Kenny Leon dumps Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, plus casting ideas

Rumor has it that Kenny Leon has quit as director of the upcoming all-black production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The talented Leon, who directed A Raisin in the Sun, will be replaced by Debbie Allen, whose credits include choreographing legendary musical flop Carrie, several Academy Awards broadcasts, and... well... has she directed for stage? All That Chat tells us she directed "an abortion called Pearl out in Los Angeles", in which she also starred. She directed a guilty pleasure of mine, the 90s sitcom "A Different World". I just loved Whitley on that show. I don't care what anyone says, Jasmine Guy is a star.

From the time it was announced, this project has always smelled fishy to me. I'm betting it's never going to happen, but if it indeed is produced, I hereby begin the campaign for Jasmine Guy as Maggie the Cat. I can see it now....

It seems almost fated to happen... Debbie Allen choreographed Carrie, the musical - Jasmine Guy played Ruby Moore in Carrie, the tv movie. Debbie Allen directed episodes of That's So Raven - Jasmine Guy guest starred! Fingers crossed, people.

Annoucement!

Hello Darlings,

Having just celebrated 100 posts, old Moxie's decided to step it up and get serious about this whole blogging thing. You can now find me at the newly christened www.moxiethemaven.com - a pared down, more memorable address for your browsing enjoyment. Fear not, the old blogspot address will still work. Thanks for reading.

Fondly Yours,

Moxie

Nope, it's not her.

In case you were wondering, Curtains' brass-tacks producer Carmen Bernstein is NOT inspired by Fran Weissler. Debra Monk says:

"Everyone thinks Carmen is based on Fran Weissler, but Peter based my character on women he knew years ago. After all, the show is set in the 1950s... I really get all my information from what Peter and Rupert Holmes gave me. And I really like Fran."

Why the 'stache?

Steve Kazee is so very sexy. I'm sure it fits very well into his character for 110 In the Shade, but why oh why must he don the moustache? No man's sexiness quotient has ever been upped by the implementation of a beardless moustache. Ever.

For some reason, Lonnie Price reminds me of a 1920's speakeasy patron in this photo. He looks milliseconds away from whipping out a cigar and saying, "Now see here, Mac, what's the big idea?!?"

Audra = Fabulous.

Celebrity Deathmatch: Theater Edition - Hare vs. Abramson

Did anyone see Page Six this weekend? Playwright David Hare got into a "screaming match" with NY Times managing editor Jill Abramson. Apparently Hare was pretty pissed that Brantley had savagely attacked his play, The Vertical Hour, like a sabre-toothed tiger on a pile of rib-eye steaks.

In case you don't recall, Brantley called Vertical Hour "soggy" and put it admittedly bluntly by saying that Bill Nighy mopped the floor using both Julianne Moore and the play itself. Brantley even accused Hare of committing "crimes against dialogue". Ouchie.

Well, the critics pan of Vertical Hour didn't stop it from recouping, but it still pissed David Hare off enough to flip out at Jill Abramson at a recent screening of (pacifist) Richard Gere's new movie The Hoax. He said, "You must be kidding. The Times has contempt for the theater, especially Broadway, and especially plays." Saucy Abramson replied, "Listen, it is not our obligation to like or care about the theater. It's our obligation to arbitrate it. We are the central arbiter of taste and culture in the city of New York." To which Hare countered, "What are you talking about? If you believe that, you are even more out of touch than your newspaper appears. You have a critic who despises the theater."

Moxie wonders what Abramson initially said to incite Hare's anger - doubtless it was something with some stingers attached. It's hard to believe that Brantley actually hates theater - if he did, he would probably go crazy from having to see so much of it, and that would make his reviews a lot more fun to read. At any rate, there are some more money quotes in the full article, which you can read here. Moxie tends to agree with producer Scott Rudin - it takes guts for an artist to stand up against the critics, so good for him. Plus, screw the "central arbiter of taste and culture". They may, in fact, be just that, but the statement is so arrogant you can't not side with Hare. But you know what? At the end of the day, The Vertical Hour was really bad.

Cell Phones banished from LCT and The Vineyard... what's next?

Has anyone else experienced this new "no cell phones allowed in the theater - at all - ever" policy?

A few weeks ago I was at The Vineyard seeing Mary Rose. The lights came up for intermission, and thinking I had a good 10-15 minutes of time to waste, I took out my phone to check my voicemail. An usher literally stormed over, leaned across several patrons, and shouted, "Ma'am, you have to put it away, there are no cell phones in the theater. You have to take it outside!"

Then a week later it happened at Dying City. I settled into my seat at about 7:50, and thinking I had a good 10 minutes, I took out my phone to check my voicemail. Again, an usher *ran* down the aisle to scold me. "No cell phones in the theater, you'll have to put it away!"

What gives?? I wasn't texting during the performance. I wasn't chatting as the lights went down. I guess I don't really NEED to use my phone in situations like that, but I certainly don't want to be yelled at by an usher in front of a bunch of strangers. We already have to listen to cutesy or stern announcements about turning them off, complete with ill-considered jokes about the vibrate feature. Must we now keep them shamefully hidden away like moonshine in the prohibition era? What's next, turning them in at a checkpoint, like middle schoolers in the NYC public school system?

On the flip side, it is obviously very annoying to have phones ringing during a show, or to watch people texting away furiously. I've even seen (and heard) people checking their voicemail in the middle of a performance, while half the audience can hear the message playing. I don't want to deal with that crap, but I also don't want to be harassed by rude ushers, or listen to those irritating pre-show announcements that treat audiences like kindergarteners.

The bigger issue here is that it's still up to audience members to use (or not use) cell phones responsibly during performances. Thus, you get human error (ringing phones during shows) resulting in varied sets of "rules", like I experienced at the Vineyard and LCT. The whole thing really needs to be taken out of the hands of the individual patrons, by installing those super-cool cell phone jammer thingies that the Russians are using. Then we can all go back to just getting pissed about candy wrappers and hearing aid feedback like the good old days.

P.S. there's a great article on the whole debaucle here.

Mary-Louise Parker's better, hotter boyfriend

A friend of mine spotted Mary-Louise Parker "canoodling" (the only way to make out when you're famous) with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a.k.a. Denny Duquette from Grey's Anatomy. Apparently the two were sucking face at Vertical Hour - at least two audience members were enjoying themselves. Morgan also played ML Parker's dead hubby on Weeds, seen in flashbacks and old camcorder tapes.

She's one crazy lady, but this could be one of the hottest celebrity couples ever. Just imagine their beautiful, three-named children.


UPDATE: Well, the pair arrived at the opening of Curtains last night (which I was at, more on that later), so I guess that confirms it. But check out this picture:

Mary Louise looks like she's in pain, while Jeffrey Dean Morgan is about to burst into song: "Hello world! Isn't life beautiful? We're so happy together! Like, really, really really happy!!! Tra, la la..." Yikes.

The rollerskating dream sequence is pretty kick-ass, though.

I had a peculiar sensation while watching Essential Self-Defense at Playwrights Horizons this weekend. With the start of every new scene, I could almost feel playwright Adam Rapp hurling an economy-size pot of spaghetti against a wall and watching it slide down the surface. Some interesting patterns, shapes, and flavors emerge from the muck from time to time, but mostly it's all about watching the waste accumulate in a big, savory pile on the floor.

All the ingredients in this show sound tasty - hard rock karaoke, punk librarians, mysterious abductions of middle schoolers, Paul Sparks... what could go wrong? Hidden beneath several layers of camp, pseudo-irony, and hedwig-like bizarreness, Essential Self-Defense is really a sweet love story about two socially paralyzed misfits. This story itself should be charming - Paul Sparks and Heather Goldenhersh take shaky, uncertain steps towards wooing in an angry and threatening world. Unfortunately, the play is frequently hijacked by ear-splitting "karaoke" (original) songs, an endless stream of pointlessly zany characters (a blood-stained butcher, a swearing, a librarian in combat boots, a guileless russian poet, etc etc), and a lot of general weirdness for weirdness' sake. And without spoiling too much, let me just say NO MORE UNNECESSARY NUDITY! For pete's sake. We don't always need to see someone's peepee to understand their vulnerability.

On the other hand, the play has some interesting stuff to say. The world these characters live in is bizarre, but their sense of something ominous approaching feels somehow accurate in it's representation of the oppresive fear we live with today. The rabid wolf is howling outside the window. Children are disappearing. Something nasty really is coming for us. Rapp's grotesque imagination is at it's best when he's riffing on these fears.

Whatever good intentions Rapp has, they're almost entirely obfuscated by the layers of craziness he's piled on, and things aren't helped by Carolyn Cantor's over-the-top staging. The production lives somewhere between The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a Blues' Clues acid trip. I actually think this could be an interesting piece if it was directed in a way that made the characters seem like humans instead of robots, and if they got rid of most (if not all) of the songs.

If you're the type that can stomach a lot of extraneous weirdness, you might really dig this play. For me, it was a huge turnoff. But hey, it's previews, maybe they'll make some good cuts and adjustments and find the focus. In another world, I think I would love it as a 90-minute two-hander. In fact, word on the street is that Adam Rapp has been tied up working on his show at The Flea, so the show might go through some transformations in the coming days and weeks.

Mom, what's an ecdysiast?

Patti LuPone will play Mama Rose this summer at City Center. To this news, I have two equal and opposite reactions. I am excited, so excited to see a fully-staged production of Gypsy. The show was one of the first cast recordings I ever got my grubby, 5-year-old mitts on, and I remember many an afternoon spent on my front porch, belting out "Some People" - not knowing what half of it even meant. It pretty much lit the theatrical flame in wee Moxie when she was just a babe - and yet I've never seen a full production! So this is exciting news to say the least.

On the other hand, I... ehrm... don't really, well, like Patti LuPone. Flame me all you want, but her brand of over-acting and scenery chewing has always irritated me, and her whole yell-singing thing doesn't turn me on much, either. I'm hoping I'll get my mind changed, because it seems like this is a role she was born to play.

The other side of this news is that the production will be a part of a new Encores! "Summer Stars" series, which according to Playbill is a spinoff of the Encores! that did Follies, The Apple Tree, etc. If my assumptions about the name "Summer Stars" are correct, it's a cool idea - put big stars in limited runs of great shows that are star vehicles. If that's the purpose, it's pretty rad.

P.S. Patti played Mama Rose at the Ravinia in 2006, and Jessica Boevers was Gypsy Rose Lee. Blahhhh... I really hope they cast someone else. She's not available, but wouldn't Leslie Kritzer be fierce?

Jennifer Hudson's Bad Celeb Behavior

Today's Page Six brings us the shocking news that America's sweetheart, Jennifer "Look What God Can Do" Hudson, might not be so sweet after all. People got pretty pissed when she tried to back out of presenting at the Soul Train Awards, and now there's all kinds of stories coming out about the American Idol runner-up's diva behavior.

When asked last week why she didn't thank "American Idol" in her Oscar speech, Hudson snapped, "If I'd been any better at my job when I was at Burger King in my middle teens, I wouldn't be here, either, so maybe I should thank them, too."

Yikes! And this comes *right* on the heels of the nice folks at Burger King giving Hudson an all-you-can-eat pass for life (which I'm told is a good thing in some circles).

Don't worry too much about Jennifer Hudson's fate, though, because she just signed a deal with Avon. Big stuff happening. Big.

Illness and understudies at Mary Rose, and everywhere!

The New York theater world reminds me of middle school sometimes. Everyone knows each other, secrets never stay secret for long, and when somebody's sick, everybody gets sick. It's really gross. This past week has been one of those times - it seems like every show I've heard about has had actors out, and understudies performing. At Translations, two understudies performed the final performances (one actor wasn't out so much from illness as he was from, uh, onstage violence?) At Coast of Utopia, Billy Crudup's understudy, Scott Parkinson, performed the marathon (!!), and blogged about his "dream-like" experience.

Meanwhile, I got a call from The Vineyard saying they had to cancel the performance of Mary Rose that I had tickets to because of a sick cast member, and when I went to my rescheduled performance, they still had the actor out. Someone from the Vineyard announced that since they don't have understudies, Noah Bean had graciously agreed to step in and play the role, script in hand. Noah did a really fantastic job in the face of adversity - his two scenes bookend the play, and are played in near-total darkness! With the help of a little book light attached to his script, he was relaxed and alive in the world of the play, and really cute to boot.


The non-book-carrying cast of Mary Rose is, in fact, perfection. Paige Howard is going to be a star (I know I have a redhead bias, but she really is amazing), and the cast surrounding her are a fabulous mix of some of New York's greatest non-famous theater actors. Michael Countryman is so delightful, as always. He just comes across as one of the most good-natured people onstage. And Ian Brennan again shines in a quirky character role - it's a matter of time until he's on the next Friends or what have you. The play a lovely sort of mix between ghost story and drawing room comedy, except not boring, which is what I always think of when someone says "drawing room comedy". Anyone who's into Peter Pan, or liked Finding Neverland, should DEFINITELY see Mary Rose.

Playwrights gets hip with Essential Self-Defence discounts

Playwrights Horizons is tossing it's hat into the competitor's ring for hippest Off-Broadway not-for-profit. In promotion for their new Adam Rapp play, Essential Self-Defense, they're throwing a kegger for theater dorks (sold out, sorry), and smartly embracing the blogosphere as a marketing tool by offering a special discount to MY readers (and Rocco's, and Jaime's, and... well it's an honor to be recognized at all). Discounts in decending order of age group, natch.

See Essential Self-Defense for $40 by clicking here and entering code EDBL. You can also use the code at the box office via phone or in person. Order by 3/28 for performances 3/15 through 4/15.

OR if you're young and spry like me, you can pick up a $20 ticket for whippersnappers under 30. One hour before curtain, bring ID.

OR if you're really young, you can get $15 student tix starting one hour before showtime.

Rapp's play Red Light Winter was one of the most beautiful, emotional, maddening theatrical experiences of recent memory. This one is about a man who takes a job as an attack dummy in a women's self-defense class, in a midwestern town named Bloggs, of all things! Playwrights Horizons describes it as "a grim fairy tale with generous helpings of rock n’ roll karaoke." Stay tuned for my review of Essential Self-Defense sometime next week.

Review: Hotel Oracle

Hotel Oracle is a play about "peregrinations and post-its." For those who don't know what peregrinations are (I was in the club when I entered Walkerspace last night), a peregrination is a journey, or a travel. Indeed, Hotel Oracle is populated by a motley crew of travellers, all unfulfilled in their own ways, all searching for an answer to their emptiness. There's a no-nonsense reporter, a self-help guru seeking clients, a winsome expectant mother, a possibly-mad scientist, and a mysterious shaggy-haired hipster, all greeted by an unsettlingly even-keeled clerk at the Hotel Oracle. He welcomes them, and us, to a dreamlike world where sounds are bottled up and stored in jars, walls are paper-thin, and everyone is quietly hungering for something.

A vast loneliness quietly percolates through Bixby Elliot's haunting play, smartly produced by The Sum Of Us Theatre Company. The setting is at first strange, even disorienting, but the doubts, fears, and questions the characters carry are immensely relatable to all of our human hopes and fears. "Do you find me attractive?" "Will she ever love me again?" "Will I ever be happy?" Elliot (a recent grad of Columbia's playwrighting program) deftly manipulates these questions with the lightest touch, illuminating not the answers, but the painful human experience of articulating the questions at all. Happily, the serious, poetic tones are seasoned with a healthy dose of humor and reality, making the themes very palatable and preventing the characters from ever taking themselves too seriously.

The play's poetry and near-experimental feel could be too challenging for a lesser company. Sometimes it seems that downtown theater is plagued by overambitious productions that make a lot of noise but are able to say very little. The Sum Of Us is not one of these companies - Nicholas Vaughn's creates many locations out of a sparse set, and along with lighting designed by Anjeanette Stokes and costumes by Donald Sanders (associate of none other than William Ivey Long), the world of Hotel Oracle is both ironic and serious, cozy and ominous.

It's also SO nice to see an ensemble of such fine actors who are able to live in the play with such gentle sensitivity. Katie Honaker particularly stands out as a cheerful, chatty woman who seems to hardly notice her very-pregnant state. The performances are skillfully directed by Stephen Brackett, who keeps things action-driven rather than philosophy-driven, letting the most thought-provoking elements of the play speak for themselves.

Clocking in at two hours, the play might benefit from a few trimmings here and there, especially since the real action (the aggressive hunt for answers from the Oracle) begins near the end of Act One. Of course, it must be acknowleged that I saw the first preview, and things are very likely to pick up as performances continue.

Hotel Oracle runs at Walkerspace through March 31st. Do you have reservations?

Photo of Katie Honaker and Tessa Gibbons by Becky Holladay.

The Vertical Hour[s of boredom] recoups - What are the audiences thinking?

Variety brings news today that The Vertical Hour has recouped, in spite of the nasty reviews and an early closing. Producer Scott Rudin said, "We had a couple of rocky weeks coming up, and we decided we'd accomplished what we'd set out to do with the play." Uh huh.

While I wish any show success, and can hardly begrudge any recoupment, this just rubs me the wrong way. I really like Julianne Moore on film (her naked, screaming entrance by flight in The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite moments on film), but she was heinously ill-suited for that roll, and possibly just not fit for the stage. I love love love Bill Nighy, but for God's sake, put him in a play that's worth a damn, not this meandering and arrogant claptrap.

The thing that irritates me is the damning evidence that audiences would rather shell out their $110 for a bad performance by someone they've seen on film than pay $60 for a fabulously-reviewed Off-Broadway show featuring talented stage actors. I recently heard a well-known not-for-profit theater producer say that Off-Broadway is tougher than ever because producing is almost as expensive off as it is on. Adding insult to injury, the real droves of audiences just won't come out unless you have an elucidating title like "My Father is Jewish, My Mother's Italian, and I'm in Therapy". Because of these, and other more complicated issues, you can expect Off-Broadway hits like The Voysey Inheritance or The Clean House to have multiple extensions, but not to transfer to a commercial Off-Broadway venue and have a long run, as they might have 10 years ago. More and more, it's becoming Broadway transfers or nothing at all, which is hugely limiting to say the least. What happened? Were audiences really just more discriminating back then? More willing to trek below 42nd Street? Smarter? Where has the Off-Broadway audience gone?

Review: King Lear

This never happens to me. I didn't like it, and I can't figure out why. Lapine is a good director, the cast are all skilled actors, and the playwright isn't too bad himself, but somehow the whole thing isn't cohesive as a story, and I sat there watching feeling nothing.

First off, I'm developing a theory that it's a bad luck to sit next to an obnoxious audience member. I sat next to a rather rotund gum-chomper, and I'd love to be able to brush that off, but loud chewing is my worst pet peeve, and I sat there listening to her cow-like masticatation through the whole first act (she left at intermission). It seems like whenever I get stuck next to someone like this (the snoring old guy with legs splayed wide, the kid who bounces on her seat and talks to mom) the show ends up being a stinker.

I'll give you the good news first: Kevin Kline is an excellent Lear. He masterfully creates the king's spiralling journey into madness, and is sympathetic enough to make you feel for him, even through all his terrible missteps. Larry Bryggman is a fantastic Gloucester, impressively matching Kline's ease with the language. The agile Michael Cerveris is perfect as Kent, Lear's servant whose unswerving allegiance could be tough to render believable in the hands of a lesser actor. A few other performers stand out: Philip Goodwin's Fool is spot-on, and Brian Avers has brilliantly crafted Edgar's journey from geeky student to Poor Tom to a courageous leader at the end.

So why did several people leave at intermission? And why was the woman behind me applying hand lotion instead of paying attention, and why were others falling asleep, and why was I so utterly unstirred?

Let's start with the three daughters. Angela Pierce just ain't my thing - her performance seemed inorganic and uninteresting, overplaying key moments rather than just making smart choices and letting us come to her. Kristen Bush is fine. I like her command of the language, and I appreciate her Cordelia not being a pushover, but I just didn't like Cordelia, and so her death felt like no big whoop. Maybe I just don't like Cordelia, period. I really like Laura Odeh, and I initially enjoyed her take on Regan as a vulnerable middle sister who defers to Goneril and gets led astray, but by the end it felt like we were watching her work really hard, and the performance seemed like "acting" rather than living believably in the role.

I had so looked forward to Logan Marshall Green's Edmund, but his performance felt overwrought, too, and so his moments of real fury or emotion felt stagey. Edmund is such a pragmatist, and there are moments where you can tell that Green gets that, but he still doesn't seem as centered and calculating as Edmund really is. Again, the "acting" thing - his work seemed effortful.

Lapine's staging is smartly executed, but feels uncompelling. The set has many levels which are made good use of - my seat was quite far over to the right side of the 3/4 house and I saw almost everything. However, it seems like the giant industrial set doesn't add much, if anything, to the story, other than providing some different exit and entrance points for the actors, and vantage points for overhearing things. The downside of the set's giant pillars and looming scaffolding is that it remains in place while Lear is raving across the countryside. It seems like we're always inside, and I wonder how much greater his suffering would affect us if Kline was given a full stage for that scene, rather than just a large patch downstage. It feels cramped and even claustrophobic for what could be a really visually sweeping show. In fact, there are times when the actors shove each other around, and I was actually worried about them falling off the platforms. King Lear has so many references to our place in the world, the stars, the country, and so much of it is outside in the open in the elements. I hungered for some kind of physical representation of all that imagery, beyond the sandbox that is the stage for outside scenes or the blue curtains that cascade down to represent rain.

So, there you have it. I guess I didn't like it because the bad just outweighed the good. There's a lot of well-intentioned effort gone wrong here, not just in one area, but scattered throughout the production. No element is a total failure, but a lot of things aren't quite working. I still think this Lear is a don't miss - Kline, Bryggman, and Cerveris together are amazing. I only wish this was the top-notch production that they deserve.