Larry Kramer to Receive Special Tony Award

Playwright, author, and longtime activist Larry Kramer will receive the Isabelle Stevenson Award this year, the WSJ reports.

The award is "a non-competitive Tony award given to an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution on behalf of humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations."

They add:

Kramer said so few playwrights in the U.S. write about politics, and instead focus on plays about personal relationships and families, “which I consider of lesser interest to me as a writer. If you compare it with Britain where every major playwright — David Hare, Howard Brenton – has written about what’s going on in the country, that doesn’t exist here.”

Kramer said he has been “frowned upon as a serious writer” ever since his 1985 play “The Normal Heart,” which is based upon his own experiences co-founding the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

Kramer won a 2011 Tony for Best Revival for the revival of The Normal Heart, now being adapted into an HBO film helmed by Ryan Murphy and starring Mark Ruffalo.

The Tony Awards take place on June 9.

(image david shankbone wikimedia)

Sylvester Stallone's 'Rocky' Coming to Broadway: VIDEO

Rocky is going to be a Broadway musical.

The Hollywood Reporter:

The stage incarnation of Rocky brings together Tony Award-winning book writer Thomas Meehan (The Producers, Hairspray) with composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens, whose many collaborations include the musical Ragtime.

Directing the production is Alex Timbers, currently represented in New York with the David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical Here Lies Love and the musical-play hybrid Peter and the Starcatcher. Fight choreography is by Steven Hoggett (Once), with dance choreography by Kelly Devine (Rock of Ages).

“I couldn’t be more proud or more excited about this production and how my original story of Rocky Balboa has been brought to spectacular life onstage,” said Stallone, who penned the screenplay of the beloved 1976 feature that spawned four sequels.

The video pitch and a clip from the show's first run in Hamburg, AFTER THE JUMP...

Bette Midler Opens On Broadway In ‘I’ll Eat You Last:’ REVIEW

 

 BY NAVEEN KUMAR

One Hollywood legend is playing another on Broadway, and there’s a good chance you’ve only heard of one of them. But by the end of I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers, which opened on Wednesday at the Booth Theatre, everyone walks away feeling like old friends.

That includes Bette Midler, and every guest welcomed into the Beverly Hills mansion of Hollywood super agent Sue Mengers for this aptly titled and utterly delightful ‘chat.’ Written by John Logan, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (Hugo, The Aviator) and Tony-winning playwright (Red), the show offers a delicious insider glimpse into the seedy yet glamorous world of the Hollywood talent business.

Sue Mengers, whose career spanned nearly thirty years beginning in the 1960s, wasn’t just any agent. She discovered Barbra Streisand singing in a gay bar, landed Gene Hackman in The French Connection, represented Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols and Bob Fosse. But loyalty is not a well-known virtue in this business—as the show begins, Sue is expecting a call from Barbra to fire her.

In the meantime, she spends the evening doing what she loves best: dishing, smoking (tobacco and otherwise), and picking up the occasional phone call from an A-list star. Ms. Midler proves her rightful place in the latter category with her gleefully engaging performance, delivered entirely from the comfort of her plush sofa. Why stand? We’re all friends here.

Under Joe Mantello’s fine direction, Sue’s stories take on a happy rhythm, punctuated with often-riotous punch lines. An opening example: regarding a certain legendary guest expected at her dinner party later in the evening, “Elton’s the easiest dinner guest ever: he’ll eat anything but pussy.”

Through the course of a tight 85 minutes, Sue delivers everything from behind-the-scenes gossip, straight-shot industry wisdom, and enough of the soft side beneath her brassy surface to bring us firmly on her side. Like any animated conversation (one-sided though this one may be), Logan’s script is built on non-sequiturs that nevertheless flow together naturally. Good agents can talk to anyone, and Sue’s certainly no exception.

From gathering courage to approach the most popular girl on the playground to a profession in schmoozing, through-lines from Sue’s formative experiences are simply drawn. But Logan’s economy with storytelling serves the play and its star well, who keeps her captive audience rapt with interest.

If we find Sue in the twilight of her career (Logan’s play is set in the early 80s, Sue died in 2011), her years have made her wise, though she’s no less passionate about show business. She loves the game with every fiber of her being (including her diaphanous kaftan), even as the game keeps changing and she loses her footing.

When she finally does stand to conclude our chat (spoiler alert), the feeling is pretty near momentous.  

(Bottom image: Sue Mengers, 1976, by Ron Galella)

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'Orphans,' Starring Alec Baldwin Opens On Broadway: REVIEW

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

Lyle Kessler’s 1983 play Orphans opened last Thursday at the Schoenfeld Theatre, making its Broadway debut in a powerfully charged production starring Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster and Tom Sturridge. A hybrid sort of drama built on contrivances yet grounded in emotional truths, the play becomes a vehicle for three outstanding star performances under Daniel Sullivan's nimble and dynamic direction.

Two orphaned adult brothers still living in their parents’ decaying house on the north side of Philadelphia, Treat and Philip have been fending for themselves since they were children. Foster plays Treat, who has supported himself and his brother as a petty thief, while keeping Philip (Sturridge) sheltered at home in an abbreviated state of development. Though Philip can’t read and doesn’t leave the house, he nurses his curiosity by watching TV or passersby, and underlining words in the daily newspaper.

Treat kidnaps Harold (Baldwin), who unbeknownst to him is not only a mobster but also a fellow orphan. Tables turn when Harold quickly escapes and offers a hand of support (and an encouraging shoulder squeeze) to both boys, effectively threatening Treat’s position as household father figure.

Baldwin is a natural fit for Harold, exuding the particular brand of polished panache for which he's famous. Foster — who replaced Shia LaBeouf after the star stepped off the production shortly into rehearsal, stirring up a Twitter sh*t storm on his way out — is fantastic as Treat, seething with resentful rage while exercising a sadistic protective grip on his brother.

But Sturridge’s remarkable performance as Philip is definitely the production’s most affecting and attention-grabbing. Though both brothers experience profound mental and emotional transformations by the play’s end, Philip has farther to travel. Sturridge brings a careful sensitivity to his every action, and traverses every inch of designer John Lee Beatty’s set with a bounding, agile grace.

Kessler’s play, though written with three roles tailor-made to showcase actor prowess, hangs upon a strangely stylized conceit that doesn’t ultimately add up to a wholly satisfying drama. That Treat just happens to kidnap a fellow orphan criminal is only one of several question marks looming in the play’s framework.

But Sullivan elicits fine performances from each of the three actors, and finesses some of the story’s more incredulous moments with a sure hand. Despite the engineered quality of Kessler’s conclusion, Sullivan’s production moves with a stirring momentum that can’t help but make an impact. 

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Downton Abbey, the Musical Version: VIDEO

"It was hard being gay in Edwardian times. There was no 'It Gets Better Project' back then.

Series 4, Episode 1 is here! A who's who of Broadway actors nail it in this staged version at NYC's 54 Below.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Richard Greenberg’s ‘The Assembled Parties’ Opens on Broadway: REVIEW

BY NAVEEN KUMAR

A finely tuned and resonant drama written with impeccable wit, Richard Greenberg’s new play The Assembled Parties, which opened on Broadway last Wednesday in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Friedman Theatre, manages to meaningfully encompass mortality, ambition, legacy, and the hidden nature of love—and that’s only in the first ten minutes.   

Set in a labyrinthian Central Park West apartment (beautifully designed by Santo Loquasto), the play follows the lives of an upper crust Jewish family across a twenty-year span, with the first act set on Christmas day in 1980, and the second on the same day in 2000.

When the play opens, a handsome young middle-aged couple, Julie and Ben Boscov (Jessica Hecht and Jonathan Walker) are hosting Christmas dinner—though all of the assembled parties are in fact, Jewish. Scotty (Jake Silbermann), their oldest son and family golden boy, has deferred admission to Harvard Law, derailing their idea that he’s destined for greatness.

Scotty’s friend and former classmate Jeff (Jeremy Shamos), who accepted his own admission and just completed his first semester, joins the family for dinner. Rapt by their posh sophistication, he makes a concerted effort to insinuate himself with Scotty’s parents, and Julie in particular.

Ben’s wry sister Faye (Judith Light) arrives with her husband Mort (Mark Blum), and their awkward 30-year-old daughter Shelley (Lauren Blumenfeld). Though their mother made her life miserable after Faye’s unplanned pregnancy with Shelley and shotgun wedding to Mort, Faye urges Ben to visit her in the hospital as she lingers on her deathbed.

Details about each intricately drawn character unfold strategically through the play’s end, even for those who don’t return twenty years later for its second act. The entire cast is top notch, though ultimately the evening belongs to Jessica Hecht and Judith Light, whose skills with language and emotional nuance are truly marvelous. 

Greenberg contextualizes his domestic portrait within broader historical patterns, with each act set during election years that marked the beginning of two double-term Republican presidencies (Reagan in the first, and Bush Jr. in the second). Both years also mark a naïve sort of calm before New York was thrust into the center of landmark national crises—the height of the urban AIDS crises, and the events of September 2001.

Our knowledge of what’s to come casts subtle shadows over the insular world of the play, as the classic mores of drawing room drama are carefully placed within a contemporary American framework. Greenberg’s New York is at once timeless and mythical, and decaying brick and mortar. Had Edith Wharton been a post-war Jewess, she couldn’t have written it better herself.

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