February 2008 Archives

OK, here at TCiC, we try to focus on productions that are in L.A. or are in driving distance. When I mention New York or Broadway -- which I rarely visit -- it's usually in connection with a show that is arriving from said place or heading there. I don't, as I'm constantly telling publicists, forward a lot of NY news because I figure the people out there looking for it aren't going to come to me to find it.

However...

I happened to notice a couple of developments reported on Playbill.com regarding Broadway's Lyceum Theatre. A production is leaving. Another is moving in.

I wonder. Oh, how I wonder, if either of them might come here.

The departing production is the David Ives adaptation of the Mark Twain play "Is He Dead" with Norbert Leo Butz (the greatest name in showbiz in my books) doing drag. If you happened to catch him in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," you'll know the man is not above drag or anything even remotely humiliating. Anyway, the show got good notices and, when it closes March 9, will have played slightly more than 100 performances.

Short run. Respectably cast. Not sure that something like this would tour, but perhaps Michael Ritchie over at Center Theatre Group might inquire about remounting it -- cast intact -- at the Taper.

Replacing "Is he Dead" is another short run, the Pond-hopping production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" with Patrick Stewart ("X-Men," "Star Trek: TNG") as the bloody thane. It plays through May 24.

That one, I hope, could also travel, maybe to UCLA or, again, the Taper.

Admittedly, there's a certain pie-in-the-sky, "If I programed the landscape" disorder to this, but that's what blogs are for.

Out at the Wilshire Theatre: the aborted tour of "Whistle Down the Wind," Andrew Lloyd Webber rock musical set in the south about a man who might be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

In (same venue, same dates): "Cats," also an ALW show. And if you don't know what this one's about (singing cats), please go away. You have no business on this blog.

June 10-15. wtbh.org, (323) 655-0111

Out at the Wilshire Theatre: the aborted tour of "Whistle Down the Wind," Andrew Lloyd Webber rock musical set in the south about a man who might be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

In (same venue, same dates): "Cats," also an ALW show. And if you don't know what this one's about (singing cats), please go away. You have no business on this blog.

June 10-15. wtbh.org, (323) 655-0111

...or, from the "Hey you used to be married/romantically involved with someone famous and now you're not earning gas money in the name of art" files.

Or... "Where have all the Scarlett's gone?"

Who out there remembers the very ill conceived TV adaptation of "Scarlett," Alexandra Ripley's sequel to "Gone with the Wind"? Nobody? Aw, sure you do. It was 1993 or thereabouts, and there was all this gas about the big international search to find a newcomer to Vivien Leigh's hoop skirts?

Well, they didn't, of course. They found Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, the British actress of "Scandal" and "Willow." I remember father quipping, "They didn't need to go on any kind of search. All they had to do was open the actors directory."

Whalley-Kilmer was 30 when "Scarlett" came out which makes her 43 now. And, yes, she's on stage at the Matrix Theatre for Tony nominated director Wilson Milam in "Poor Beast in the Rain," a play about a man's return to his hometown during the weekend of the All Ireland Hurling finals to encounter -- among others -- his "jaded, faded" ex flame, Molly.

That would be Ms. Whalley who dropped the Kilmer when she dropped hubby Val Kilmer in 1996 and who has a not insubstantial stage background: Per the website, her stage work includes: RITA SUE AND
BOB, TOO (The Royal Court); SAVED (The Royal
Court); THE POPE'S WEDDING (The Royal Court);
WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN (The Royal Court); AS I LAY
DYING (The National); KATE (The Bush); THREE
SISTERS (Greenwich); THE CRIMES OF VAULTRIN
(Joint Stock Company); THE LULU PLAYS (Alemeida)
and WHAT THE BUTLER SAW (Manhattan Theatre
Club).

"Poor Beast" is at the Matrix through March 16. (323) 960-4420 or visit www.salemktheatreco.org

Having nothing to do with Irish curling, but another familiar name from the past is that of "Titanic" and "Unforgiven" actress Frances Fisher who, in addition to a rather memorable topless scene in the recent "In the Valley of Elah" once had a thing with her "Unforgiven" director, Clint Eastwood, and is mother to Francesca Fisher-Eastwood.

Ms Fisher can be seen in the horny middle agers- comedy "Sexy Laundry" at the Hayworth Theatre through March 16, playing, yes, a woman who borrows a copy of "Sex for Dummies" and books herself and her husband into a fancy hotel for a weekend of romance-rekindling nookie.

Tickets for "Sexy Laundry": (213) 389-9860 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com

Gearing up for interviews for the Pasadena Playhouse's upcoming production of "Mask," a world premiere musical based on the 1985 Peter Bogdanovich film. Anyone remember a heavily latexed Eric Stoltz as the "inspirational" Rocky Dennis and pre Oscar Cher as his biker chick mother, Rusty?

Set to open on March 21, "Mask" is now a musical written by the movie's screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan. The songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil -- who gave the world the number "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" are the composing team. I can't imagine what song titles they could possibly come up with for a musical "Mask," but I plan to ask them. Watch this space -- and the Daily News -- for more "Mask"-ings as the opening draws nearer.

It's such SOP these days to raid the cinematic vaults for possible musical fodder. "Shrek" is coming down the pike. "Catch me if You Can." San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse will get the West Coast premiere of "Xanadu" in the summer. More immediately, the Old Globe will see Scott Bakula in "Dancing in the Dark," a stage adaptation of the Fred Astaire flick "The Band Wagon" opening mid March.

L.A.'s Center Theatre Group, meanwhile, will premiere the musical of "9 to 5" in the fall with a score by Dolly Parton and a more than respectable cast of Stephanie Block, Megan Hilty, Allison Janey. and Marc Kudisch. Joe Mantello directs. Mantello, Block and Hilty are graduates of the not-a-movie-to-musical smash "Wicked."

Like I said, I get bemused by all these screen to stage projects...no, you don't really need an original idea to hit big. And I get even more bemused by the ones that started out as movies, become musicals and then RETURN TO THE SCREEN AS MUSICALS. I give you: "The Producers" and "Hairspray."

Countless producers out there have undoubtedly snapped up the stage rights to every movie under the sun. Still, I wonder what kind of a play the other "Mask" movie would make -- the one with Jim Carrey?

Time, no doubt, will tell.

I finally saw "Gone, Baby, Gone" the other day, and very much hope that the Amy Ryan -- who, as previously notes in "Curtains" -- appeared in "Rabbit Hole" at the Geffen a year or so ago -- will take the best supporting actress Oscar next Sunday. Industry favorite Cate Blanchett ("I'm not There") appears to be the front runner, and career longevity like Ruby Dee's could make Dee a dark horse victor. But let's not count our Ryan just yet.

Enjoyed an anecdote she shared at the Oscar nominees lunch last week. So somebody asked her who she had crushes on or admired, and she said Jimmy Stewart. "I like the men who make me laugh."

She also confessed a bit of teen heat for Richard Gere, which took the form of a fan letter requesting an autographed picture.

"It took me doing a play with Laura Linney years later to get him to send me that picture I asked for when I was 13," Ryan said. "I'm patient. I'm very patient."

Just to connect the dots a bit here. Linney and Gere twice appeared together in the films "Primal Fear" and "The Mothman Prophecies." The play Ryan references has got to be the 2000 Broadway revival of "Uncle Vanya."

As for patience, we'll know Sunday whether Amy Ryan -- of, for that matter fellow nominee Laura Linney -- has to extend her wait for an Oscar.

...on my review of his play "Some Girl(s)" at the Geffen Playhouse, which I recommend, BTW. (check out the review at www.LA.com.

evan:

just read your review of "some girl(s)."
i appreciate your considered take on the
production--glad you enjoyed the work
of the actors (who i think are doing very
strong stuff out there).

i appreciate how much you had to say
in a limited amount of space. keep up
the good work.

neil labute

------------------------------------

It's kind of cool to know that people are reading. And, yes, I will print the scathers, the "Get your sorry behind out of this profession you wanna be hack, e-mails as well, if and when they come in.

Some of you may have been following the flicks of Mamie Gummer who looks rather like her mother Meryl Streep (particularly in the movie "Evening" where Streep plays Gummer's character as an older woman). Gummer will appear opposite Laura Linney in a revival of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" on Broadway in May, presumably in the Presidente de Tourvel role (Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie).

A bit closer to home, Streep's son Henry Gummer, age 28, turns up in The Production Company's production of "A Good Smoke" by Don Cummings, opening Feb. 22 and running through March 29 at the Chandler Studio Theatre in NoHo.

Here's the play's description:

Mom says she suffers from the effects of an abusive childhood and turns her affections to narcotics and cigarettes. The rest of the family: hard-drinking Dad, sons Dave and Joe, and daughter, Susan; have been trained to obey. But now the balance has been upset. Susan just had a baby and Mom isn’t the center of attention anymore. Will she stop at nothing to regain that position? Please note that there is a very brief moment of smoking in the last few seconds of the play.

(I love that last warning, BTW). www.theprodco.com or 1-800-838-3006 for more info.

Back in the day, I suppose agents would have you change your name to something more glamorous than "Gummer" if you're going to get into show business. (Just ask the descendants of Judy Garland, nee Frances Ethel Gumm) Even so, I suspect before too long, actors with the name Gummer will be asked, "Are you, by chance, related to Meryl Streep?"

For that matter, I wonder how many actors with the last name Streep are kicking around out there.