April 2008 Archives

Chatted with Helen Hunt recently for an interview centering around her new movie "Then She Found Me." Didn't get to meet in person (@#$!^ publicists), but an interview's an interview.

Who among us doesn't think that Helen Hunt is cool? From a stage lovers POV alone, the woman wins an Oscar, goes backstage and, holding her trophy, announces she'll play Viola in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" for director Nicholas Hytner at Lincoln Center with a bunch of other theater hounds.

That was back in _ whew! _ 1998? My time doth fly.

"It wasn't like I was doing 'Twelfth Night' in some obscure place. I grew up going to the theater in New York," Hunt, the daughter of director Gordon Hunt told me. "For me it was as exciting to play that part in that place and that city. I heard somebody say there was great nobility in choosing to do a play. For me, I felt like I was cashing in this momentary set of chips while I had them to do what I really wanted to do."

Hunt returned to Broadway a few years later for a quickie run of Yasmina Reza's "Life (x) 3." In the summer 2002, she also kicked off the L.A. run of "The Guys" opposite Tim Robbins at The Actors Gang. More like a staged reading, but, briefly, she was back on the boards here in L.A.

Now a devoted mom to a 4 year old daughter, Hunt doesn't see a lot of stage-work in her immediate future. She was offered a role in a Broadway production last year and turned it down.

"The whole time I read it, I was nervous, and in the end it didn't feel like the right thing," says Hunt, who took three years off from film to write and be home with her daughter. "I didn't feel scared I would want to do it. I don't like not being home. I don't feel comfortable. I'm envious of those actresses who can just say, 'Here we go. It will work out,' and I don't mean that in a roundabout way."

"I know mothers who are good friends of mine who have mostly stayed home, and they don't walk around feeling sure they did right thing. It's important to me to feel happy and fulfilled enough to never cross that line."

My favorite Helen Hunt story -- with which I will bore you readers _ is actually a skipped generation Henerson encounter that happened during the summer of 2002 while Hunt was in the run of "The Guys." As it happened, Hunt was living one street over from where my parents lived in the San Fernando Valley. Her house had a cool sort of bridge walkway that my son, Jeremy, then 3 years old, found interesting.

Well, one afternoon, Jeremy and his grandfather took a walk on that street and paused in front of H.H.'s house. The actress herself came out to see what was going on. My father asked if she would mind if my kid walked across the bridge of her house a few times.

"Go for it," was Ms. Hunt's, I thought, quite gracious response.

When that tale was related to me, I vowed to thank Helen Hunt if I ever interviewed her. Which I did, and which I did.

The Reprise Theatre Co.'s 2008-09 season has been announced and, for his first programming duties as artistic director, Jason Alexander has an interesting slate.

When I interviewed Alexander a few months back, I asked whether he would be acting any of his company's productions. "When appropriate" was his reply in a nutshell (When appropriate, the former "Seinfeld"-ian also directs. "You probably won't be seeing my Don Quixote anytime soon."

We might, however, see his Sancho Panza when "Man of La Mancha" bows Feb. 17, 2009 at the Freud Playhouse, UCLA. I sometimes scratched my head when Reprise! (as it was formerly called) would stage musicals that were anything but undiscovered gems like "Brigadoon" or "Anything Goes." "Man of La Mancha," the musical Don Quixote tale by Dale Wasserman, Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion with the song "The Impossible Dream," can get a little ubiquitous (A Noise Within did a great scaled down version last season), but it's nothing if not a trusty warhorse.

"Once on this Island," on the other hand, is a horse of a different stripe. The season opener (yes, we frequently take things out of order here at TCiC), is a reggae and calypso fused "Little Mermaid" tale about a West Indies village girl who saves the life of a Prince. Music and lyrics are by "Ragtime's" Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty. Sept. 2-14 at the Freud.

Billy Porter will direct, Bradley "Shooz" Rapier of the Groovaloos will choreograph and -- aren't they optimistic -- Reprise has even announced partial casting: Yvette Cason, Vanita Harbour, Patina Miller, Jesse Nager, Leslie Odom Jr., Nita Whitaker and 2008 Grammy nominee Ledisi.

Alexander will act in "I Love my Wife" along with Vicki Lewis and Steven Weber for director Larry Moss. The Michael Lewis and Cy Coleman piece is set amidst the sexual revolution of the 1970s. Dec. 2-14 at, not the Freud, but the Brentwood Theatre on the V.A. grounds.

And more than a year from now (May 5-17), the company wraps the season with "Chess." With music by the ABBA B's (Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus) and lyrics by Tim Rice, "Chess" was a London hit and a Broadway flop. It's a Cold War love story between a Russian chess master and an American woman, set amidst a series of chess tournaments. Remember "One Night in Bangkok?" Yeah, from that musical.

More info: www.reprise.org

A few posts back, I speculated that "Legally Blonde: the Musical" would likely make it to the Pantages Theatre as part of the Broadway/L.A. series now that "Wicked" will be vacating in January of next year.

And so it will, albeit in August of 2009.

What else is coming? Well...

"Phantom of the Opera," Jan 21-Feb 21. Gotta love repositioning. Apart from the usual boilerplate about "Phantom" being the musical juggernaut it has been since, sheesh, the mid 80s, the B/LA folks are reminding us that this is the first time "Phantom" has played the PANTAGES, in "over a decade."

For the record, I've seen the play four times, one of which was a work obligation. The only way I'll see it again, and with great reluctance, is if I decide to take the kid.

"Grease," March 10-22. I was dubious that this was indeed "direct from Broadway" as advertised, until I checked and was reminded that, yes, "Grease" has recently been revived. And there was a reality TV series that helped cast the leads. So Kathleen Marshall's production is kinda new, albeit a conventional choice.

"Mamma Mia," April 7-19 See, here's what you can do when your theater is "Wicked Free." Close one show and open another two weeks later. And not just any show, but "Mamma Mia" the ABBA fluffer that will be at the Pantages for "the first time in five years" and the first L.A. engagement since the release of the movie. Remember my earlier remark about promotional repositioning? Well, double it here.

"Dirty Dancing,– the Classic Story On Stage" April 28-June 14. A West Coast premiere, hanging around for longer than the quick one week and offs. Not sure how this will translate. Hoping DD film star Patrick Swayze will be in good health when it gets here.

"Fiddler on the Roof," Jul 22- Aug. 9. The rare announcement that can also include a confirmed cast member, Topol, who stared in the movie and who will be a 73 year old Tevye when he takes the stage.

The aforementioned "Blonde," Aug. 12- Sept. 6.

"Dr Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas," Nov. 10-Jan. 3-2010, a perennial down in San Diego where it was birthed, and now on Broadway. Somebody got the bright idea to take it regionally.

Bonus productions,

"Rent" with Adam Pascal and Anthony Rap, March 3-8, 09: the original Roger and Mark return. Aren't they a little old to be bohemians?

"RAIN: the Beatles Experience" March 31-April 5, 2009 because no season is complete without some sort of a rock flashback cum tribute event.

OK, so I snark from time to time, but this lineup certainly beats the Ahmanson piggyback of last year to accommodate the "Wicked" hoards.

Doings at the Geffen Playhouse...

Out goes one play by Donald Margulies: the world premiere of "The Elephant in the Room" to be replaced by "Shipwrecked An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself)." Apparently you can do this when you're an established playwright in possession of a commission with a given theater company. I give you Center Theatre Group, which has subbed the David Mamet musical "A Waitress in Yellowstone" a couple of times, but will slip in a couple of Mamet one-acts where "Waitress" was supposed to go.

Back to Margulies, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Dinner with Friends," "Sight Unseen," "Collected Stories" and "Brooklyn Boy." Daniel Sullivan, who has directed many of the playwrights' premiers both in New York and at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, was not available to tackle "Elephant" until next season. So the Geffen will hold onto it, and produce "Shipwrecked" instead. I suspect this is a cost saving maneuver as well as a creative necessity.

Shipwrecked," which is apparently something of a tour de force by actor Gregory Itzin, played Costa Mesa's South Coast Repertory last Fall. It will now transfer, with Itzin and director Bart DeLorenzo (who helmed the mess that was "The Joan Rivers Theatre Project"). I didn't see it, figuring that Margulies -- with two plays on the horizon for the 07-08 season _ was getting positively ubiquitous. (Plus I hated his last play, "Brooklyn Boy.").

The Geffen and SCR seem to have Margulies in common as both venues routinely stage the man's work. Fair enough.

"Shipwrecked!" opens June 25 and runs through Aug. 3. Visit GeffenPlayhouse.com or call (310) 208-5454 for tickets.

Who out there caught "Permanent Collection" when it played the Kirk Douglas Theatre back in early '06. Or, prior to that, at the Greenway Court? Very cool play by Thomas Gibbons about the new director of a too white art collection and his somewhat racial clash with the museum's director of education?

I ask because the third play in Gibbons's 3 play trilogy, titled "A House with No Walls," will arrive at the New LATC Theater on Spring Street starting May 9.

The production is courtesy of the Robey Theatre Co. which co-produced "Permanent Collection." That's the company co founded by Danny Glover and Bennet Guillory who will both direct and star in "A House with No Walls."

This one doesn't synopsize easily. The press release takes about four paragraphs. But what the hey, we've always got room...

Cadence Lane has so much going for her. The young African American woman is gifted with striking beauty, superior intellect, abundant charm, noted accomplishment, social prominence and affluence. She could almost be a role model for everything a young Black woman wanted to be. If only she wasn't a conservative.

She's a historian, and takes issue with people, especially those who try to cast African Americans as victims. She can somewhat afford to take this position as an educated, successful woman who has never known the sting of poverty. At the start of the play, she heads a committee concerned with planning the Museum of American Liberty in Independence National Park in Philadelphia, where George Washington's Executive Mansion originally was.

Cadence is about to lock horns with Salif Camara, an old school radical Black activist who is trying to have a reconstruction erected of the tiny shack where Washington's slaves resided when not at Washington's main home in Mount Vernon. His objective is to ensure that the Slaves of Washington the slave owner are not forgotten, abd is not above exaggeration to make his point. At one juncture, he asserts that Washington whipped and chained his household slaves, when in fact he did not.

Steven Gardner, a bureaucrat and a Republican, is charged with getting the museum opened in time. On his team is Allen Rosen, a white liberal. Meanwhile, somehow, some way, Cadence has established a mystical connection with Oney Judge. Oney, the subject of a historical volume penned by Cadence, is one of Washington's slaves, living in Philadelphia in 1797. Oney falsely believes the President will free her. Will she run away to freedom if given the chance? More importantly, what is Oney trying to communicate to Cadence across the chasm of 211 years?

Anybody still with me? Too much information?

So check out the production itself starting May 9 and continuing through June 15 at 514 S. Spring St. downtown. (213) 489-7402, www.robeytheatrecompany.com.

I interviewed Guillory for a feature prior to "Collection" at a Marie Calenders in the Valley. At the time we talked ab out his dream that the Robey would eventually get its own permanent space. I recall him asking me to print his fervid hope that Eli Broad would see the article and volunteer $10 million or so for the space.

The Robey may be nomadic, but it's an important company. They certainly could do a lot worse than housing at LATC for a month or so.

Looked over the announced cities for the national tour of "Legally Blonde: The Musical" and didn't see any L.A. dates. Costa Mesa, yes, from Sept. 8 to 20 of 2009 at the OC Performing Arts Center, but nothing more local.

You know "Blonde" is coming, of course, a big pink MTV wave of musical fluff in its wake. And here's something else just announced: "Wicked" which has occupied the Pantages Theatre since February of last year announced that it must play its last performance Jan. 11 of 2009 so that Broadway/L.A.'s subscribers can actually watch other shows in the Pantages. I'll bet you any Elle Woods article of clothing in your wardrobe that "Legally Blonde" will be one of the shows on the B/L.A. menu.

Incidentally, I've been asked to EMPHASIZE that "Wicked" would have played on, were it not for those subscribers who no longer want to catch their entertainment at the Ahmanson or the Wilshire Theatre of Beverly Hills.

This from James M. Nederlander, chariman and CEO of the Nederlander Organization which owns and runs the Pantages:

"Although WICKED could continue to run for some time in Los Angeles, the Pantages Theatre is also home to Broadway L.A. and its subscription series. And, while we've been happy to send our subscribers to other venues during WICKED's run, we felt it was time to bring them back to the Pantages for our upcoming productions. So it is with reluctance, but great pride with both the success of WICKED and the strength of our subscription base, that WICKED will conclude its run in January 2009.”

Barring yet another extension then, (not out of the question), I will finally get people to stop asking me how to get "Wicked" tickets by Jan. 11 of 09 having run 791 performances and 12 previews.

Apparently for some people it really IS easy being green.