AS BEES FLY Producers Randall L. Wreghitt and Edgar Lans-bury pitched a 100th performance party at Vittorio's for their sleeper hit at the Lucille Lortel, Douglas Carter Beane's sprightly and original As Bees in Honey Drown. (It's going in the right direction, apparently.) J. Smith-Cameron and T. Scott Cunning-ham, as the conner and the conned, are the only members of the original cast still with the show; the rest fled to other Drama Dept. projectsnotably, a revival of Ring Lardner Jr.'s June Moon (predicted for the Variety Arts in the spring). . . . Lifting off Off-Broadway: Fly, a one-man comedy written by and starring Joseph Edward at the American Place Theatre; and Flight, Arthur Giron's play about the Wright brothers (Thomas McHugh and Michael Louis Wells) at Ensemble Studio Theatre. . . . Having paid his dues in Rent, Timothy Britten Parker will tackle a new milieuLondon ballroom dancingthis month in Jeanne Dorsey's Stepping Out with Mr. Markham.SEATTLE'S OTT BUSY IN NY: Seattle Rep's new artistic director, Sharon Ott, is culture-jumping in the extreme with the plays she is helming in New York, going from the Louisiana wetlands of Anne Galjour's Alligator Tales at Manhattan Theatre Club to the Hawaii of 1919 of Phillip Kan Gotanda's Ballad of Yachiyo at The Public. . . . Cynthia Darlow, a funny lady who knows from funny writers, has been seen recently in the works of Paul Rudnick (The Naked Truth), Neil Simon (Rumors), Noël Coward (Present Laughter) and Christopher Durang (Sex and Longing). Now, inevitably, she has joined Mere Mortals in its extended run at the John Houseman. Its author, David Ives, who contributed an extended run of All in the Timing to the same theatre, is currently adapting Travels With My Aunt for a Hallmark Hall of Famer and working up the film biography of Alfred Kinsey for director Stanley Donen. . . . Goose-Pimples, a Mike (Secrets and Lies) Leigh dissection of the "upwardly mobile" working class in the 'burbs of London, is hitting Theatre Row this month, under the auspices of The New Group and the direction of Scott Elliott. The playwright, director and company came together quite memorably with the Obie-winning Ecstasy. Caroline Seymour, who starred in the latter, will be aboard for this one, along with Sam Rockwell from the film Box of Moonlight and Adam Alexi-Malle from Broadway's Titanic.
STAR-SPANGLED GIRL: "This has been my American week," said Joan Copeland, exiting from a Signature Theatre Company revival of her brother Arthur Miller's The American Clock; in the original Broadway production, she played essentially their mother (essayed in this recent production by Laura Esterman). A few days earlier, Copeland had ventured to the other side of 42nd Street to check out the revival of another play she had originally starred in: Richard Greenberg's The American Plan; her role this time was played by Catherine Wolf. . . . Eric Bogosian's Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll returned to N.Y.C. for the first time since its initial gigthis time sans Bogosian. Oscar Riba did the honorsand quite well, too.
-- By Harry Haun
