Celebrity Sightings, Shakepeare in the Park Edition
At Sunday night's almost-rained-out-but-saved-by-the-wind performance of Maccers, Famke Janssen, who gets extra points for lending the hippy couple in the row ahead her Lulu Guinness umbrella (she and her companion wore Public Theater rain ponchos), and Mr. Big/Logan himself, Chris Noth. (They were not together, I hasten to add.)
I’ve read quite a bit about the Channel 4 reality show The Play’s the Thing—but here’s a review from a theater person I trust. Webloge’s take on the show makes me want to fly to Britain to watch!
(Mark Shenton wrote about the commercial challenges for the theater that’s hosting the winning play.)
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Sunday, June 11, 2006
Tony Blogging Lite
Erm, is it just me, or was Harry Connick Jr. totally off-key in the initial “Tonight” section of his medley. Or as Randy would say “Pitchy, dawg.”
Hey, they just showed us a photo! Sure, it’s of the gathering of more than 100 previous Tony winners, but we can’t actually see it!
When accepting the Tony for Best Score (for Drowsy Chaperone), Greg Morrison’s speech, in which he thanked his parents for buying him a piano, was the first verkempt-making moment of the night. (Of course, if they’re back home in PEI, they won’t be able to watch, except via Webcast.)
Receiving the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical, John Doyle gives the first homo shoutout of the night--wishing his partner, Rob, a happy anniversary (and getting a round of applause for it). We had two last year (Edward Albee dedicating his award to his late partner and Cherry Jones snogging her girlfriend when her name was read). Will we beat that total tonight? Ooh, another gay moment: Harvey Fierstein say, "A gay man's work is never done" when releasing Audra McDonald's train.
I know that reviews always mention Hal Holbrooke's amazing memory (he apparently has massive quantities of Twain memorized and trots out different bits each night depending on the audience or his mood), but I was really worried he was going to lose his train of thought in his rambling preamble. I guess CBS wasn't too worried, though, he got the best guest cutaway guest shots of the night--Les Moonves, Julie Chen, and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Also, a very cool co-presenter, Veronica Mars herself, Kirsten Bell.
Hmm, so Clifford Odets now joins the pantheon of great American playwrights because he has a Tony?
Beth Leavel's speech was lovely, but even nicer were the closeups of Drowsy Chaperone director, Casey Nicholaw, shedding a tear at her joy.
So far, most of the musical numbers have seemed pretty lame--Jersey Boys, especially.
Could the excerpts from the best play nominees have been any shorter? Answer: NO!
Oh, the first political joke--from a puppet, no less! (Not that I'm calling the miraculous Christine Ebersole a puppet.) I suppose a gay puppet counts as a homo moment.
Wow, seeing Christian Hoff I wonder why I sometimes find goofy, emotional speeches irresistible and sometimes find them embarrassing. This was the latter.
LOVE the human tableaux in the Hal Prince lifetime achievement award. A new high in camp (which is saying something at the Tonys).
Hey, another homo moment thanks to Cynthia Nixon! And we're only two-thirds through the telecast. But she didn't thank her girlfriend!
LOVED seeing Julia Roberts get yanked out of camera shot by the award-guardian.
OK, the speeches have been longish, but the musical interruption of Richard Griffiths' speech was inexcusable. As The Playgoer has said, what exactly do they have in mind for the next hour?
In the zippy catch-up on the technical awards, it was heart-breaking to see the winners holding speeches (of which we heard approximately 3 seconds each from just some of them) but not being able to hear them. Bob Crowley's "I should've won it for the other one" was particularly interesting.
Alfre Woodard's dress made it a little difficult for me to focus on James Earl Jones' and Cynthia Nixon's Wilson and Wasserstein excerpts.
Nice writing from whomever came up with this description of the folks in the "in memoriam" section (too bad it was kind of hard to see the photos): "talented partners whose collaboration shall be missed."
Say what you like about Oprah, but she sure can make a speech, and the number from The Color Purple was the best of tonight's live musical presentations.
I have so little interest in Jersey Boys, I can barely bring myself to type out its full title, but I must admit producer Michael David's speech was appreciative and respectful. (And if he's ever short a few bucks for one of his productions, I have an idea for a way he could make some money in December.)
So, the final count was: History Boys - 6, Drowsy Chaperone - 5, Jersey Boys - 4 (but good ones, Best Musical the two actor awards, and the biggest one of all, lighting), Awake and Sing! - 2, Pajama Game - 2, Sweeney Todd - 2, and one each for Color Purple, Faith Healer, and Rabbit Hole. Oh, I almost forgot the special award for Bridge & Tunnel.
Back in March, PBS screened a Martin Scorsese-produced documentary, The Blues: Godfathers and Sons, which contained blues musicians using the words “sh_t” and “f_ck.” As a result, the Federal Communications Commission levied a fine of $15,000 against station KCSM-TV, which aired the doc. It’s part of an FCC crackdown against “indecency” on television.
So, how come I keep hearing the word “coño” on television? Yesterday I was watching an old episode of CSI: Miami, and a Latino hustler told his victim, “Watch me, coño.” Also this season, Fox’s Prison Break showed Lincoln’s cellmate, Sucre (played by Amaury Nolasco), feeling really frustrated by a phone call, slamming down the receiver, and yelling, “Coño!”
For anyone who doesn’t speak Spanish, “coño” translates to the English C-word, the one that rhymes with punt. In Spain it’s not a terribly taboo word—I’ve heard people use it to summon a waiter (when I last lived in Spain, in the early '90s, the “worst” word was hostia, which means “communion wafer”!)—but that’s not really the point. I’m sure it’s pretty offensive in most Spanish-speaking countries.
I’m not sure why this double standard bothers me so much. (And I’m maintaining it myself—I avoid English-language profanity, so as not to set off Net nanny software, but I’m not terribly worried about bad foreign language shutting me out.) If Tía Nelida isn’t complaining, what’s it to me?
Still, it seems wrong. Can’t shows do what the BBC did in the 1970s for Porridge, a sitcom set in a prison, and invent a curse word that expresses the strength of the speaker’s feelings but avoids actual offense?
In the light of the speech by Eduardo Machado that was the talk of the theaterblogosphere this week, I got a weird frisson when I watched this weekend’s repeat of a 2005 American Theater Wing seminar about “Off-Broadway,” and discovered that two of the panelists were Eduardo Machado, representing INTAR, and James C. Nicola, representing the New York Theatre Workshop. (The others were Tisa Chang of the Pan Asian Repertory Company, Loretta Greco of Women’s Project and Productions, Virginia Louloudes of ART-NY, and Neil Pepe of Atlantic Theater Co.)
It started off well: The various artistic directors all seemed willing, keen even, to talk about money (I was particularly fascinated by Greco’s mention of the theater community’s unquenchable thirst for comps damaging companies' ability to plan), but that talk never really went anywhere. Instead, there were a lot of generalizations about passion and theater being about people getting together in the dark—and I have to say I blame Nicola for the move toward speechifying.
I’d never seen Nicola before, and I must preface the coming judgmental statements with the obvious proviso that I know I shouldn’t judge people from a 90-minute taped seminar. Yeah, right. He freaked me out! It seemed to me that either consciously or unconsciously he ignored any “real” conversation about money or the challenges of working with other professionals and instead launched into a series of odd set-piece statements that came across as anodyne up-with-people manifesto pledges. Worse almost, despite all the histrionic body language, he was depressingly inarticulate (and one thing you can usually say for artistic directors, especially ones who’ve held onto their jobs for a number of years, is that they’re indisputably articulate).
Take, for example, his speech after the moderator asked for panelists’ views on nontraditional casting (I urge you to check this out on tape, it starts around the 1:00:43 mark). He said:
Well, I think … I think [clears throat, shuffles in seat as though his piles are acting up] ... It’s interesting, in our process [another throat-clear] of casting in my time doing this, erm, what has emerged, is that every, almost every, with the exceptions you [Tisa Chang, who’d just spoken] talk about, where there are specific things [massive hand gestures] things to be achieved in a script … but in general we start with “any actors can play these roles,” and we bring in actors of all different … [pauses for so long, looking for the safe word, that the moderator takes pity and offers “backgrounds?”] yep, and erm, that has happened, and there’s often a lot of discussion around that, and I think this is an interesting reflection of contemporary life, that this is where we are and that we do find with our audiences that we are learning a new etiquette that will become unconscious, about when we’re supposed to notice the race of the person or not. Erm [clears throat] and it’s been very interesting to work with directors from other countries who have different ethnic and cultural situations and their perception of American culture, and for the most part, even the most enlightened and progressive people are very retrograde about this issue. [Swings head, triumphantly slaps thighs.]
Now, if you can tell me what the hell he was talking about there—except perhaps, “We’re really right on and a lot of foreigners aren’t”—good work!
In fairness, I should also add that later in the show, Machado made an unprompted tribute to the NYTW in which he praised the warm and respectful way they have treated him and other playwrights.
