Last Saturday night, the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s one and only transport van was stolen. In preparation for this summer’s road tour around the Bay Area, the Troupe had just outfitted the blue 1994 seven-passenger Chevy with new tires. The van was parked in the South Mission/Excelsior area waiting to be loaded up with equipment for the Troupe’s music rehearsal the next morning.
The Troupe, celebrating its 50th Anniversary this summer, did not have theft insurance on the stolen vehicle. They desperately need a van to transport the troupers to and from the parks where they are scheduled to perform their 50th Anniversary production, Too Big to Fail (July 4-September 27). They are making an emergency appeal to the Bay Area community in the hopes that someone can come forward and donate a van (for a tax deduction). If anyone has info about the high-jacked vehicle, or can donate a transport van, please contact San Francisco Mime Troupe general manager Jenee Gill at 415-285-1717.
The Tony Award-winning SFMT opens its song-and-dance satire of monumental proportions, Too Big to Fail, July 4 in San Francisco’s Dolores Park. All performances are free (unless otherwise noted) and open to the public.
Mime Troupe Alumna Wilma Bonet directs Velina Brown, BW Gonzalez, Ed Holmes, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Adrian Mejia and Michael Gene Sullivan, with music and lyrics by Pat Moran.
Live (well, the West Coast version of live, which is actually three hours NOT live, but hey, we’re on the West Coast) 63rd Annual Tony Awards blogging!
Please comment and join the conversation! Hit refresh for anything new. P.S. Comments will be shared (with your permission) in the main part of the post as they arrive.
Warning: there’s liable to be a lot of gushing ahead because I LOVE Dolly Parton, Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Fonda, Angela Lansbury, Next to Normal, Billy Elliotand Broadway itself. It’s party night because it’s Tony night.
To get things going, here’s a handsome photo of our host for the evening, Neil Patrick Harris, who, after watching him host “Saturday Night Live,” deserves his own variety show (btw, so does Justin Timberlake, who was also brilliant on “SNL”). NPH sings, dances, has impeccable comic timing and is just cool as hell. Can we please bring back the variety show (and not the way Rosie O’Donnell, bless her Broadway-lovin’ heart, did last fall — that was a disaster!)??? Tony Awards host Neil Patrick Harris (Photo by the Associated Press)
It’s showtime! Fantastic opening number with Billy Elliot and fantastic counterpoint between West Side Story’s “Tonight” and Guys & Dolls’“Luck Be a Lady.”
Not entirely sure Stockard Channing (who looks AMAZING) should have been opposite the very young and very alive Aaron Tveit.
Shrek the Musical’s “Let Your Freak Flag Fly” was cute, but it looks like Disney gone haywire.
If only Dolly Parton were actually IN 9 to 5, I’d be there every night. Still, big love to Alison Janney, Stephanie J. Block and Megan Hilty, who actually are in the show.
Love Liza, but the vocals? Not so much.
The Hair revival definitely lets the sun shine in.
I’m so happy to see Dolly Parton on a Broadway stage. Don’t think she’ll be going home with any trophies, so let’s get her photo up here. Photo by Associated Press
Jane Fonda showing some major cleveage in a black gown. She presented the best performance by a featured actor in a play to Roger Robinson in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. That’s the play the Obamas saw last weekend. Photo by Associated press
The Shrek number: Trying too hard to blend Beauty and the Beast with Spamalot.
Says commenter “bracelets”: “The guy clapping after the SHREK number sums it up exactly.”
Tracy writes of the opening number: “Bret Michaels on the Tony’s? That’s a surprise. He called me when I was 21. I sent him fan mail and a poem. That crush is long over.”
James Gandolfini says he and Shrek are no relation. Fuggedaboutit. He and Jeff Daniels presented the best featured actress in a musical award to Angela Lansbury!!! This is her fifth Tony. God love her. She is the essence of gratitude and happiness and joy! Photo by Associated Press
Ah, a Mamma Mia moment — something for the viewers in the great Midwest.
Pre-broadcast award: Lee Hall best book of a musical for Billy Elliot. Now best score: winners Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey for Next to Normal. Well deserved. Fantastic cast album. How do you beat Elton John and Dolly Parton? Well, you write a kick-ass score. Kitt won for best orchestrations as well. It’s so incredibly rude to cut people off mid-speech. Sorry, guys.
West Side Story number: “Dance” at the Gym, “Tonight.” Could Matt Cavenaugh and Josefina Scaglione be any more adorable? And she almost didn’t hit that high note.
Could I look that good if I sleep with Tim Robbins? Kidding. All due respect to the wondrous Susan Sarandon. She gave the best director of a play award to Matthew Warchus for God of Carnage (he was also nominated for the trilogy The Norman Conquests).
Commenter Ms. Small, commenting on the West Side Story number says: “Josefina almost didn’t hit that high note because Matt Cavenaugh is de-LISH!mmmmm….” Um - that is probably true.
Sarandon also handed the best director of a musical award to Stephen Daldry of Billy Elliot – he also directed the movie on which the musical is based. Photo by Associated Press
Journey on the Tonys! I never stopped believin’ (neither did Liza Minnelli, all evidence to the contrary). Rock of Ages looks like a blast. And has anyone noticed that Journey, and specifically “Don’t Stop Believin’” has become super hot? (best use of the song on TV’s “Glee”) Photo by Associated Press
Commenter Trixie says: “I could use a glitter gun and some ginormous angel wings.” Honey, they’re in the mail.
Commenter Mike says: “Rock of Ages looks like the Hair of the 80’s. I want to SEE that.”
Edie Falco (stunning) presents the Tony for special event to Liza Minnelli and her boys for Liza’s at the Palace. Sorry, Will Ferrell. Thank God Slava’s Snow Show didn’t win. Boy did I hate that show on tour. What can you say about Liza except maybe: baby, take a breath. A really long breath. Photo by Associated Press
God of Carnage clip — not a great selling point (and what’s with that cracked mud artwork in the background?). Guys and Dollsnumber — saved by a hand mic. The guy in charge of sound tonight ought to look for work in the wonderful world of fast food.
Commenter Dyan says: “Some of these shows look like a big, fat, hot mess.”
We’re on a hot mess trend here. Ms. Small says: “Ok…Liza is just a hot mess…I’m sorry. `a great America treasure’ ok, Ok..OK…OKAY!!!…fine…hot mess. BUT, great hold tactic! Whenever I’m being played off the stage I’m totally pulling the `Wait, not yet! I have to thank my crazy-famous parents’ card!!!”
Creative arts Tonys (presented pre-broadcast): Regional theater Tony to Signature Theatre of Arlington, Va. Tie for orchestrations, Billy Elliot and Next to Normal. Blah blah blah, www.americantheatrewing.org.
Ghost of Broadway yet to come: John Stamos in Bye Bye Birdie. Could Bob Saget be far behind?
Gregory Jbara wins best featured actor in a musical for his role as Billy Elliot’s dad in Shrek — kidding — in Billy Elliot. He dragged his wife, Julie, up on stage with him. Really sweet speech.
And best featured actress in a musical goes to Karen Olivo as Anita in West Side Story. Her first Tony Award. Her advice: surround yourself with people who love you. Photo by Associated Press
Brilliant idea to have Carrie Fisher introduce Next to Normal: bipolar lady, meet bipolar musical. I know how brilliant this show is on disc — not sure it’s really coming across on the tube. OK. Alice Ripley, J. Robert Spencer and Aaron Tveit pulled it off. Electrifying.
Jessica Lange — a long way from Big Edie in HBO’s Grey Gardens — she makes reading glasses gorgeous and classy. She handed Geoffrey Rush his award for best actor in a play for his performance in Ionesco’s Exit the King. This is the Oscar winner’s first Tony. Classy Aussie. Photo by Associated Press
Bebe Neuwirth’s tribute to Natasha Richardson was affecting. Sorry they chose “Memory” as the underscore. Broadway Inspriational Voices’ “What I Did for Love” was lovely as we remembered Estelle Getty, Dale Waserman, Edie Adams, Bruce Adler, Horton Foote, James Whitmore, Sydney Chaplin, Clive Barnes, Marilyn Cooper, Tom O’Horgan, Bea Arthur, Ron Silver, Robert Prosky, Robert Anderson, Lee Solters, Pat Hingle, Anna Manahan, Sam Cohn, George Furth, Eartha Kitt, Hugh Leonard, Rodger MacFarlane, William Gibson, Tharon Musser, Paul Sills, Lawrence Miller and Paul Newman.
Commenter Ms. Small: “not to be vulgar during a sensitive time….the `in memoriam’ section…but you know someone thought about it being appropriate to have the vampire-hued Bebe Neuwirth introduce the dead people. right? very nicely done segment.” P.S. Ms. Neuwirth will be playing Morticia in the upcoming Addams Family musical.
Frank Langella, in whom awards season brings out the best, chided nominators for missing his brilliance in A Man for All Seasons last season. On with business: best actress in a play goes to Marcia Gay Harden for God of Carnage. I’m a little sad Jane Fonda didn’t win because I wanted to hear her speech. Whoops — in the intros they mixed up Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter. Shame, Tonys! Photo by Associated Press
Sir Elton introduces Billy Elliot, the show for which he wrote a wonderful score that, for the most part, doesn’t sound remotely like Elton John. Billy’s angry dance amid a riot is pretty phenomenal. Photo by Associated Press
Why oh why are we wasting precious prime time on Legally Blonde the Musical? Tours should get their own show — this is all about Broadway.
Harvey Fierstein, his clarion voice a thing of beauty, presents the best revival of a play award to The Norman Conquests, which is actually three plays. Delighted to see Jessica Hynes in the crowd up on stage accepting the award. She was in one of my favorite TV shows, the British series “Spaced.”
And best play goes to Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage. Not really much of a surprise there. Why does everyone associated with this play seem so downbeat? Photo by Associated Press
Commenter LY has a fashion note: “As my roommate put it, Marcia Gay Harden looks like an asparagus.”
Time for the tribute to Jerry Herman, a worthy and deserving candidate. He’s a true American treasure. Lots of good footage from the terrific documentary Words and Music by Jerry Herman. Lifetime achievement indeed. Great shot of a tearful Harvey Fierstein. “It just doesn’t get any better than this, does it?” the 77-year-old Herman said to the audience in mid-standing ovation. “The thing I want you to know is I will hold this moment fast because the best of times is now, is now, is now, is definitely now.” Photo by Associated Press
Anne Hathaway (scrumptious) should bolt from the Central Park production of Twelfth Night and join the cast of Hair. She’d probably have more fun. The well-heeled audience probably didn’t expect to have cast members’ crotches in their faces tonight. Lucky them.
Oh, look! It’s Kristin Chenoweth and the girls! They’re all up and out to present the best revival of a musical to Hair. Yay Oskar Eustis (artistic director of the Public Theater) — “Equality now!” Photo by Associated Press
Commenter Tracy says: “That hair number was kind of scary. I wouldn’t want Fringe Guy gyrating on my armrests.”
Commenter bracelets says: “Thanks, Oskar!”
David Hyde Pierce comes out to present leading actress in a musical. Oh hooray! It’s Alice Ripley from Next to Normal. Wow. She is fierce. And wonderful. And incredibly talented. Photo by Associated Press
Audra McDonald presents leading actor in a musical to the trio of Billys from Billy Elliot. Tony history is made as three actors win a single award. Completely adorable. David Alvarez, Kiril Kulish and Trent Kowalik. Photo by Associated Press
Ms. Small says of the winning Billys: “1. Precious! 2. Poised! and 3. Perfect!! Love those boys…”
Five Frankie Vallis makes this gratuitous tour moment worthwhile!
A final thought from commenter Tracy: “Sweet surrender! I want to see Jersey Boys again and again and again and again.”
And we’re coming to the finish line. Here’s Liza. Best musical goes to — no surprise here — Billy Elliot. Great to see all those kids on stage — Broadway needs young people. Photo by Associated Press
And that’s all, folks! A highly enjoyable evening. Neil Patrick Harris did a wonderful job (again, someone please get this man his own variety show!!!). At last they gave him a song! Apparently Angela Lansbury hooked up with Poison backstage. Great lyric about performing on your knees only working for Golden Globes.
In spite of the state of the world, Broadway looks to be in good shape — at least that’s how it seemed on TV.
A final thought from commenter Mike: “OMG. Five Frankie Vallis, Elton John, Dolly Parton and a cast of literally thousands. I have never seen an even comparable performance. Well, maybe Jersey Boys. But what a production! That was fantastic. I’m totally glad I got culture.”
Thanks to my commenters for making this evening so enjoyable for me. Now let’s all go see a Broadway show!
The cast of Terrence McNally’s Some Men includes (from left) Brandon Finch, P.A Cooley, George Patrick Scott, Scott Cox, Dann Howard, Christopher Morrell, Patrick Michael Dukeman, and Matthew Vierling. This scene from the New Conservatory Theatre Center production takes place in a piano bar adjacent to the Stonewall riots. Photos by Lois Tema
From assignations to spouses for life in McNally’s `Some Men’ «««
Funny, heartfelt and even a little corny, Terrence McNally’sSome Men traipses through gay male history the way a Queer Studies professor might present a survey course of contemporary gay drama.
Here’s a stop at Boys in the Band. Here we are at McNally’s own The Ritz. Now we’re in The Normal Heart territory. Dramatically speaking, we’ve been most of the places McNally takes us in Some Men, but he’s a writer of such compassion and warmth it’s hard to resist his characters, even if we feel like we’ve seen them hundreds of times before.
Now on stage at the New Conservatory Theatre Center under the sure hand of artistic director Ed Decker, Some Men arrives just in time for Pride month, and the production offers an appealing all-male cast, plenty of laughs and some genuinely emotional scenes.
McNally structures the play a little like a variety show with some key plot threads woven throughout the play’s 2 ½ hours. There’s comedy, drama and even some song and dance. The time frame flips back and forth (sometimes causing confusion) but begins and ends in a time resembling the present when gay marriage seems to be unquestionably legal.
Friends are gathered at New York’s Waldorf Astoria for the wedding of Michael and Eugene. From that moment of casual equality, we head back to the late ’60s, to a room at the Waldorf, where married man Bernie (Dann Howard), who will be one of the characters we follow in multiple scenes, is having his first gay sex encounter, and it’s with a hustler named Zach (Tim Redmond), who (surprise, surprise) just happens to be a Milton-loving Columbia student.
From there we bounce into the 21st century and to the funeral of a soldier who didn’t make it out of Iraq. His high-ranking military father (P.A. Cooley) meets a wounded soldier (Matthew Vierling), who happens to be the fallen son’s lover.
The farthest back McNally goes is the 1920s as he depicts the illicit affair between moneyed East Hampton dweller (Redmond) and his Irish chauffeur (Brandon Finch). We’ll hear about this pair again later in the play when their love story has become part of East Hampton lore, and their ritzy manse has become the home of gay dads and their adopted offspring.
Kuo-Hao Lo’s plain, attractive set (lit by John Kelly) provides the blank canvas on which the drama of 80-plus years unfurls with little need for fancy scenery.
The play’s most effective scene, the one that blends humor and pathos most effectively, is set in the ’90s in an AOL chat room, where men are hunting and hiding with the help of pseudonyms and phony profiles. The most poignant connection is between a muscle hunk (Vierling) and a bookish AIDS widower (Patrick Michael Dukeman), whose brand of snarky humor is hard to convey online, even amid a plethora of LOLs.
Dukeman makes the most of a centerpiece scene set in a piano bar adjacent to the Stonewall riots of 1969. The show queens in the bar can hardly be bothered to stop contemplating the Broadway oeuvre long enough to pay attention to the commotion outside. Dukeman arrives as a drag queen (looking slightly prettier than Ethel Merman) who just wants a drink and a little respect, both of which are in short supply at this bar. Finally, a kind patron (Scott Cox) buys the lady, known as Archie in pants and as Roxie in a dress, a drink, prompting some deep inner thoughts.
“I look in the mirror and I see an ugly woman but a fuckin’ beautiful drag queen,” Archie/Roxie says. “We owe Barbra so much.”
Dukeman wins over the tough piano bar crowd by warbling a tribute to the recently deceased Judy Garland. When he starts singing “Over the Rainbow” (Christopher Morell plays the pianist but the recorded accompaniment is really by G. Scott Lacy) it seems the scene will implode from precious sentiment, but Dukeman pulls it off with dignity and passion.
Another poignant moment comes from George Patrick Scott as “Angel Eyes,” the proprietor of an underground gay Harlem club attempting to sing “Ten Cents a Dance” but interrupting himself to tell of his fling with the song’s lyricist, Lorenz Hart, who apparently wrote the song for Mr. Eyes.
Married men with secret gay lives, over-earnest gender studies students from Vassar, a night in the late ’70s steam baths are all part of McNally’s mix here, but he only really gains dramatic traction with a stop in a hospital’s AIDS ward and later a visit to a men’s group therapy session.
Decker’s attractive cast shuffles through this history lesson with the requisite energy and charm, but the comedy often lands with more surety than the drama.
The title of the play, Some Men, is truth in advertising – this is gay history from the vantage point of some men – but I have to say I missed the presence of women. They’re referred to – wives and divas mostly – but never seen, and that makes this historical tour shallower than it needs to be. The play depicts a slice of history to be sure, but its single-sex perspective makes it feel hermetically sealed.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Terrence McNally’s Some Men continues through July 12 at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Tickets are $22-$34. Call 415-861-8972 or visit www.nctcsf.org for information.
Lillian Askew is 4-year-old Lucy and Gabriel Grilli is her imaginary friend, Mr. Marmalade in Noah Haidle’s oddball comedy Mr. Marmalade, a Custom Made Theatre Co. production. Photos by Bessie Delucchi
Tangy `Marmalade’ oozes with creepy, chilling laughs ««« ½
Jimmy Stewart had Harvey. Big Bird had Snuffleupagus. And 4-year-old Lucy has Mr. Marmalade, a Type-A businessman with a penchant for drinking, snorting coke and abusing Bradley, his mightily bruised assistant.
It seems imaginary friends, like so many aspects of modern childhood, have been co-opted by corporate America. At least that’s the case in Noah Haidle’s dark, twisted and deeply funny Mr. Marmalade, a production of the Custom Made Theatre Co.
The joke is that precocious Lucy (the superb and superbly named Lillian Askew), the product of a broken home who lives with her economically struggling mother (Juliet Heller), compensates for all the time spent alone or with a babysitter (a kind but rebellious Roselyn Hallett) by constructing an elaborate fantasy world, which playwright Haidle allows us to see.
Into Lucy’s fatherless world comes suit-wearing Mr. Marmalade (Gabriel Grilli), a by-appointment-only playmate who comes complete with briefcase, BlackBerry and promises to fly his young friend to Cabo San Lucas for a first-class vacation. Unfortunately, Mr. Marmalade is both more and less than he seems – he’s less of a beneficent playmate and more of a garden variety corporate asshole. After a stint in rehab, he attempts to make amends with Lucy and even offers to play one of her favorite games. “Let’s play doctor,” he says. “C’mere. My prostate hurts.”
When his assistant, Bradley (Daniel Duque-Estrada) appears to schedule brunch with Lucy, we know his black eye(s) and, eventually, his crutch, are the product of his boss’ unchecked rage.
What’s a little girl to do when even her imaginary life treats her horribly?
Haidle’s dark comedy is truly dark, though there’s near-constant laughter (when the audience isn’t gasping, that is) for most of its 80 minutes. That’s a real accomplishment, and director Daunielle Rasmussen deserves a whole lot of credit for finding and maintaining just the right off-kilter tone to keep Haidle’s humor bubbling while the action of the play delves into some terribly twisted territory.
Adults playing children can be one of the most annoying things in the world, but Askew is astonishingly non-annoying. In fact, it’s sort of genius the way she maintains the illusion of childhood while giving an entirely grown-up performance, which is just how Haidle has designed the character. He’s really digging into the adults of the world and the deplorable ways (intentionally or not) they model behavior for children.
The hero of the story comes in the form of 5-year-old Larry (Benjamin Pither, right with Askew), who is on record as New Jersey’s youngest suicide attempt. As Larry says, “If this is the carefree part of my life, I don’t want to see the part that’s supposed to be hard.”
Like Askew, Pither finds that tricky toehold between playing a child while never leaving the realm of the adult. When Larry and Lucy engage in a game of “house” (bolstered by pocketfuls of junk food lifted from 7-11), the game quickly takes on shadows of discontent and ceases to be at all childish (even when Larry’s imaginary friends, a sunflower and a cactus, played by Heller and Arthur Keng, turn the game into utter chaos).
A deep-in-the-night fantasia about what happens after the happy ending takes on horror movie overtones, but, amazingly, the play rights itself and ends on a sentimental note that remains more sharp than sappy. Somehow Haidle has created a perversely funny fairy tale with real-world relevance. It calls to mind Stephen Sondheim in his dark fairy tale, Into the Woods: “Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see. And learn.”
And, according to Haidle, imagine – some truly terrible things.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
The Custom Made Theatre Co.’s Mr. Marmalade by Noah Haidle continues an extended run through June 20 at The Custom Stage in the Off-Market theater complex, 965 Mission St., San Francisco. Tickets are $10-$25. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com or www.custommade.org for information.
Paul Gerrior is Krapp, a 69-year-old writer spending his birthday with the spirits of his younger selves via an old reel-to-reel tape recorder in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, a Cutting Ball Theater production at the EXIT on Taylor. Photos by Margaret Whitaker
Get a load of `Krapp,’ another sad Beckett clown ««««
Exactly 40 years ago, Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for a body of work that, even though it has been parsed and produced to a fare thee well for more than five decades, remains elusive, mysterious and vast. There’s space and darkness and humor aplenty in the world of Beckett, and all those qualities are the exact opposite of our fast, narrow, digital world.
It’s hard to imagine Krapp, the hero of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, celebrating his 69th birthday by plugging into an iPod or sliding a gleaming CD into a player as a means of listening to the voice of his 39-year-old self. No, there’s something entirely appropriate about the old man punching buttons and slinging ribbons of tape on a clunky old reel-to-reel tape recorder in order to conjure (and deride) the voice of his youth.
Cutting Ball Theater’s production of Krapp, now at the EXIT on Taylor, is, thankfully, a glimpse of time out of time. It could be 1958 (the play’s year of birth) or it could be in the back closet of now. Whatever time period allows for reel-to-reel, electricity, bananas and offstage hooch, that’s the time we’re in.
Director Rob Melrose (who also designed the set – a table, a chair, some drawers and some boxes – and the lights) creates an inviting contrast between the stark light where Krapp sits and the thick blackness that surrounds him.
Paul Gerrior is a pitch-perfect Krapp. For much of the play’s brief but rich 45 minutes, Gerrior is a reactor. He’s listening to a recording made by his 39-year-old self (the voice on the tape, full of youthful pseudo-wisdom, belongs to David Sinaiko), who comments on listening to a previous tape made in his late 20s. It’s the three ages of the man all at once, and the expressive Gerrior gives us plenty to experience, even when he’s just listening.
The play begins with a little slapstick as Krapp rummages through drawers and finds a banana. He blithely tosses the peel on the floor then begins pacing. If you know anything about comedy, a banana peel on the floor means only one…oops, he just slipped on it. Ba dum bum.
When Krapp finally settles into the listening (the spot-on sound design is by Cliff Caruthers), the mood turns pretty bleak, especially when, after sufficient listening, Krapp attempts to record this year’s tape. Bitterness, rage and regret seep through his gruff crankiness, leaving us with an incredible vantage point into the aging process of a vibrant, creative mind. Krapp’s younger self has great expectations and won’t be derailed, “Not with the fire in me now,” he says.
But the older Krapp is more extinguished. There’s still a flame of sorts, but he says he’s “drowned in dreams and burning to be gone.” Such sentiment, which reverberates in the silence of a recording with no recorded sound, stir emotions that make Krapp’s Last Tape last far longer than its brief running time.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Cutting Ball Theater’s Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett continues through June 21 at EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., San Francisco. Tickets are $15-$30. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.cuttingball.com for information.
Finally caught up with the outstanding documentary Every Little Step about casting the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line.
Though some Chorus Line purists balked at the revival, I was pretty fond of it, mostly because I got to cover its out-of-town tryout at the Curran Theatre here in San Francisco as part of the SHN/Best of Broadway series in the early fall of 2006. (I also got to attend the cast album recording session at Skywalker Ranch.)
The best thing about the movie (produced and directed by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo), though, has nothing to do with the revival and everything to do with the creative process behind the original production. The original interview tapes Michael Bennett made late one night when he gathered a group of dancers (including Donna McKechnie, who would originate the role of Cassie, which was pretty much based on her anyway). Listening to those tapes (happily transcribed on screen, though not always completely accurately) is astonishing because there are lines directly lifted from those conversations that are key moments of dialogue in the show. The movie doesn’t go into the controversy that raged for years about how those people on whom the show is based were (or were not) compensated.
But it’s clear that Bennett was a genius and A Chorus Line exists because of his creative motor and his ability to surround himself with talented people like Edward Kleban (lyricist), Marvin Hamlisch (composer) and book writers James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante.
There’s great footage from the original 1975 production, especially of the extraordinary McKechnie performing “The Music and the Mirror,” and some fascinating interview footage of Bennett (who gave one of the all-time great Tony acceptance speeches, which is seen at the end of the movie and in the clip below).
The casting process for the revival is pretty interesting as well. Director Bob Avian (who co-choreographed the original production) works alongside casting director Jay Binder and choreographer Baayork Lee (the original Connie) to find just the right people – original but adhering closely to the specific requirements of the characters.
What impressed me about watching the eight-month-long audition process is just how hard performers work and what a grueling process auditioning is (hey, it’s a lot like what you see on stage in A Chorus Line). It’s interesting to see Nikki Snelson come this close to getting the role of Val (”Dance Ten, Looks Three”). She seems really burned by the process and the fact that she didn’t get cast. But then she gets the last laugh (though you wouldn’t know it from the movie): she landed the role of Cassie in the Broadway tour of the revival production (which we saw in San Francisco last summer—read my review here).
We also see Rick Faugno come close to getting cast as Mike (”I Can Do That”), but what the movie doesn’t add is that even though Faugno lost the role to Jeffrey Schecter, he lands the role of Frankie Valli in the Las Vegas production of Jersey Boys.
Another great thing about this movie is that we finally get a celluloid representation of the film that is true to the spirit of the show. The 1985 Richard Attenborough-directed film just doesn’t do it.
By far the film’s most affecting scene is the audition of Jason Tam for the key role of Paul, who delivers a shattering monologue about his parents catching him performing in a seedy Times Square drag theater. If you want to see what a phenomenal audition looks like, check out the way Tam reduces all the Chorus Line veterans behind the table into quivering puddles of tears. Avian and Binder can’t really even speak afterward except to say, “Sign him up.”
Here are a few pieces of my interview with Mr. McNally that didn’t make it into the newspaper.
In addition to Some Men opening this week at the NCTC, McNally has a few other irons in the fire:
Last month he wrapped a critically lauded revival of Ragtime (he adapted E.L. Doctorow’s book with Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens providing the score) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The cast (which McNally describes as “much younger than the original company) included Christiane Noll as Mother and Manoel Felciano (now in Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo here in San Francisco at American Conservatory Theater) as Tateh. The show was so well received, in fact, that there were meetings about a possible transfer to Broadway. “We’ll see,” McNally says. “That would make a lot of people happy.” The show has a whole different production team, headed by director/choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge, but even more than that, McNally says, the country has gone through a seismic shift since Ragtime opened on Broadway in 1998. “The show has a relevance now it didn’t have with the election of Obama,” McNally says. “You view a show like this differently through the lens of current events. People think we’ve re-written it, but it’s not like it was show that didn’t work the first time.” McNally isn’t exactly making plans for opening night on Broadway. “I don’t celebrate anything until I’m seeing the curtain go up,” he says. “So much can go wrong at 11:59, which I’ve learned after many bitter disappointments. I’ve learned not to celebrate just because we had a good meeting…but things look really good. We’ll see.”
This summer, McNally is a West Coast kind of guy. This week at the La Jolla Playhouse, McNally opened his play Unusual Acts of Devotion with a cast that includes Doris Roberts (”Everybody Loves Raymond”), Richard Thomas (”The Waltons”) and Tony-winner Harriet Harris (Thoroughly Modern Millie) under the direction of Trip Cullman. The show runs through June 28, and then the writer heads up to Seattle (with a likely stop in San Francisco to see NCTC’s Some Men).
Toward the end of July, at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, McNally is part of the creative team behind the Broadway-bound musical Catch Me If You Can (based on the book and movie of the same name). Much of the team behind Hairspray – composer Marc Shaiman, lyricist Scott Wittman, director Jack O’Brien, choreographer Jerry Mitchell – have reunited for this show. McNally is the new kid on the block, but after The Rink, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ragtime, The Full Monty, A Man of No Importance and The Visit, he’s no stranger to the world of musical. Rather than depending solely on the Steven Spielberg movie that starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, a slippery young con artist, McNally has turned to Abagnale’s original book for inspiration. “I hope I have found an emotional resonance to make audiences care about the characters,” he says. “A stage version cannot compete with the movie and its hairbreadth escapes and chases involving airplanes. Maybe someone could do that in a theater. I don’t know how. So my story is much more about the psychological chase of the FBI agent assigned to bring Frank in. It’s a father-son surrogate story. Frank’s real father let him down, and this motivates much of his action. We have musicalized the story, not put a movie on stage, which can very often be the case when movies are translated to the Broadway stage. I’m very proud of this piece.” It has been said that working on a musical out of town can be one of the most trying, aggravating and crazy-making experiences on earth. Not for McNally. This is his seventh time out, and he has yet to see the kind of drama people expect from Hollywood versions of backstage drama along the lines of All About Eve. “There’s this preconceived notion of the leading lady throwing down her mink and stomping out,” McNally says. “That has never been my experience, but I have to say it’s an exciting thing to do. There’s a lot of pressure and high emotion. But I don’t ever anticipate being hysterical. I anticipate being challenged and hope I rise to that challenge with my sense of humor and sanity intact. In the writer’s room or in the rehearsal space, the play is the most important thing, the only thing in the world. But out in the street, in the real world, there’s a more important life beyond that.”
Some Men, which ran off Broadway two years ago at the Second Stage Theatre (under Cullman’s direction), celebrates gay history and the relatively swift march toward equality in the form of legalized same-sex marriage, which is a given in the play. McNally and his partner, Tom, were civically united in Vermont. “We thought we were doing a political act,” McNally says. “We’d go to Vermont and give the state another number. But the emotions were so strong. The night before we both got so thoughtful at the profundity of it. Our people are raised on `what you do is illegal and criminal and society hates you.’ But to stand in the country and get married. It was…People staying at the inn watched the ceremony, and by the end there must have been 30 people cheering for two strangers. It was incredibly moving to say to another person: `I am yours to the end, for the long haul.’ The change in this country is just amazing. Gay men and women had half-visible, half-not roles for years. They might have been accepted but were frowned on, not embraced. Now I feel such clarity with my friends. I know they take Tom and me just as seriously as any other married couple.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Terrence McNally’s Some Men continues through July 12 at the New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Tickets are $22-$34. Call 415-861-8972 or visit www.nctcsf.org for information.
If you want a big, dramatic scene involving John Rosenberg smashing things on his way out the door, you better look elsewhere.
About three years ago, along with Tore Ingersoll-Thorp and Damian Lanahan Kalish, Rosenberg founded Sleepwalkers Theatre, a group committed to producing new work by new authors. The trio had been in what they considered to be the worst production of Hamlet ever (at an undisclosed location in the East Bay), and after commiserating backstage, joined together to create their own company.
That first season, Sleepwalkers produced one of Rosenberg’s plays, Use Both Hands, about strangers meeting and connecting in the keno lounge of the Circus Circus casino in Reno, Nev. But last year, Rosenberg decided to branch out and do his own thing.
He created his own theater company and decided to call it Hella Fresh Theatre because, well, it’s apparently hella fresh theater.
The parting of ways with old friends Ingersoll-Thorp and Kalish seems to be quite amicable.
“I had an incredible experience with Sleepwalkers,” Rosenberg says. “I loved working with them. As we geared up for the second season, we all realized we wanted to take things in different directions. I wanted to create plays and have control over them. I decided to move in a different direction. It wasn’t like there were screaming fights. I’m in my early 30s. At some point you have to stand up and make your own stuff.”
For their part, the Sleepwalker guys seem OK with the parting. On their Web site they write of Rosenberg’s departure: “John left the group to form another, and more cutting edge theatre will be coming from it soon. If this process were to repeat itself with other members, we couldn’t be happier. We need more exciting small theatre companies, and we think everyone should start one.”
Jericho Road Improvement Association, the first production from Hella Fresh Theatre begins performances Thursday, June 4 at San Francisco’s Phoenix Theatre, and it should come as no surprise that the play is written and directed by Rosenberg. (Pictured above: Jericho Road Improvement Association cast members Sam Leichter, left, and Abel Habtegeorgis)
Set in the neighborhood where, in April of 1968, Oakland police clashed with the Black Panthers and ended up killing Little Bobby Hutton, Rosenberg writes about a veteran police officer who was part of that clash 30 years ago attempting to atone for himself and make positive change the neighborhood.
Inspiration for the play came from two places. After attending the University of California, Berkeley “back in the 20th century,” as Rosenberg puts it, he lived in North Oakland near the site of the famous clash.
“That idea, that history has taken place all around you stuck with me,” Rosenberg says.
The second factor came in the form of playwright August Wilson and his famous cycle of plays documenting African American life in each decade of the 20th century.
“Something about his work really touched me,” Rosenberg says. “I’m very interested in race in America, and I became more and more interested in creating a work that reflected a local piece of history, that tackled the problem of race and law enforcement in Oakland and that told a personal story. I think in some ways, since Obama was elected, people thing we’re in a post-racial America, but while I was writing this, BART police killed Oscar Grant on New Year’s Eve and four Oakland police officers were murdered a couple months after that.”
Rosenberg’s day job as a bookkeeper for a Berkeley nonprofit gives him some flexibility to write and produce plays in his spare time, which he does entirely on his own, without the aid of grants or corporate sponsors. His mom, who happens to be a drama teacher, serves as an editor, and the people in his life – his girlfriend, his sister, his friends – all offer opinions and, when he needs it, extra funds. This is theater created on a budget – mostly Rosenberg’s.
“It’s definitely an interesting time to be starting a new company,” Rosenberg says. “But it’s definitely possible to do it. It’s exciting and challenging to do it on your own. I’m not trying to make money off of this. It’s just great to put new work out there. As long as I have my job and people who love me, I think we’ll be OK.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Hella Fresh Theatre presents Jericho Road Improvement Association by John Rosenberg, through June 27 at the Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason St., San Francisco. Tickets are $10. Call 510-292-6403 or visit www.hellafreshtheatre.com for information.
Husband-and-wife team Rob Melorse and Paige Rogers are the creative force behind San Francisco’s The Cutting Ball Theater. The company is heading into its 10th anniversary season. Photo courtesy Marin Independent Journal
One of the Bay Area’s most committed alternative theater companies, The Cutting Ball Theater has anounced its 10th Anniversary season.
The season opens in October with Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist comedy The Bald Soprano, in a new translation by Cutting Ball artistic director Rob Melrose, who will also direct.
In March 2010 is … and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, a new play by Marcus Gardley, directed by Amy Mueller.
In May, back by popular demand is Eugenie Chan’s retelling of the Ariadne myth, Bone to Pick, which received its world premiere in Cutting Ball’s 2007-2008 season as part of Avant GardARAMA!; Paige Rogers once again stars, and the one-act will be accompanied by a newly commissioned companion piece, Diadem. Both will be directed by Melrose.
“For 10 years now, The Cutting Ball Theater has brought experimental new plays and re-visioned classics to the Bay Area,” Melrose said in a statement. “Our 10th anniversary season will be a year-long celebration of this mission featuring productions of new plays and our most extensive offerings in the Hidden Classics Reading Series ever. We are so proud to be presenting some of the most exciting and challenging stage works in San Francisco, as well as preparing risk-taking work to potentially transfer to the national stage; this indeed will be a great season.”
The Cutting Ball Theater continues its Hidden Classics Reading Series with six new installments this season: Aristophanes’ The Knights in September; William Shakespeare’sTroilus and Cressidain November; Euripides and Seneca’s versions of Medea in January; Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton in February; August Strindberg’s Storm, in a new translation by Paul Walsh, in April; and Carlo Goldoni’s The Antiquarian’s Family, in a new translation by Beatrice Basso, in May. The entire season will be staged in San Francisco at the Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor.
Co-founded in 1999 by Melrose and Rogers, Cutting Ball Theater presents avant-garde works of the past, present and future by re-envisioning classics, exploring seminal avant-garde texts, and developing new experimental plays. Cutting Ball Theater has partnered with Playwrights Foundation, Magic Theatre and Z Space New Plays Initiative to commission new experimental works.
The new Broadway cast recording of West Side Story is out today in all the usual outlets (in three dimensions on CD, digitally via iTunes, etc.).
To celebrate the classic work of Leonard Berstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins, let’s take a peek at the music video for “Tonight” from the new recording as sung by Karen Olivo as Anita, Matt Cavenaugh as Tony and Josefina Scaglione as Maria.
You’ll notice the Sharks singing in Spanish — the lyric translations are by Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights fame.
The Troupe, celebrating its 50th Anniversary this summer, did not have theft insurance on the stolen vehicle. They desperately need a van to transport the troupers to and from the parks where they are scheduled to perform their 50th Anniversary production, Too Big to Fail (July 4-September 27). They are making an emergency appeal to the Bay Area community in the hopes that someone can come forward and donate a van (for a tax deduction). If anyone has info about the high-jacked vehicle, or can donate a transport van, please contact San Francisco Mime Troupe general manager Jenee Gill at 415-285-1717.
