Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as
Ken in John Logan’s Red.Photo Johan Persson
Best Play
    
Red
Golden Theater,
252 West 45th St.
(212) 239-6200.
Through June 27.
[Other Noteworthy New Plays: Superior Donuts, Time Stands Still, Next Fall]
I am drawn to plays and movies about art and artists. On the cinema side, there is of course, Lust for Life with Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, The Moon and Sixpence with George Sanders playing a character based on Gaugin, Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera opposite Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo and perhaps the best of the lot, Pollack with Ed Harris as Jackson Pollack.
As for theater, in Ten Unknowns, I witnessed the fruitless attempt of Donald Sutherland as the fictional Malcolm Raphaelson to make something of Jon Robin Baitz’s New York School Abstract Expressionist painter, who like Gaugin, shunned society. I am not a fan of Stephen Sondheim’s and James Lapine’s musical about Seurat, Sunday in the Park With George. There was also the mildly successful comedy, Yasmina Reza’s Art, featuring Alan Alda, Victor Garber and (yet again) Alfred Molina.
In the British import, Red, Alfred Molina as the artist Mark Rothko, sits with his back to the arriving audience, a soon-to-be-savored bon bon in John Logan’s absorbing two-character bio-drama. He is locked in, viscerally to the painting before him in a striking depiction of Rothko’s studio, circa 1950s (thanks to scenic designer Christopher Oram) . Rising from his chair, the artist scrutinizes the painting up close and runs his hand across the surface as a young man, Ken, enters the studio; and requests a job interview. Without turning to him, Rothko waves his visitor and audience in with the words “What do you see?” The play follows the initiation of Ken, portrayed by Eddie Redmayne, into the obdurate universe of Rothko who at that time was working on a commissioned series of paintings for the new Four Seasons restaurant (where I spent many a client lunch in the ‘60s) in the heralded Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building on Park Avenue. Redmayne appeared with Molina in the Donmar Warehouse production in London and in the process, garnered an Olivier Award. As fascinating to me as the confrontational Socratic dialogue that engages the two, was the wordless business of preparing, stretching and painting the oversized canvases that appeared from our Row F view, cunningly and convincingly “Rothkos.” It is by far the best stage role I’ve seen Molina in and served to obviate the lingering bad taste of his loutish Jewish father in the movie, An Education.
Best Musical
  
Sondheim on Sondheim
Roundabout Theater Company
Studio 54
254 W. 54th St.
212-339-6200
In a down year for new musicals, this olio of well-known, lesser-known and unknown Sondheim songs is driven by the dexterous cinematic techniques of Beowulf Barrett who provides a giant representation of the composer/lyricist discoursing winningly and humorously in his apartment about his craft. It is an entertainment, but with a single exception, this is not the glorious, spine-chilling mind blower of Wall to Wall Sondheim done five years ago at Symphony Space. No longer the clarion-voiced Barbara Cook of The Music Man, She Loves Me and the concert version of Follies, she still has the pipes to do (let us hope) many more one-woman shows. What she should not be doing is lumber around the proscenium with lither performers like Vanessa Williams and Norm Lewis. The highlight of the show was that single exception of which I spoke, Williams, stage left, doing Losing My Mind (from Follies) in counterpoint to Cook, stage right, doing Not a Day Goes By (my favorite of all Sondheim melodies, from Merrily We Roll Along.)
Best Play Revival
Denzel Washington and Viola Davis as Troy and Rose Maxson, in the revival of August Wilson’s 1987 drama, Fences.
   
Fences
Cort Theater
138 W. 48th St.
212-239-6200
Other notable play revivals: A View from the Bridge, Twelfth Night, Hamlet
Of the 10 plays in the August Wilson cycle, governing 10 decades of the 20th century, Fences comes after The Piano Lesson and Joe Jurner’s Come and Gone in my personal pecking order. It takes place in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, home to the fabled Homestead Grays Negro League team, a powerhouse owing to the presence of Josh Gibson, arguably the best catcher in baseball history and Satchel Paige, the most illustrious name in the Negro Leagues. I saw Gibson, Paige and Cool Papa Bell play with the Grays opposite the all-white Bushwicks semi-pro nine in Ridgewood, Queens. How could this be possible, years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier? Because of the benevolent and liberal owner of the Bushwicks, Max Rosner, who happened to be the father of a friend of my father and father-in-law. But I digress. In the play, Denzel Washington is a retired Grays player, now a sanitation worker, who rides herd over his aspiring ballplayer son Cory (Chris Chalk) and cuckolds his saintly wife (Viola Davis). The original production which I saw in 1987 had James Earl Jones and Mary Alice as the two principals. Jones performance, was visceral, physical and uncompromising, whereas Washington’s is more vulnerable and introspective. Davis who shone in a brief sequence of the movie Doubt is shatteringly glorious.
Best Revival of a Revue
(L-R) Lynn Wintersteller, Sal Viviano, Sally Mayes,
George Dvorsky in Closer Than Ever.
    
Closer Than Ever
Among the great musical revues I’ve witnessed, including John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, Call Me Mister and This is the Army, Closer Than Ever, with words by Richard Maltby, Jr. and music by David Shire stands alone. Closer Than Ever features self-contained songs which deal with such diverse topics as security, aging, mid-life crisis, second marriages, working couples, and unrequited love. My wife and I saw it in 1989 at the Cherry Lane Theater and play the original score relentlessly, so when astute publicist Peter Cromarty informed me that the 20th anniversary edition would be coming to Queens Theater in the Park, with the ageless Lynn Wintersteller and the comic singer Sally Mayes re-conceiving their original roles, we rented a car and heard Wintersteller sing Life Story a hauntingly beautiful, anthem for our time, a theater song Sondheim would have killed for:
It was a liberated marriage
We shared the household chores of course
We understood each others’ feelings
Right down to the day of our sensible divorce
I didn’t ask him for a penny
I had my liberated training
So off he went with his hair of bronze
To find a life like Khalil Gibrans
I got my rest from the drugs he did
He got his quest,
I got the kid
But oh,
I’m not complaining
So I set off to be a writer,
A modern mother on her own
I wrote up happenings at galleries
Turned down jobs with salaries
Stayed freelance and alone
I fought the battles of the sixties
Which you recall were rather draining
When men were thick, I hit the hay
Became a prick
Got equal pay
I faced down chauvinistic slobs
I won the fights
Improved the jobs
But oh,
I’m not complaining
My husband found himself his ashram
Lost forty pounds and went through hell
Then one day he came back from limbo
Found himself some bimbo
And moved to New Rochelle
I raised my son and I had lovers
My choices sometimes take explaining
I’d meet some jock
My friends would scoff
He’d stay a while
I’d drive him off
I kept my space
Preserved my turf
Six months I’d send him back to surf
And oooh,
I was not complaining
And now my son’s half way through college
I pay tuition like a fine
I’m still this feisty freelance writer
Resume well-honed
At a well-toned forty-nine
I find that getting work is harder
Each job I want takes more campaigning
And those sweet young things who hire me now
Those MBA’s making ninety thou
Who smile and ask what I have done
When they got their jobs from the fights I won
Ah, they should all stay home and have babies
But I’m not complaining
And in the evening at my window
As I watch Jersey growing dim
I feel this troubling emotion
Summed up in this notion
I wished I’d stayed with him
Lord knows each day with him was madness
As I have spent my life maintaining
But more and more I recall the joy
My golden dreamer
My lost boy
Our life was life in the twilight zone
But no worse then a life alone
But oh,
Well I chose my way
And I’m not complaining
© Richard Maltby, Jr. & David Shire
Best Actor in a Play
Alfred Molina, Red
Other outstanding performers: Liev Schreiber, A View from the Bridge; Brian d’Arcy James, Times Stands Still; Jude Law, Hamlet;, Denzel Washington, Fences; Noah Robbins, Brighton Beach Memoirs; Victor Garber, Present Laughter; Patrick Breen, Next Fall.
Best Actress in a Play
Viola Davis, Fences
Other outstanding performers: Laura Linney, Time Stands Still; Anne Hathaway, Twelfth Night.
Best Actor in a Musical
Jim Norton, Finian’s Rainbow
Best Actress in a Musical
Kate Baldwin, Finian’s Rainbow
Kate Baldwin and Jim Norton as Sharon and Finian McLonergan.
    
Finian’s Rainbow
On my list of 50 Top Musicals, published five years ago, Finian’s Rainbow, in my estimation, ranked #20. I wrote: “Yip Harburg and Burton Lane’s message musical was notable for its parodies of Senator Bilbo and other oppressors of African-Americans. David Wayne was immense as the leprechaun, who loved ‘the girl I'm near.’ Thank heavens they dropped plans for a revival, with a Peter Stone re-writing of the 'politically passe' book.” Yes, the late Peter Stone who wrote the book of the musical 1776, was poised to do a re-vamping of the script and lyrics of Finian’s. Talented as Stone was, it would have been a Leprechaunical curse on any pending production to have sanitized the brave words that emanated from that 1947-48 original. It was the same year in which Jackie Robinson broke into baseball which I happily witnessed at Ebbets Field. To the credit of the producers of this exquisite revival, they have caringly and cunningly retained such pearls from the show-stopping song: “If This Isn’t Love, I’m Carmen Miranda/ if this isn’t love, it’s red propaganda.” Indeed, I had to explain these lyrical references to my three grandkids, and also to point out that the opening number, This Time of the Year, was probably the first time a Broadway ensemble was comprised of African-Americans and whites sharing the stage equally. I relish the memory of that first production of Finian’s with the bravura performances of David Wayne as Og, Donald Richards as Woody, Ella Logan as Sharon and Anita Alvarez as Susan Mahoney, the Silent. Alvarez figured prominently in each of the subsequent three revivals. The first revival was a brief 15-show stint in 1955 at City Center with the under-appreciated actress/singer/dancer Helen Gallagher who played Sharon more winningly than Logan, Opposite her was Merv Griffin (yes, the very same) as Woody in his only Broadway credit. In 2004 I witnessed a delightful minimalist production Off-Broadway by the talented Irish Repertory Theater. This scintillating revival at the historic St. James Theater, has stellar performances from Kate Baldwin as Sharon, Alina Faye as Susan Mahoney, Christopher Fitzgerald as Og, Cheyenne Jackson as Woody, and Terri White as Dottie and Chuck Cooper in such show-stopping numbers as Necessity and The Begat. Towering above them all is the diminutive Jim Norton, that great Tony-winning Irish classical actor as Finian é féin [his very self], who sings, step-dances and sparks every scene in which he appears, without a scintilla of caricature. To paraphrase Joxer Daly from O’ Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, “he’s a darlin’ by, a darlin’ by.”
Best Actress in a Revue
Lynn Wintersteller, Closer Than Ever
Best Featured Actor in a Play
Eddie Redmayne, Red
Other fine performers: Michael Cristofer, A View from the Bridge; Stephen McKinley Henderson, Fences; Jon Michael Hill, Superior Donuts
Best Featured Actress in a Play
Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber in A View From The Bridge.
Scarlett Johansson, A View from the Bridge
Other fine performers: Jessica Hecht, Brighton Beach Memoirs and A View from the Bridge
Best Featured Actor in a Musical
Chuck Cooper, Finian’s Rainbow
Best Featured Actress in a Musical
Kate Finneran and Sean Hayes in Promises, Promises.
Kate Finneran, Promises, Promises
Best Featured Actress in a Revue
Sally Mayes, Closer than Ever
Best Director of a Play
Daniel Sullivan, Time Stands Still
Best Director (and Choreographer) of a Musical
Warren Carlyle, Finian’s Rainbow
Jim Brochu is Zero Mostel in Zero
Hour Photo: Stan Barouh
Best Solo Performer and Writer
Jim Brochu, Zero Hour
   
The DR2 Theater
103 East 15 Street, New York (east of Union Square)
(212) 375-1110
When an increasing number of my friends told me in no uncertain terms to see this one-man comic/tragic homage to Zero Mostel, I demurred merely because an imitator of – say - Ethel Merman, is something I could swallow. But an aper of Zero Mostel? Puh-leez. A man who before your very eyes, could turn into a Rhinoceros? Or become Leopold Bloom or Tevye or perform in the liberal Café Society with the likes of Jack Gilford, Professor Irwin Corey and Jimmy Savo? No one but the Genuine Z-Man. No one, until a reasonable facsimile performed admirably before our eyes at the DR2 Theater. The first time I saw Mostel anywhere was on the old Channel 13 Play of the Week in which he performed live on TV with E. G. Marshall in Waiting for Godot, followed by his incomparable Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and as Psuedolus in A Funny Thing Happened, a role turned down in successive order by Milton Berle and Phil Silvers, until Zero’s wife threatened to remove his genitals unless he took the part. The premise of Brochu’s brilliant script is Zero being interviewed by a young, albeit not visible reporter for The New York Times in Mostel’s West 28th St. apartment. In between guffaws from we onlookers were words spoken of the black list that kept him from performing for years, thanks in no small part to Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen who pilloried him from the Hearst press. He reminisces about such victims as his dear friend Jacob Loeb who played Gertrude Berg’s husband on The Goldbergs As an adman at the time, I was conscious of black listing by the notorious Red Channels which vicitimized Loeb who later took his own life, and Jean Muir who played Henry Aldrich’s mother on the TV version of that famed serial. Muir was the victim of a one-person hate campaign by Loblaw an upstate NY supermarket chain whose president threatened to pull all General Food products from his shelves, unless Muir was fired. The irony of Brochu’s condemnation of Jerome Robbins for naming names to HUAC, is that Robbins later hired Zero for both A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof. Not in the drama was the paradox of Elia Kazan who ratted Zero out, giving him an important role in the movie Panic in the Streets. Vindication was almost complete when he appeared in Woody Allen’s The Front in 1975.
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