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.

John Slattery in The Subject was Roses: Waiting for Sarah Jessica Parker

At Bay Street Theater, the stage was set for The Subject Was Roses. In the courtyard, the drama was palpable. A wine cart selling Wolffer sparkling rose, a summer intern named Lily giving long stemmed roses to VIPs beside the red carpet where theater royalty such as Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin smiled for cameras. The play features an all-star family, that is John Slattery, his real-life wife Talia Balsam, and their son Harry Slattery, a star-in-waiting in his theater debut, but everyone was waiting for Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick who brought family and friends Andy Cohen and Bridget Everett, star of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, now going into its third season. The show would go on.

A family story, The Subject was Roses begins as Timmy (Harry Slattery) returns home from war to find his parents, grateful for his return but living out age-old marital issues. Alcohol is involved.

Let’s just say, he has good genes: Said Balsam, herself the child of actors, Joyce Van Patten and Martin Balsam: “It’s a period piece but it’s the internal lives, the alcoholism, the family dynamic of a boy watching his parents in a dysfunctional situation. Someone who wants to get out and make his own way is universal.”

As Timmy, navigating the emotional roller coaster of this post-WW II family in Frank Gilroy’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play, Harry makes it all look so easy. John Slattery was happy with opening night, especially for his son. First time out of the gate, “Harry hit it out of the park.”

Bernstein’s Wall: Leonard Bernstein Uptown

An elite group gathered this week for a special screening of BERNSTEIN’S WALL, a documentary about the great composer/ conductor/ educator, a fixture of 20^th century American cultural history. Well-timed, the riveting documentary comes after Bradley Cooper’s success with MAESTRO, his Oscar nominated biopic of the legendary artist. But here, with Leonard Bernstein’s own words dancing across the screen, we get the inner life of this creative genius.

This week’s screening and dinner at Jean-Georges’ new Four Twenty-Five restaurant hit every high note, hosted by Spectrum One’s Frank DiLella—not far from the Philharmonic where Bernstein’s illustrious career was launched at 25, when, as an understudy conductor filling in, he garnered raves. Ditto for this exceptional movie. Not quite a biopic, as filmmaker Doug Tirola makes clear—a proper one might be hours long—this film, comprised only of Bernstein’s own voice from tapes and readings from personal letters, recounting the importance of music, his own process, how music informs his life, still manages to touch all bases: his political activism—starting with the Berlin Wall, and coming to the “Kotel” in Jerusalem.

BERNSTEIN’S WALL was actually ready prior to MAESTRO, and the filmmakers—including producer Susan Bedusa-- strategically held it back. Bradley Cooper’s focus on the Bernstein’s marriage to Felicia Montenegro and homosexuality was a point of contention. What about Bernstein’s politics? At an early BERNSTEIN’S WALL screening put together by Peggy Siegal, Peter Duchin, who had attended Bernstein’s legendary parties, remembered the infamous one Tom Wolfe sensationalized in his Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Chasers. Duchin said the encounter was Lenny’s wife Felicia’s idea to bring the Black Panthers to the Dakota: Let’s just hear what they have to say. A not-so-outrageous event that nevertheless made headlines.

Tirola illuminates these subjects: Black Panthers, McCarthyism, Bernstein’s Talmudic style as a teacher. His pulse attuned to the politics of the day, and mensch that he was, Leonard Bernstein did not turn away. Jewish, he fixed neither his nose nor his name. And even though Bernstein clearly states that at age 10 he wished his strict immigrant father dead—he was dismayed at his son’s career choice—Lenny came to understand and to love him.

The Commandant’s Shadow: Rudolf Hoss’ Secondhand Smoke

“I had the best part of my life in Auschwitz,” says Hans Jurgen Hoss, son of the killing camp’s commandant, Rudolf Hoss—without a trace of irony. A fictional version of his time there can be seen in the Academy Award winning, THE ZONE OF INTEREST; he’s one of the five children who frolicked in the garden beside the camp’s walls, oblivious to what was going on. As he says in the documentary, THE COMMANDANT’S SHADOW, he thought it was a prison and was happy to be able to live where his father worked. In his late ‘80’s, taking the filmmakers around the house, he shows where the crematoria could be seen from an upstairs window, noting there were fewer trees then. He does not recall a stench. His son Kai, Rudolf Hoss’ grandson says, understating the difficult matter of his father having been a child next to the murder of millions, “I think my father has repressed memories.”

Astonishing but true, awaiting trial for war crimes in Nuremburg, Rudolf Hoss wrote his autobiography, segments of which form a compelling narrative of what exactly went on in Auschwitz, providing a detailed account and perhaps varnishing his reputation, a confession. He watched as children were torn screaming from their mothers and thought of his own family, he writes. Director Daniela Volker was amazed that his book was not more widely known. Even Hans only read it for the film.

Is it merely a German boast when Kai Hoss asserts repeatedly, “My grandfather was the most successful mass murderer in human history?” Tasked with creating an efficient killing machine as the Fuhrer demanded the Final Solution for the Jews, Hoss was hands on. Now a man of the church, his grandson Kai copes with this legacy through scripture, God’s grace, and his ministry to others in Stuttgart, he tells me at the film’s New York premiere at the Whitby Hotel.

Also present was Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, the daughter of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who, as a young woman transported to Auschwitz, was in luck. The orchestra needed a cellist; playing music kept her alive. In the film we see her celebrating her 98th birthday in London. Distant and tough on her daughter, Anita’s mothering was no-nonsense. Now a psychoanalyst, Maya sees her life as a mess.  Moving to Berlin, she memorializes her murdered grandparents who she never met in the effort to reclaim what might have been-- had life in Germany been possible. Despite a hopeful and generous world view, Anita’s open hyper-criticism of Maya is evident. “Your Auschwitz is different from my Auschwitz. I did not know if I would live another hour,” she tells her daughter even as Maya is desperate to know more. Anita triumphs hosting Hans Jurgen Hoss for coffee and fruit pie in London—an utterly remarkable, historic meeting, given the sides of the wall each occupied in the war years. This coming together is the film’s climax, and summing it up, Anita delivers the film’ zinger: “Isn’t that beautiful?”

Ladies Who Lunch: Designs by Josie Natori to Benefit Cancer Research

On my way into Riverpark for the fashion show marking the annual “Collaborating for a Cure Ladies Lunch” to benefit the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation, I ran into Dr. Waxman making his way out ‘round the revolving door. I’m here to see you, I said, always reminding the esteemed cancer specialist that my mother died in his care. But did we do the best we could for her? Yes, I replied. And I thank you for that. My mother died in 1996, and since that time I come to see the doctor at these special events, to learn how much more has been done by his researchers to combat a disease that affects just about every family.

While Dr. Waxman had to be elsewhere, he was there at Riverpark to support his wife Marion Waxman and the women who help this annual event such a huge success. This year designer Josie Natori, who I knew for her lingerie created for Lord & Taylor back in the day, presented gorgeous embroidered caftans. Models worked the spacious, elegant room as the ladies lunched on burrata and branzino. One stopped at every table to show off a stunning necklace from Mikimoto to be auctioned. The opulence was palpable at a time when most of us worry about the future of the planet. But that was not the point. The point is cancer, and it is still killing us.

Dr. Waxman often explains the latest accomplishments of his research foundation, reminding everyone, while we are all ageing beautifully, the older we get, the more vulnerable we are to the disease. I am sure no one wants to hear that news, but it feels worse because as life is extended, that means the greater possibility of illness for our kids—and grandkids. That hits home.

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.