07/02/04
Nope, nothing half-assed about the company of dance stars that I saw tear through Tharp's brilliant creation, which should have won her a direction Tony Award to go along with her Best Choreography prize. The three male understudies--Ted Benfalvi as Eddie, Stuart Capps as James and Ian Carney as Tony--were actually the alternate stars (who regularly perform at the Wednesday and Saturday 2pm matinees), and they were all great. Like Tony nominee John Selya, Benfalvi is an athletic crowd pleaser, making good use of an electric smile that brings to mind the younger Scott Wise. Wise, by the way, is still onboard as Assistant Director/Choreographer as well as performing in the non-dance roles of Sergeant O'Leary and the drill sergeant (when not home tending to wife Elizabeth Parkinson, the show's electrifying original star who's due to give birth in September).
Taking on Brenda--perhaps the show's largest role--is Nancy Lemenager, who was plucked from the chorus to play the ingénue in last year's musical flop Never Gonna Dance. I was in the minority on her performance in that show, finding her to be a spunky presence with a sweet, old-fashioned singing voice that was a nice reprise from the power-belting found in every other show in town. (Oh, and did I mention that she and co-star Noah Racey were robbed of Astaire Awards? Well, now I have!) Nobody will argue with Lemenager's work in Movin' Out. She's confident and sexy with all the right moves and a real focus on the role. There's no doubt that Lemenager's a great actress under all that dancer's precision.
Ashley Tuttle recently returned as Judy after a season with the American Ballet Theatre, and she's still a striking figure as the en pointe grieving widow. I'd also love to give a shout-out to the members of the ensemble who are still with the Broadway production 22 months into the run (and whose bodies are all the better for it!): Aliane Baquerot, Alexander Brady, Ron DeJesus, Melissa Downey, Pascale Faye, Jill Nicklaus, Rika Okamoto, Meg Paul, Karine Plantadit-Bageot and Lawrence Rabson. And what more can I say about Michael Cavenaugh, the uber-talented piano man that guides the crowd through the Billy Joel songbook? Well, the crowd screams for him like he's a rock star at the end, and I couldn't agree more with them.
Movin' Out, which tells a more-moving-than-ever story of war, with the unlikely combination of satisfying rock-pop and modern dance, remains one of the most original shows in town. If you haven't seen it, shame on you. And if you've only seen it with the original cast, check it out again.
MARRIAGE IS A GREAT INSTITUTION AND THIS BLONDE'S READY FOR AN INSTITUTION!
I had a chance this week to check in on the delightful Claudia Shear, who is doing just fine these days. “I got married two months ago in Scotland, went on my honeymoon, came back and went into rehearsals with my buddies,” Shear gushed. “It doesn't get any better than this!”
The buddies she's referring to are director James Lapine and co-stars Kevin Chamberlin and Bob Stillman, the Broadway team that is now presenting her terrific play Dirty Blonde on the West End to rave reviews. After the off-Broadway premiere of the play (which is about Mae West and her fans) at New York Theater Workshop, a Broadway run at the Helen Hayes and regional stints in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, Shear is calling the London engagement her Dirty Blonde swan song. “It's nice to finish out on top,” she said.
Shear is thrilled to still call her co-stars close friends. “We're very tight,” she confirmed. “Tighter and tighter. It's not that we're best friends. We all have very separate lives, but we know each other so well. We've been through deaths of parents, loss of love, finding of love. Our lives were defined by this show.” When I asked Shear if the threesome had taken time to explore London together at all, she laughed. “We've explored a lot of restaurants!”
What's making the London run different for Shear is the presence of her hubby Harry, who she married on May 1 in Scotland (“Mae Day” is also the date Dirty Blonde opened on Broadway in 2000.) “We met three years ago at my best friend's wedding,” Shear said, adding that Harry is a first cousin to her friends Aidan and Alice. “Then I didn't see him for a year. When we did Dirty Blonde in Leeds [in 2002], Alice said, ‘You should call my cousin Harry.' He came to see the show and I was trying to be cool afterwards and Kevin [Chamberlin] said, ‘Oh, Harry! We've heard so much about you!' If looks could kill, he would have been incinerated!”
After Blonde Shear is looking forward to hankering down and writing a new piece. “I have several things on the computer waiting for me to write them,” she said. She still hopes to write a redo of the 1961 Noël Coward musical Sail Away for which she would play the Elaine Stritch role of travel guide Mimi Paragon (“It's one of seven parts that I'm right for!” she joked), but there are no firm plans at this point.
For now, she's thrilled to be playing Mae West and lovelorn fan Jo at the Duke of York's Theatre, where she's happy to report audiences are ready to go for the ride. “No one laughs immediately here,” she admitted. “They need permission to laugh. If you get a couple in the audience who laugh, it turns the key for them. But no matter how quiet they are, they always get perky at the end. They always come through.” Some things are funny anywhere, it seems, including the show's the now-famous dialogue about high colonics. “A poop joke,” Shear laughed. “is universal!”
SPEAKING OF DIRTY BLONDES…
The rumors are true--millionaire heiress and Simple Life 2 star Paris Hilton is heading to the New York stage this summer. The mind wanders with titillating possibilities—Roxie Hart? Amneris? Peggy Sawyer? Penny Pingleton? Christine Daae? Eileen Sherwood? Ulla?!? Well, no. Instead, Paris Hilton herself is the character, in Doug Field's new one-person show I Love Paris, playing six consecutive Mondays at 8pm at the Blue Heron Arts Center starting July 26 under the direction of Timothy Haskell.
Field, who wrote the very funny Down South off-Broadway a few seasons back, got the inspiration for the show while running on a treadmill at his Los Angeles gym. You see, the gym bunny that came before him left behind a copy of US Weekly that featured Hilton on the cover around the time news of her sex tape broke. But it wasn't the juicy tidbits of Hilton and on-screen partner Rick Solomon that Field reacted to, but an adjacent story regarding the weight loss of pop star and fellow (sometimes) blonde Christina Aguilera.
“There were these pictures of her before and after,” he remembered. “And I couldn't tell the difference! And the magazine didn't talk to Christina, but her trainer, who said that between meals she now ate 12 almonds and a piece of fruit. I found that so oddly specific and I could imagine her carrying around almonds and having to count out 12 three times a day.” I know what you're thinking—why didn't he just write a play about Aguilera then? “Well, Paris seemed to epitomize and embody the whole '12 almonds and a piece of fruit' way of thinking,” he explained. “In fact, I wanted to call the show that!” Field laughed about the notion of finding his next show at the gym: “Usually you come out with a phone number, but this time I came out with a play!”
Field, who sets Hilton backstage at The View waiting to audition to be a co-host in his show, disagreed with my assessment that there wasn't a lot to Hilton. “There's a lot to everybody,” he argued. “You just have to look deep enough.” Although Field likes to think that Hilton herself would have played the part if offered, Kevin Shinick (who appeared in Down South) will play Paris--“absolutely NOT in drag” according to press materials. “I wanted to capture Paris through words, not clothes,” Field said.
“I find it funnier to not do it in drag,” added Shinick, who has appeared on Broadway in more high-brow fare like The Seagull, Saint Joan, Timon of Athens, The Government Inspector and The School for Scandal. “It's a lot of fun just sort of looking like me and free associating as Paris. We cover everything from her split ends to the Geneva Convention.” Of course, they also cover the homemade porno (recently released commercially as 1 Night in Paris), which Shinick admits he's watched for the sake of research: “With my wife out of the room, yes I've seen it. When she comes back in, I'll say no, I haven't!” (“Are you talking about the porno?” his wife yelled from the other room a moment later.)
Maybe Hilton herself will come by the Blue Heron and prove to be a good sport about I Love Paris. “I have a friend who knows her and was supposed to tell her about the show,” Field said. “There's a ticket for her waiting at the door. And it's free!”
IN BOX
Dear Paul:
I am currently in a production of the musical take on the story of the ugly duckling called Honk! The music is great and so is the plot. It even has many hidden jokes in it, like Shrek. I learned that it won the Lawrence Olivier Award for Best Musical (beating out Mamma Mia! AND The Lion King. Yet, it has never been on Broadway. Why is this?
Nick Pacifico
----Catasauqua, Pennsylvannia
Dear Nick:
Yes, Honk will probably forever be known as the show that beat out those other two smash hits for the best musical prize in the UK. It won that honor in 2000, even though it had been kicking around for quite a few years prior. In fact, the show first saw the light of day in 1993 with the title The Ugly Ducking or the Aesthetically Challenged Farmyard Fowl. There have been several regional productions, including one at the Helen Hayes Performing Arts Center in Nyack, New York, and the Music Theater of Wichita, Kansas (which produced a cast album that Ken Mandelbaum reviewed favorably in 2002). Variety even once reported plans were afoot for a film of Honk! combining stop-motion animation and live-action to tell the story. But a Broadway production, you ask? It doesn't seem to be on anyone's plate, but I think it'd be foolish to count it out. It certainly could make it to these parts some day, no?
Dear Paul:
I notice that when I check the "grosses" and "capacity" for Broadway shows on Broadway.com, Wicked is always at 100% capacity while other shows are sometimes 101% or more. Is this because the Gershwin Theatre does not allow standing room? Does standing room account for the percentage over 100 at other theaters?
----Michael Lalla
Dear Michael:
Yes. A capacity of 100% means that every seat in the house is taken, with 100+ reported capacities accounting for those hungry fans that are willing to stand for a good time. Hit musicals like Hairspray, Mamma Mia!, The Lion King and The Producers regularly have reported such grosses, as their venues can accommodate extra audience members. Wicked plays at the Gershwin, which boasts a large slope of an orchestra section that offers pretty much everyone a good view of the stage. It also boasts over 1,900 seats, which has been more than enough for just about every show in recent memory until Wicked came down the pike!
Dear Paul:
Thanks for your unwaivering support of Thoroughly Modern Millie. I am a proud Millie freak, having seen it 16 1/2 times (I felt compelled to second-act a show for the first time ever one night so I could enjoy that Act II opener!) I was also at that last performance and agree with your assessment. It was exciting but didn't in any way match the incredible experience that was Sutton Foster's last performance. Anyway, I miss Millie! Have you seen the tour? I'm curious about it, but didn't make it up to Connecticut when it went through there a while back.
----Edward Kamholz
New York, New York
Dear Edward:
Yes, I did catch the tour when it played up in Hartford last year. It was in terrific shape—it's a damn shame that Darcy Roberts didn't get to play the role on the Great White Way! By the way, Edward, yours was one of dozens of pro-Millie letters I received this week. Here's another:
Dear Paul:
Thank you for the words you wrote about Thoroughly Modern Millie. I live in Charlotte, NC and while I did not see the show on Broadway, I did have the pleasure of seeing the terrific touring version. I have been baffled why this show, although a Tony winner, was not all the rage. And equally surprised at how inventive and entertaining the choreography was. You are correct--Rob Ashford should be attached to every upcoming musical; his dances have a certain "it factor" that gets the audience toes tapping while their hearts are aflutter with the elements of excitement and surprise. And the score (original material) never got its true do. The music and and, especially lyrics are very inventive. And the book is so funny and smart with a multitude of great characters. I predict this show will have a long life in stock and ultimately, in time, be given its due; I've felt this way for a while and am just writing to say I'm glad you, as a professional theatre columnist, took the initiative to point out how underrated this gem of a show is.
----Jeff Turk
----Charlotte, NC
That's it for now. Talk to you next week. Please e-mail me any of your questions, comments or critiques!
Paul Wontorek
Editor-in-Chief
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