I had one of those incredibly busy days that sometimes happen where I was running from 8.00am clear through till 11.00pm. My day was stacked with auditions, rehearsal (for a fun one night only industrial gig), errands, and my parents, rather unexpectedly, being in town.
I'm really tired. And I've spent the past couple of hours trying to catch up with things at home and plan what is looking like another heinously busy day tomorrow.
And I have a ton of shows to write about. When? Who the fuck knows? I'm hoping I'll have time to take a breath by the weekend. And then we'll see.
Keep tuning in.
Okay, just back from a short visit with the parents down the shore. It was fun. The pool in their complex in Jersey isn't heated, so the water was freezing, but it was still nice to get in some pool time.
The sketch comedy thing I did down at Theatre for the New City on Friday went pretty well. I was really nervous about it, due to the speed of the rehearsal process, but everyone seemed pleased with it. The playwright mentioned that one of the pieces will be expanded into a full length play. That might be cool. Don't know if there will be a role for me if and when that happens, but possibilities are cool, you know?
I've seen some theatre (surprise, surprise!) and I need to write about it, but I'm tired now.
Oh, hey, the reading that I did on Monday went really well, especially considering that we had only about 3 hours or so to read through it and talk about it before doing it for the crowd. It's a really good script that it probably 90% or more there already. The writer got some really good feedback afterward from the crowd that will help him make the script even stronger.
I really hope something happens with this. I'd love to continue with it.
Since then, I've been concentrating on learning my lines for a sketch comedy thing I'm doing tonight at Theatre for the New City. This is a part of the Lower East Side Festival of the Arts and I am appearing in two sketches written by Charles Battersby, the author of Kryptonite Hearts, the play I did down at Theatre for the New City earlier this year.
If you're in the East Village, come on down and check us out. We're supposed to go on at some point between 9.30pm and 10.00pm. It's hard to tell exactly with these things when we'll be going on, so that's why it's so general.
Still not sure what I'm doing this weekend. I have three invitations, all of which are for events out of town. Like my record with weddings, I, apparently, don't know anyone who celebrates Memorial Day in the city.
Regarding my news yesterday of my brother and sister-in-law's split, I'm sort of torn about how involved I might want to be in possibly helping.
After having had conversations with both, I feel like I have some idea of the communication issues they are having. Should I try to intervene?
All the people who have talked to me about this have said to stay the hell out of it. And I probably will. But I just have this nagging feeling that I should try to do something if I can.
Oh, and it's not because he's gay...STEVE HICKSON. Ew.
Argh.
I got the sad news tonight that my brother and sister-in-law have decided to separate.
I was pretty shocked because this news, which came to me from my father, by the way, is the first I've heard of any trouble in that quarter. They've been married for about 2 and a half years and, from what I gather tonight, there have been issues from the very beginning and it just got to a point where they were on completely different pages. And now they are taking a break to re-evaluate.
It was a little awkward tonight. As soon as I got off the phone with my father, I called my brother and got his voice mail. Then I called my sister-in-law and got her voice mail, during which the brother calls me back. And then while I'm taking to him, she calls.
So I talked to both tonight and got two very different pictures of what's going on down there. If they are going to try to work things out, which is the plan, I think, they need to spend some time both talking to each other and listening to each other.
I'm working very hard to be Switzerland and maintain neutrality here. Is that weird? I like her very much and I, of all people, know how difficult it can be to live with my brother. But I made clear tonight that I don't want to get thrust into the middle of this.
I don't really know how to proceed here. I, of course, don't really have a role in this drama, but I would like to be there (whatever that means) for both of them. Not sure that will be possible, especially if things continue to deteriorate between them, but that's my plan.
It's just so sad.
So I'll be doing a reading of a new play next week and all are invited to come check it out. The playwright seems to be interested in as much feedback as possible. It's totally free of charge, so come see it and bring your friends. It's really interesting and I like it a lot. Check out the details...
Shapeshifter by Jonthan Wallace
Monday, May 21st at 7.15pm
Shetler Studios
244 West 54th Street (between Broadway and 8th Ave)
12th Floor, Room 1210
If you come, be sure to stop afterward and say hi.
Hey, the Tony nominations for the 2006-2007 season came out a couple of days ago. I'm going to do some in-depth analysis a little later when I've had a chance to see more of the nominees, but there were some surprises, so I'll briefly hit some of that and discuss some initial impressions that struck me. You can see a full list of the nominations here.
-Snubbed were Broadway darlings Kristin Chenoweth and Kevin Spacey for their performances in revivals of The Apple Tree and A Moon for the Misbegotten, respectively. Spacey's turn got mixed reviews and no one really seems to like the production, but Chenoweth got raves in a production that wasn't universally adored, but which did manage to cop a nod for Best Revival (something Spacey's show did not).
-Mary Poppins managed to eke out a nomination for Best Musical, despite no one really seeming to like it very much. Not nominated for Best Musical was Legally Blonde, a show which did managed to get nominated for Best Score, Best Book, Best Direction, and Best Actress, all nominations for which Mary Poppins was passed over. All the other Best Musical nominees got their various parts nominated as well. Hmmm...so essentially what the nominators are saying here is that, in the case of these two shows, Legally Blonde has the better music and lyrics, better book, better direction, and a better leading lady, but that Mary Poppins is somehow, after all that, a better show. I smell a political play here big time.
-Speaking of Legally Blonde, its leading lady, Laura Bell Bundy, scored a nomination in a role and show that was originally conceived as a vehicle for the above mentioned Kristin Chenoweth, who, as I said, was not nominated for her own work this season. Interesting.
-The revival of Les Miserables was completely overlooked, as well, even though the similarly recreated A Chorus Line managed a couple of nominations. No idea what this means. I thought that nominators would either accept or reject these "recreations" together, but A Chorus Line seems to have been embraced and Les Miz snubbed.
-Both the Best Featured Actor and Actress in a Play categories shook out with two sets of two nominees from a single play and one lone nominee from another production.
-On the techinical side, there are the usual couple of categories that feature nominees competing against themselves. Jonathan Tunick is up for his orchestrations of both LoveMusik and 110 In the Shade and Brian MacDevitt is up for his Lighting Designs for both Inherit The Wind and Coast of Utopia.
-There was an interesting element this year of nominating only half of inseparable on-stage partnerships. From Frost/Nixon, Frank Langella's Nixon was nominated, but not Michael Sheen's Frost. From Deuce, Angela Lansbury got the nod, but not Marian Seldes with whom she shares a stage for 90 minutes. And at Inherit The Wind, Christopher Plummer's wily fox got a nomination, but not Brian Dennehy's pompous blowhard. Then there's the aforementioned A Moon for the Misbegotten, where Eve Best was recognized for her Josie and Kevin Spacey left out for his Jim. You could make the argument that the nominated performances in these cases could not possibly exist without the equally accomplished work of the stage partners. But that's the way that awards always fall. It's always good to keep in mind that no one's ever on stage in a vaccuum.
-There are an unusual amount of dead nominees this season. Fred Ebb and Peter Stone are included for their work on the musical Curtains, and August Wilson for his play Radio Golf. All three of these men were fairly beloved and each had a long career in the theatre. It will be interesting to see if any or all of them are able to swing the vote toward the posthumous.
Anyhow, that's it for now. I'm going to see what I can see over the next week or so and report back on how I feel the awards will go.
Again, I'm just burning through stuff and I find the programs around. Can't believe I've gotten this behind and I've barely told any stories or talked about any of the stuff I saw in London. Ah, well...it's always busy busy busy here.
Stairway To Paradise - This was the final Encores! concert of the season, a tribute to the glory days of the Broadway revue. This was essentially a collection of songs and sketches that appeared in various revues on Broadway between 1901(!) and 1954, a "greatest hits" if you will. The big name performer here was Kristin Chenoweth and, boy, did she deliver with both the comedy and big ballads. She was ably abetted by Christopher Fitzgerald and Kevin Chamberlain in the comedy and almost all of it landed beautifully. A first act sketch from 1924's Keep Kool that hinged on some unexpected goldenrod and the allergies that went with it was at once one of the simplest jokes (and really the whole sketch was built around a single joke) I've ever seen and one of the funniest scenes I've ever had the pleasure of seeing on or off Broadway. My only disappointment was the complete wasting of Ruthie Henshall, who made only one appearance in each act to sing a torch song in a pretty dress. This is just the sort of thing that PBS should be preserving and showing to the rest of the country. They'd love it. It was a wonderful evening.
The 5th Dimension - The prize for the more random event invitation I've gotten recently has got to go to Tim, who called one day and invited me to go see this '60's and 70's pop group at Town Hall. How much fun was this! At this point, there's only one original member left (Florence LaRue), but the harmonies are still there. They ran through their catalogue of hits and did some new stuff and not even a weird heckler (who was ejected by security from his front row seat midway through) could dampen the fun. Whoo-Hoo!
Journey's End - This revival on Broadway of this 1929 play by R.C. Sherriff at the Belasco Theatre tells the story of a group of British soldiers serving in the trenches in France during the first world war. Basically, the evening's theme is "war is hell," which makes it especially relevant in today's war-drenched political climate. On the eve of a spectacular clash with the Germans, we're in the bunker with the young Captain Stanhope, played by Hugh Dancy, and his men, a cross-section of military types of varying ages and experiences. The one common denominator is the pervasive fear that each and every one of these men feels at the coming conflict. How they deal with this and go on, or don't, is the stuff of this very serious drama. I was really blown away by this production. It's heavy, without being heavy-handed. It's naturalistic, while also being a very effective allegory for our current war situation. One quibble? The very naturalistic setting involves a very dim lighting plot that has the potential to strain the eyes. It's real and I get it, but it's still very dim and sometimes makes it difficult to tell at a glance who is who when you have a cast of men who are all dressed in somewhat identical uniforms. But don't let the grim subject matter put you off...this is a play that should be seen.
Radio Golf - This is the last of playwright August Wilson's landmark series of plays chronicling African-American life in every decade of the 20th Century. Before Wilson died two years ago, he was, arguably, America's greatest living playwright. So this is a play that should be seen, if only for its historical and sentimental value. Luckily, it also turned out to be a really good play. This is the one set in the 1990's, as always, in the Hill District in Pittsburgh. Harry Lennix plays Harmond Wilks, a Pittsburgh real estate magnate who is championing redevelopment in the dilapidated Hill District as a way of helping the people there while also raising his own profile for a run for mayor. The play follows the story of how this "limousine liberal" reconnects with his roots in this poor section of town, re-evaluates his priorities, and makes decisions that ultimately end up affecting the course of his life. This play was fascinating and engrossing and may be my new favorite in the Wilson canon. Tonya Pinkins gives a tremendous performance here as Harmond's upwardly mobile wife who may or may not be able to change a course that she's meticulously plotted for so long. There's less of Wilson's trademark mysticism here than in some of the plays and less of the speechifying and more plot than philosophy. And all that's to the good. We really care about these characters because they are real characters, not symbols or ciphers. Wilson still had something to say here, but he's saying it in the context of the drama, not in sidetrips and digressions from the drama. It's pretty cool. Even if you don't care for Wilson, give this one a try.
Talk Radio - This is a revial of Eric Bogosian's off-Broadway play of the mid-1980's. This time, it's on Broadway and starring Liev Schreiber as the rude, nasty, self-destructive radio host in a small midwestern town at the beginning of the talk radio movement in the early 1980's. There's not much plot in the play (Will the radio show get picked up for national syndication before Schreiber's Barry can kill himself with drugs and booze? Is he really helping people or just giving voice to the lunatic fringe? Can he pull together a personal life with a foxy co-worker?), but it's really all about the characters, not the story. Or should I say, character. Schreiber's Barry Champlain is such a charismatic figure that, despite being a complete asshole with few people skills, he is the dominant figure in all of these people's lives. Bogosian gives each featured character a sort of monologue to the audience in which they explain what Barry means to them and how he impacts their lives. And I totally got it. Schreiber creates a man here whose entire being is like a traffic accident...horrible, but you cannot look away. He's like a black hole who sucks in everyone around him for better, but more likely worse. He makes you understand Barry's appeal to his co-workers and his audience, which seems to be equal parts nuts and just plain folks who sense in him a conduit for their own voices. He's that sexy bad boy that your parents warned you about that you cannot resist. Amazing. If you're looking for the personification of charisma on a stage, here it is. All the other actors are terrific as well. The set is an amazing recreation of a 1980's radio station, which was probably a lot harder to do than you might think. Go.
It's been awhile since I've been personally attacked via comments on the blog. But, yesterday's post attracted such an attack...one that, ironically, had little-to-nothing to do with the content of the post.
I'm not going to engage in a tit-for-tat exchange with this person. I'm going to address this once and that's it.
Rather than being an anonymous reader who found me through the net in some, more or less, random way, this person is someone who was once a close friend. Last fall, this person did something pretty horrible to me and I made the decision that I could no longer be his friend. I explained this to him several times, while also conveying that it was possible that we might be able to be friends again sometime in the future if I ever got to a point where I would want to have him in my life again.
This was followed by a series of emails and IMs that alternately pleaded for my friendship and crucified me for making the decision to end the friendship and for doing various things that he would read about in this blog. I have invited him in the past to stop reading the blog, but he has, apparently, not done so.
I need to stress, for those of you that actually do know me, that this person knows no more about my life any longer than what he reads here. Just to clear the air, I will address some of what he wrote.
1) He seems to suggest that I'm whoring myself out for theatre tickets, dinners, and hotel rooms. While I often make jokes about being a "ticket whore," this is far from reality. Now and then, a friend or family member will take me to dinner or to the theatre, and sometimes I am offered complimentary tickets through various sources and connections. By and large, however, I pay my own way to the theatre, usually through lotteries, rush tickets, or standing room. I can't even remember when last I stayed in a hotel room, so I'm not certain from whence that part of the rant came.
2) This person would occasionally come to New York and stay at my apartment for a week or more. To thank me for my hospitality, he would sometimes take me to dinner or to the theatre. I always made clear that this was unnecessary as I am always happy to have friends come to stay. But I was happy to accept as I do enjoy going to the theatre and it's fun to share that with a friend. And he seemed happy to do it, since, as he explained to me, the cost of this was much cheaper than the cost of a hotel room. Anyhow, this is now continually thrown up at me as an example of my being ungrateful for his attentions, etc.
3) He seems to think I'm a bit older than I am. I am 34 years old. Most people say I appear significantly younger, but I'm happy to show anyone who asks my driving license.
4) He seems to think I've not appeared in many "professional" productions. Again, I'm not certain what his definition of professional is, but my resume would beg to disagree. In the matter of the specific production he mentions, it IS on my resume and I do give him credit there for it. Not sure what he means by this.
Anyhow, I'm now done with this matter. In response to the comment, a couple of readers sent comments that were, to my amusement, almost identical. Check this out:
"And whoever the hell [name deleted] is, who commented on your blog, he sure seems like an ass."
And...
"[name deleted] is an a$$ ... but what do you expect from a theatre
'professional' who can't spell Equity or Spamalot ..."
Thanks, folks, for your support. Nice to know that not everyone out there is so eager to believe the worst. I really appreciate it.
Sorry for the lack of updates here. I've been incredibly busy these days running from one audition to another and, this weekend, decamping for New Jersey to see the parents for Mothers Day. Nothing solid yet, either in the day job front or a new show, but we'll see what pans out.
Here's a quick rundown, in no particular order, of some of the things I've seen lately.
Inherit The Wind - This is a Broadway revival of a true American classic by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee starring two lions of the theatre, Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. You know this play. It's a fictionized take on the 1920's Scopes-Monkey Trial in Tennessee in which two powerful celebrity lawyers take up the question of whether Darwin's theory of evolution should be taught in classrooms. It was great to see Dennehy (in the William Jennings Bryan anti-evolution role) and Plummer (the Clarence Darrow pro-evolution role) battle it out on stage like the two old pros they are. And, frankly, this play could have been written last week. The issues that it raises of religion versus science are still fought over in the south and midwest on a regular basis. The play itself is heavily weighted toward Dennehy and he does a lot with this more flashy of the two leads. He's got the weight of public opinion in this small town on his side and that allows a lot of ugly stuff to get said in the name of God and country. Plummer is a wily fox though and he picks the perfect moment to turn the tables on Dennehy. The fact that this moment is made to seem a by-product of extreme desperation is just the icing on the cake for Plummer. The play is like a sudden death chess match. Try to see this if you can.
Gutenberg!-The Musical - This two-hander, which just closed down at Actors Playhouse, was hysterically funny and self-referential in the [title of show] vein. I love this stuff, so I found it all vastly amusing. The show is set at a backers' audition and Darren Goldstein and David Turner play Doug and Bud, writers who will be performing their new musical, an epic about printer press inventor Johannes Gutenberg, for us and playing all the parts themselves. They do this with the help of a large assortment of baseball caps with various characters' names on them. Goldstein and Turner were marvelous at assuming all of these roles and even more so when interacting "merely" as Doug and Bud. A technical glitch in the second act was handled brilliantly in character and I don't think most of the audience had a clue what was really going on. I wasn't certain myself at first. Kudos to these guys for going out there and selling this funny show as though their lives depended upon it.
A Moon For The Misbegotten - This revival of another American classic, this one by Eugene O'Neill, comes to Broadway courtesy of London's Old Vic and starring sometime movie star Kevin Spacey (also Artistic Director of the Old Vic), Eve Best, and Colm Meaney. This got kind of savaged by the critics here (mainly, I think, because there was a truly superlative production of this play on Broadway not even 10 years ago that starred Gabriel Bryne and Cherry Jones; and some critics will still remember an even earlier production starring Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst, but I digress), but I enjoyed the character work here of Spacey and especially Best whose play this truly is. It's very compelling to see two such damaged people come together, clash, maybe find love/lust, and ultimately crash and burn amidst the detritous of the lives they've made for themselves. The stark realities of these lives are made even more manifest in Bob Crowley's set, which looks more like the arid west than O'Neill's Connecticut, but which is the perfect barren locale to watch these characters go at it. People will go see this for Spacey, but come away wondering who exactly this Eve Best is. She rules the joint from the curtain and I hope we see her more often on these shores.
As always, more later...
Actor Joe Grifasi was ahead of me in line at the box office at the Lyceum Theatre waiting to pick up tickets to the current revival of Inherit The Wind that is starring Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy.
You know this guy even if you don't recognize the name. He was the original Bazzard/Phillip Bax in the original cast of The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway. He was Otto Titsling (Inventor and Kraut) in the Bette Midler/Barbara Hershey tear-jerker Beaches. And he was a randy Plaza Hotel bellhop in the Bette Midler/Lily Tomlin comedy Big Business.
And those are just the stuff I thought of off the top of my head.
So I'm finally getting around to writing some about the theatre I've seen over the last week or so. And I promise that I'll get back to the London stuff as well.
Prelude to a Kiss - How interesting to see a Broadway revival of a play from the 1980's that didn't rock anyone's world, but was just a quirky, interesting exercise for 3 actors. I don't think anyone will be claiming that this is a classic American play, even a modern one, but it's interesting and fun. And the very sexy Alan Tudyk was shirtless quite a bit. Always a good thing. I'm sure you know the story: hapless guy meets cute with quirky girl and they quickly get married. At the wedding, the girl gets kissed by a mysterious old man and they seem to switch bodies. Is this for real? Or is the guy just paranoid? Is it a modern fairy tale or a metaphor for the old saw about how people change after marriage? It's entertaining, but comes off, on the whole, a bit slight. Afterward, as lovely as it was, I was wondering if that's all there was.
The Coast of Utopia - This was the very definition of epic in every way...huge cast, huge sets and costumes, huge running time. I saw all three of the plays that comprise this work in a single day and it was a bit overwhelming. Cast was terrific, especially Ethan Hawke, Brian F. O'Bryne (terrific in everything and New York's most reliable character actor), and Jennifer Ehle. It about a group of real-life Russian philosphers/rabble rousers and follows the group from their student days in St. Petersburg through their lives for 40 or 50 years. It's like Chekov by way of Stoppard. You just sort of have to go with it and let the whole thing wash over you. Go, if you have a chance. We don't get big theatrical epics like this very often and this is a chance to catch something the likes of which you probably won't see again.
Communicating Doors - This is the Alan Ayckbourn play that I went down to Pennsylvania to see because my best friend Greg was playing the possibly murderous bad guy. This play is a really fascinating story about three women who are drawn together by a hotel room door that seems to be a portal to the past and future. Time travel is always a hit-and-miss dramatic device (see any number of Star Trek episodes), but Ayckbourn pulls it off here by construsting a play meant to be played at the breakneck pace of a farce without actually being one. That was the most problematic part of this production...there were moments when the cast allowed the play to take on a more naturalistic sort of pace, which just killed some scenes. The technical aspects were, again, hit and miss, but with a small theatre company doing such an amazingly difficult (technically) piece, you have to give them some credit. Because my friend was in the show, I was privvy to some of the behind-the-scenes drama, and it's amazing that some productions even get on in the first place.
Frost/Nixon - Wow. You've probably heard about this one, as it's about all the strum und drang that led up to British television personality David Frost's landmark 1977 series of interviews with Richard Nixon. It was in these interviews that Frost got Nixon to admit guilt and, basically, apologize to the American people for his part in the Watergate scandal. I have to say that Frank Langella's Nixon is an amazing thing to behold. He's not doing an impression, so much as simply inhabiting the character. He's got he posture and the inflections down pat, and even though his resemblance to Nixon is very slight, you get it totally. Michael Sheen has the easier job as Frost, I think, but he's still an able sparring partner for Langella and the give and take between the two is extrordinary. Never has a television interview seemed more like a battle in some existential war. Who's winning? Who's losing? Hey, it's not Waterloo...it's television. This play was a bit slow starting, but becomes riveting as it progresses. Langella is a front-runner for the Best Actor in a Play Tony this season and, if he gets it, it'll be well-deserved.
More later...
It's been a busy week or so here. In addition to the auditions I've been doing, the auditions I've been trying to get into, and the sending out of resumes, there's been some theatre.
Here's a quick "it's 1.00am" rundown:
Friday: Prelude to a Kiss on Broadway at the Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre.
Saturday: All three Coast of Utopia plays by Tom Stoppard on Broadway at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre.
Sunday: Traveling to Pennsylvania to see Greg in Alan Ayckbourn's Communicating Doors. We also watch Jerry Springer: The Opera on DVD, which I picked up in London.
Monday: Return to the city; no theatre.
Tuesday: Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.
Wednesday: A Chorus Line on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre and Howard Katz by Patrick Marber off-Broadway at the Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre.
Thursday (tonight): Talk Radio by Eric Bogosian on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre.
So I haven't been home much. I'll write more about them later. I hope.
This evening, I saw Les Miserables star Alexander Gemignani walking east on West 49th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues. You know...over by Worldwide Plaza.
I have not yet seen this production, but I would like to see it.
He plays Jean Valjean. He's very young. But everyone says he's good in it. I've seen him in other things in which he's been excellent.
Today is my parents' 36th wedding anniversary. Whoo-Hoo!
I called tonight to wish them a Happy Anniversary and to find out how they were celebrating. They are in the midst of closing up the condo in Florida to return to the house in New Jersey, so they were really too busy to do anything other than go out to dinner.
No presents either, since they just spent a lot of money on the long trip to the South Pacific. There were cards though, so I hear.
Anyhow, can't wish them enough happiness. Congratulations, Mom and Dad.