No, not the president and the newscaster, the actress and the director. Cynthia Nixon appears with other members of NY's Drama Dept. theatre company in a new, well-received comedy by Douglas Carter Beane, As Bees In Honey Drown.
Directing is Mark Brokaw, currently basking in the glow of a Drama Desk Award for staging the Off-Broadway smash, How I Learned To Drive.
The show had been scheduled to run only through June 29, but those performances have already sold out.Fourteen more have been added, pushing the show's closing date to July 13 at the Greenwich House Theatre on Barrow Street.
Nixon appeared on Broadway in Hurly-Burly, in 1995's Indiscretions, as well as Off-Broadway's The Balcony Scene at Circle Rep (1991). Also in Beane's comedy are T. Scott Cunningham (Tartuffe: Born Again), Josh Hamilton (Wonderful Time at the WPA), J. Smith-Cameron (The Play's The Thing), Sandra Daley and Mark Nelson, who staged their well-received revival of June Moon this past season, and who's best known for starring as Albert Einstein in Picasso At The Lapin Agile.
The show follows exotic New York socialite, Alexa Veer de Veer, trying to change a young novelist's attitudes towards life. Beane's satire of the fashionable set takes on modern glamour, success and revenge. Designing Bees will be Allen Moyer (set), Jonathan Bixby (costumes) and Kenneth Posner (lighting). David Van Tiegham will serve as composer and sound designer.
Bees received a staged reading in 1996 as part of Portland Stage Company's Little Festival of the Unexpected in Maine. Beane was also the author, lyricist and co-composer of the revue White Lies, which played at NJ's American Stage Company in 1991. Author of the screenplay for To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, Beane's Advice From A Caterpillar played Off-Broadway with Ally Sheedy in 1991.
Drama Dept. was formed in 1994 to "create, develop and produce new and neglected plays, as well as to work with educational institutions to help foster new artists and audiences." Company members include Sarah Jessica Parker, Peter Gallagher, Nicky Silver and John Cameron Mitchell.
Asked about the Drama Dept.'s upcoming season, managing director Michael Rosenberg said plans weren't firmed up yet. "We have some ideas. One will be a neglected classic melodrama; one will be a neglected classic musical; the third will be the neglected classic new play by one of our writers." Those writers include Richard Greenberg, Peter Hedges, Nicky Silver, Stephen Flaherty and Frank Pugliese.
For tickets ($12) and information on As Bees In Honey Drown, June 5-July 13 at the Greenwich House Theatre, call (212) 629-3014.
--By David Lefkowitz
