Gossip Central

White Lotus in Rajasthan: Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright

The fictive White Lotus resort in Thailand, the locus of Mike White’s mega HBO series in its third season, has nothing on the Six Senses wellness retreats in India. Seeing the staff line up to greet guests arriving by boat in episode one recalled entrée into the extraordinarily fabulously fashioned Six Senses Fort Barwara in Rajasthan—modeled after Marrakech’s La Mamounia. On a recent trip, we were treated to a cascade of bright red rose petals on a recent visit, by a staff lining up for this awesome welcome.

True, the tiger safari is a great lure. Tourists often book multiple excursions in a given day a year in advance, just in case Charger, the alpha male, feels like a stroll in this nearby preserved habitat also occupied by crocodiles, monkeys, mongooses, and spotted deer, the favored delectable dinner for tigers. Snagging a last-minute reservation, we careened around road curves in our open-air jeep, assigned to the park’s Zone 4, hoping to catch a glimpse. Not only did Charger make the scene, so too did one of his lady friends and their three cubs. We had won the safari lottery.

But just in case, the consolation prize was none too shabby: hanging in a resort featuring prana yoga, sound meditation, classes in pottery and herbal cures—plus pool, sauna, steam, and massage. If this fort had been home to kings, we were next in line.

Climbing up the 720 steps to a white hilltop temple, we encountered a wedding party. Young boys asked to take selfies with us, and the women wrapped in festive red, green, blue saris pulled us into dance. Rose petals may be a metaphor for a valentine’s love, or for the kind of connection that has no price.

Tammy Faye: Finding Religion on Broadway

Before becoming the pioneering televangelist power couple, Jim Bakker and his enterprising wife Tammy Faye Bakker sold God using puppets out of the back seat of a car, creating an industry and an empire. Religion, as we know, is big business. Limning their rise—and fall-- in fame and fortune, the new Elton John musical, Tammy Faye, puts them onstage at the newly refurbished Palace Theater, set against a wall of television monitors. The usual ministry of heavy-weights—Billy Graham (Mark Evans), Jimmy Swaggart (Ian Lassiter), Pat Robertson (Andy Taylor), Jerry Falwell (Michael Cerveris)-- pop up like the stars on Hollywood Squares. The story doesn’t get more American than this.

Except this is Broadway, and it’s Tammy Faye whose arc we follow. Before feminism was a thing, she master-minded much of the God-selling program. A wronged woman once Jim strayed with Jessica Hahn (Alana Pollard), Tammy Faye went off her own rails, spending excessively, downing drugs in her own tearfully sad journey--all to great spectacle; she’s accompanied by Elton John’s tunes—“He’s Inside Me,” “Look How Far We’ve Fallen,” “If You Came to See Me Cry,” “See You in Heaven”--with Jake Shears’ lyrics, book by James Graham, under Rupert Goold’s direction.

Opening night had Extravaganza written all over in sequins and glitz, from Jake Shears’ multicolored track suit to Elton John’s pearls. A Tammy Faye look-alike played the red carpet, batting winged eyelashes. We met Tammy Faye’s son, Jay Bakker, and his BFF Jeanette at the Tavern on the Green afterparty. No, he doesn’t see his dad, who seems to be in hiding. The great Christian Borle is in his glory portraying a hammy Jim Bakker. Jay Bakker was thrilled to hear Katie Brayben portraying his mom, and meet Michael Stipe who told Jay that when he started out recording in a studio, he was on the same microphone as Tammy Faye, a big moment for the REM singer/ lyricist. Meantime, young Jay said he was listening to “Losing My Religion.”

Remembering Paul Morrissey

From the edgy look of his movies—FLESH, TRASH, HEAT, to name a few--you would never think of Paul Morrissey as deeply religious. With his friend and partner Andy Warhol, a fellow Catholic, he made art, collaborating on many cinema-verite films and other ventures including the purchase of cliff-high acreage in Montauk overlooking the Atlantic.

The legendary Eothen had on it a number of cottages—more like rustic Catskill bungalows—where visitors could reside. Realtor Linda Stein who had brokered the deal stayed for a summer with Morrissey insisting that she shut lights when rooms were not in use. Not quite a conservationist, he was old school frugal and utilities out east are not cheap. Notables passed through: dutchesses, Kennedy’s and Radziwill’s, artists, musicians such as Lou Reed, the Rolling Stones. Curmudgeonly and loving, Paul Morrissey was the consummate host.

Friends and family celebrated him at his funeral this week hosted by his adoring nieces. Gerard Malanga, who had introduced Morrissey to Warhol in 1965, sent a poem. With speakers: the casting director Leonard Finger and music manager Danny Fields, much was made of Morrissey’s contradictions to a knowing crowd including Geraldine Smith and Susan Blond. A promoter of The Velvet Underground, Morrissey nevertheless cautioned against drug use. Compelled to sell the property long after Warhol died in 1987, he bought three units in the newly desirable trailer park nearby, just before the market surged for these waterfront residences now beached on cement foundations in rows. One for himself, the others for visiting family.

Luca Guadagnino's Queer at the New York Film Festival: Daniel Craig Looking for Love

The novels of William S. Burroughs may be difficult to adapt—just ask David Cronenberg—but in the able imagination of Luca Guadagnino, the transformation of Queer to film is a triumph. The packed audience at the recent Alice Tully Hall premiere, a high point at this year's New York Film Festival, went wild as the creative team took the stage for the post-screening Q&A. And it is not only because the movie stars Daniel Craig. Guadagnino explained how as a boy in Palermo, he picked up the Burroughs work and always wanted to make this film. While working on Challengers from screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes’ script, he gifted him the book one day and said “Read this tonight.”

The text of Queer, unlike say, Burroughs’ most famous Naked Lunch, has a linear thread so a narrative could be made of the love story between William Lee and a younger Eugene Allerton (a formidable Drew Starkey). Yes, there’s plenty of man-on-man sex—minus the testosterone. How else can you explain the tenderness? Prowling Mexico City looking for a connection, Lee has a tryst or two, essential to the vision of what homosexuality meant in the midcentury—achy, twitchy, awkward, and alone, Craig plays Lee’s vulnerability.

Of course, there are drugs involved. Costume designer J. W. Anderson spoke of dressing Lee in cool whites when the substance of choice was cocaine to the colors for heroin use. A funny moment comes when a doctor asks the sick Lee, are you addicted to opiates? Cut into chapters, Queer proceeds to South America as Lee looks to explore “telepathy;” Lee invites Allerton to travel with him in search of yage. The jungle scenes feature an unrecognizable Lesley Manville as shaman—the one significant woman in this movie, a transformation from the male Dr. Cotter of the book.

Another significant change: insisting that Queer did not have an ending, Guadagnino and Kuritzkes supply one, bringing closure to their plot. As Guadagnino put it, the novel opens a door and then closes it. Guadagnino proposed, “What if we went through that door?”

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.

John Slattery, Steve Buscemi, Michael Shannon at Tribeca: Actors Direct

Among the pleasures of Tribeca this year, actors have taken the helm of movies, working well with other actors, and finding stories that reveal their strengths as directors.

Actor John Slattery, well known for his role in Mad Men, is not just another pretty face. He premiered a film at the Tribeca Film Festival as director: Maggie Moore(s), scripted by Paul Birnbaum, could not be funnier given that two, not one, women named Maggie Moore are murdered. Slattery’s Mad Men pal Jon Hamm—let’s just say he’s not the Don Draper heart throb we knew, --leads a cast of loony characters. Hamm plays a lonely widower who works as the cop on this bizarre coincidence of a case. SNL alum Tina Fey, nutty as a peeping tom neighbor, is divorced and their relationship grounds the dramatis personae, including a pedophile, a dumb fast-food store manager, a closeted Nazi freak, and a large, scary deaf man for hire.

Sad things happen and make you laugh but no one you really know and love gets hurt in the making of this madcap movie. Well, maybe except one.

And, big reveal, Slattery does fine work making all the comedy and poignance land.

Andre Royo in Drinking in America: Heads of a Bygone Era

A glass of wine with dinner, or a joint if you are so inclined, might be a good idea before meeting the array of characters who so imbibe in Eric Bogosian’s award-winning one-man tour-de-force, Drinking in America, a production of Audible at the Minetta Lane Theatre. Performed to wiry perfection by Andre Royo, the assorted men he plays hale from the 1980’s. You might want to consider this background, drinking in American culture, to understanding the male toxicity—and fragility-- of our moment, decades later. And let’s face it, the drugs are different now.

Which may explain why the jokes landed askew at the performance we attended, even though Royo could not have been more appealing—as a talent agent, for example, doing lines of coke to wake up, trying to book Lee Marvin, but Richard Chamberlain would do. Or vice versa. It would be good to know the young folk in the audience could get these references.

Or the traveling salesman, on the road hawking industrial ceramic tile, wasted in a hotel room with an unseen “Cheryl.” The vignette starts with his paternal, fatigued request: “Cheryl, keep your rubbing to yourself,” as he passes out in an easy chair. The ending is less than happy; getting his money’s worth, he advises her, “There’s no future in the escort business.”

Some Like It Hot: “Nobody’s Perfect,” But Maybe This Musical Comes Close

The musical Some Like It Hot, based on the beloved movie, tweaks its source, seeing in the original the chance to be both color and gender savvy. To recap the basic storyline, Joe and Jerry are a couple of working musicians who land a gig at a swank Chicago joint run by the mob. In between sets, they witness a gangland rub out, and now they are on the run for their lives. Hiding in plain sight, they dress as women and join an all-girls touring band heading for California. In the movie, Tony Curtis, Joe, and Jack Lemmon, Jerry, are pretty in disguise. Here, Joe (Christian Borle), not to face-shame, is goofy on a good day, but Jerry, redubbed Daphne (J. Harrison Ghee) looks as gorgeous and glamorous as Diana Ross. As Daphne, Jerry finds new depth and does not shy from engagement to Osgood (Kevin Del Aguila)—just because he was born a man. Osgood is understandably crazy about Daphne just the same. And boy, can these hoofers tap!

Sugar Kane, --that’s the Marilyn Monroe character-- still drinks and distrusts sax players. Here, a wonderful Adrianna Hicks, fresh off Six, shows ample song and dance chops; a sexy Sugar, she forms a tapping trio with Josephine and Daphne to lead the band, kept in check and on schedule by Sweet Sue (NaTasha Yvette Williams). Wise, she knows her mixed race band might not fare well in the South.

Salman Rushdie in Public

In one of the great Curb Your Enthusiasm vignettes, Larry David wanted to make a musical called “Fatwa,” the word itself giggle-worthy. But the fatwa on Salman Rushdie was no joke. Last week a lone, determined man got past light security at Chautauqua, a famous writers conference and knifed the author of Midnight’s Children and an Islam-offending novel called The Satanic Verses. As the story goes, without having ever read the book, the Ayatollah declared a bounty on Rushdie who had imagined mortal qualities in the prophet Mohammed. A translator was murdered in the ensuing outrage. 

Meanwhile, Rushdie had been in hiding in safe houses in England and the States for decades. In the 1980’s, someone sent the book to the American writer Paul Bowles who resided in Tangier, and worried about his expatriate status there if the authorities found out he possessed such a book. One year a hushed event brought the writer to the New York Public Library’s main branch for a PEN forum, an affirmation of freedom of expression; many celebrated Rushdie and the daring it took to pull this off. Needless to say, security was tight. And over time, Salman Rushdie let his guard down.

Girl Power: My Brilliant Friend, season 3 on HBO

Addiction to the HBO series My Brilliant Friend is second only to a passion for the source, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. That’s why, writing about the eight episodes of season 3, I do not fear spoilers. Faithful to the literature—in fact Ferrante is listed among the script writers—the series follows friends Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) and Lila (Gaia Girace) from childhood on, with season 3 the period of young adulthood: each has been married; Lila has a son, Lenu, 2 girls. Proud to a fault, and difficult to comprehend, Lila works in Bruno’s meatpacking plant, a harrowing flesh factory on every level. Lenu, now a famous novelist living in Florence seems to have it all. Something, however, is seriously missing. Their domestic lives play out against blistering violence in Naples, with friends beaten and raped. Yet all the while, their relationship endures, at times through enormous bouts of envy, irritation, ambivalence. Who among us can’t relate?