By Harry Haun
25 Jan 2008
The postman, the milkman and the neighbor Kanouse, Williamson and Wehle were all imported from the L.A. production to make their Broadway debut, and all took it big.
"It's unbelievable," said Williamson, the muscular milkman (one previewing wag suggested they retitle the show The Milkman Cometh). "This is one of those things that, no matter what happens even if we closed the show tonight nobody can ever take that away from me. I'm a Broadway actor, and it feels incredible. My mom's here. This is the first time she's seen the show. She came all the way from Sweden to see it. That's where my mom lives now. I'm actually from the Midwest, from Missouri."
Williamson, who just turned 35 a few weeks ago, displays a young man's physique which, like the character he plays, wasn't casually arrived it. There's a sexual undercurrent to his scenes with Merkerson. "I don't really think about the sexual part of it too much," Williamson insisted. "As a character, I'm into 'I've got places to be and milk to deliver and I don't want to go into this strange lady's house and waste time.' But when she does start to be nice to me, she just happens to touch a nerve that my character's really into which is fitness. As soon as she touches that nerve, she's got a friend. Then we're on the same page, and our relationship sorta grows from there. Epatha's a really wonderful actress to share the stage with. It's a privilege. The whole thing's a privilege."
Brian J. Smith is also in the beefcake race as Kazan's lover, Turk (young, young, young, young Turk). He just jumped out of Juilliard in May and, like quite a few Julliard seniors, caught the trapeze bar to Broadway. "This is a dream come true. I'm having a great time."
William Inge's niece, Jean Inge, admitted she was very touched by this production and found it superior to one done in L.A. "I was moved in several spots in that play because some of it reminded me so much of Grandmother Inge just some of her actions and the way she talked, her moods. [Inge's mother was not married to an alcoholic]. That could have been Bill himself because he was an alcoholic, and that could have been him."
A bitterly cold night meant there was not a lot of lollygagging in the lobby. People rushed to their seats, and the curtain went up on time. There was a nice turn-out of celebrity cheerleaders for the show's creators and performers, and the applause was generous.
Her Blondeness, Michelle Pfeiffer, and her TV-titan hubby, David E. Kelly, made their high-speed "California entrance," hard-charging and ignoring the pleas of paparazzi for pictures. They were there for Pressman who helmed a screen adaptation that Kelly wrote for his wife, "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday."
Her Dreadlockness, Whoopi Goldberg, was there in a gaggle of glory, supporting Merkerson and the color-blind barrier she broke through. (It may be remembered that Goldberg wanted the role of the homeless alkie in "Ironweed" that went to Meryl Streep.)
Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who, like Merkerson, has been Tony-nominated for August Wilson, was also there for her. Upcoming projects on his plate: "I'm doing a play at New York Theatre Workshop, Naomi Wallace's Things of Dry Hours, in June and then I am going to direct the first play in the Negro Ensemble Company season at Signature."
Just in from her second week of rehearsing In the Heights (opening in March at the Richard Rodgers), Priscilla Lopez was in a particularly jubilant mood. "They gave me a new song it's called 'Enough,'" said the gal who introduced "Nothing" in A Chorus Line.
Playwright Adam Bock said he, too, had a spring opening The Drunken City at Playwrights Horizons. Barrett Foa and Maria Dizzia star. Jayne Houdyshell, who recently served Bock superbly as The Receptionist at MTC, has gone back to playing Midwestern Mom (a la the one in Well, her Tony-nominated Broadway-arrival vehicle); this time she's doing it up at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse in an evening of four short Paul Rudnick plays The New Century, with Linda Lavin and Peter Bartlett.
Valerie Harper is in a media mix these days, and theatre is not included: "I got a series," she whispered. "I can't speak about it until the writers' strike is over." She was play-going with David Steiner and his wife, Sylvia. They have a state of the art movie studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and co-produced with Harper's husband, Tony Cacciotti, the movie version of the play Harper took on tour, Golda's Balcony. She is planning to screen it and talk-back it in various cities to mark the 60th anniversary of Israel.
Doubt Tony-winner Adriane Lenox is another betwixt and between because of the strike. "I have a recurring role on 'Lipstick Jungle,'" she said. "That starts up on NBC Thursday nights at 10 PM on Feb. 7. That's also the night I'm doing a little workshop I've been working on for three weeks. It's called Langston in Harlem. The Public Theater is interested in seeing what it looks like so we'll do a presentation there on Feb. 7-8."
Other first-nighters: Geoffrey Holder and Carmen De Lavallade, Bill Kux, directors Dan Sullivan and Walter Bobbie, Donna Murphy and Sean Elliott, Fran Liebowitz, George Maksian, Kate Clinton with The 39 Steps and Stomp producer Harriet Leve, Jamie de Roy, Hunt Slocum, Caroline McCormick, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marian Seldes, Kate Mulgrew, Denis O'Hare, Patrice O'Neal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Rene Fris of "Sheer Genius," Sherri Shepherd of "The View," Sabine Singh, Susan Birkenhead and, representing the "Law & Order" faction, Sam Waterson.
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| The cast of Come Back, Little Sheba takes its opening night bows.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
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