he championed her for a role in FEARLESS. He was so relaxed, “it pissed me off.” And, get this, she said, they were reluctant to have an interracial couple. “Jeff,” she addressed him, “it would be so easy for you to be an asshole.”

Blythe Danner, who can go ditsy on cue, forgot some details about the film she did with Bridges, and when he shouted out the references from the audience, she was impressed by his good “projection”—given he’s a movie actor. Ditto, John Lithgow on video sang his praises. But it was Chris Pine, most hilarious, on their friendship after making the film HELL OR HIGH WATER, quoting some of Bridges’ signature lines.

“Ok, if I quote you?”

“Go for it man.”

And he did THE BIG LEBOWSKI’s Dude speech: “Yeah, well, . . . that’s just your opinion.”

Alicia Keyes’ Hell’s Kitchen and Sufjans Stevens’ Illinoise: Coming of Age on Broadway

Tales of young people reaching their first rung of wisdom is a potent motif. On Broadway, two musicals, vastly different, feature that story in song and dance. At the Shubert Theatre, Hell’s Kitchen, not quite the coming-of-age of its creator, Alicia Keyes, but close enough, takes place in Manhattan Plaza, housing for artists in Hell’s Kitchen, the ‘hood. What starts out as teen rebellion: girl crush on perhaps an inappropriate hunk with mom exerting all her force to keep her home, healthy, and in school, finds her in the building’s “Ellington Room,” for solace and a place to hide, taking piano lessons from an elder. Her unreliable but good-hearted jazzman dad comes ‘round at will. These are the bare bones of this origin tale, book by Kristoffer Diaz, which could also be seen as a play on the joke, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”

Mother is white, in the person of Shoshana Bean, and Ali is Maleah Joi Moon. Their powerhouse voices are more than matched by Brandon Victor Dixon’s dad named Davis, and those of the supporting players, a bevy of childhood friends (Rema Webb, Nyseli Vega, Vanessa Ferguson, Jackie Leon), musician/ construction worker, Knuck (Chris Lee), and Miss Liza Jane (Kecia Lewis), the mysterious being in the Ellington Room--in my mind like Mary Lou Williams—an incomparable piano playing ancestor. Because Alicia Keyes’ music is so well known, audiences have a hard time repressing the need to belt her signature songs: “Girl on Fire,” “No One,” “Empire State of Mind.”

With singers wearing the wings of butterflies, Illinoise, is a stunning story of healing at the St. James Theatre. Vocalists and musicians occupy the stage’s upper level, celestial, as dancers performing Justin Peck’s choreography take center stage. Passionate followers of Sufjan Stevens revel in the gorgeous music in an idyllic set as the dancers play out themes of death, loss, and grieving.

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.

Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret: How Kinky is It?

The musical Cabaret was always a window into the years leading up to the atrocities of World War II based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories. Landmark productions starring Joel Grey and Alan Cumming as Emcee at the fictional Kit Kat Club allowed us to glimpse a decadence we could never imagine. Can you ever top the images of cross-dressing, cross-gender, and utter flagrant sex that John Kander’s music and Fred Ebb’s lyrics brought to provocative life? The new must-see production at the August Wilson Theater, redone in the round so that it could give audiences not only the vision but the experience, is simply above and beyond.

And how do you celebrate that? This opening weekend literally had audiences leaving their troubles at the door, as Eddie Redmayne, the latest Emcee welcomes everyone in whatever your language, to do just that. Angular, his kinkily-clad body a vessel of dis-jointed movement, “Wilkommen” he sings and introduces the ladies and gentlemen dancers who thrust their pelvises your way. Soon the key figures, an American writer called Clifford Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wood), an actress named Sally Bowles (a marvelous Gayle Rankin) after Isherwood’s friend, the writer Jane Bowles, and others join the party. Most poignant is landlady Fraulein Schneider, a fabulous Bebe Neuwirth and her beau Herr Schultz (Steven Skybell), a Jew. When he brings her fresh fruit, it is not only an Edenic gift and sexy, but in that real time of deprivation, it brought life-affirming hope.

Speaking to the actors as the Kit Kat Club became a huge multi-leveled party space with flowing Moet & Chandon, lobster rolls, and tasty sliders, we learned just how much the long legacy of the play informed this new production. Sporting a Kit Kat logo “eye” pin, a gift from director Rebecca Frecknall, Neuwirth said in this subtle performance she was mindful that the role was created for Lotte Lenya.

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?

Alex Bornstein at the NYWFT Muse Awards: “You Are Enough.

“Do not fuck with a woman from NYC,” exclaimed comedian/actress Alex Bornstein, accepting her award for The Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment Made in NY Award at this year’s NYWFT Muse Awards.

The “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” star reminded 700 guests seated for a sumptuous steak dinner at Cipriani 42nd Street this week, she was not actually “made in New York,” but everyone seemed to think she was, maybe because as Susie Myerson, she epitomized the brash, pushy person who could be a New York bred talent agent.

Her parents never called to congratulate her for any of her work, but they did for “Mrs. Maisel.” “You were good,” said her mother, while her father asked, “Why weren’t you the lead?” Her mother replied, “Because the skinny one with the perfect tits is the lead.” This may have bothered her growing up, but as the Muses dispense advice, now she knows: “You are enough.”

Canadian actress Tantoo Cardinal whose personal story informed Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, had gratitude to family, particularly her grandmother who picked her up from the “dregs of genocide.” When her grandfather spoke her name, she said, “I knew he knew me.” And when he died, she wore an eagle feather in her hair for him. That was brave, she told the crowd. Of indigenous descent, she was taught to be ashamed of who she was.

The WONDERSTRUCK and A QUIET PLACE actress Millicent Simmons accepted the Loreen Arbus Changemaker Award. Her mother was discouraged from learning to sign by doctors who thought that would slow her, a deaf baby, in learning to speak. A riveting performer, in A QUIET PLACE II, she leads the cast including writer director John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, often giving them notes. Actress Kyra Sedgwick has taken on directing. Her husband Kevin Bacon advised her: she was great at directing, if only she would never say “I’m sorry,” as she worked—as in, I’m sorry but we’re doing another take. This gave the audience a hearty, knowing chuckle.

Water for Elephants: An Awesome Spectacle on Broadway

This circus show comes with no disclaimer. No animals were hurt in Water for Elephants, opening this week at the Imperial Theater. Some human characters, yes! But if you know the story from the movie and the book on which it’s based, you know that certain bad leaders get their just desserts. The animals, so appealing in their puppet form, make for the heart and soul of this beautiful theater piece.

When Marlena, a gorgeous aerialist (Isabelle McCalla), married to the ringmaster (Paul Alexander Nolan), must put down her prized, overworked show horse, he ascends to the heavens in a white sash, carried aloft in the acrobatics of Antoine Boissereau, an elegant performer from France in his Broadway debut. Here is a riveting moment, the essence of this production: the audience must suspend disbelief; awed, you see the divine in the art.

Now, of course, Marlena must find another act, and soon an elephant with long curled eyelashes wraps her in its trunk. The elephant act works well to rescue the Depression era failing Benzini Brothers Circus. Along with a talented troupe of acrobats and one funny clown (Joe de Paul—the Playbill says he really did run away with the circus), the circus thrives. The day is saved! Until . . .