By Harry Haun
02 Mar 2009

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Even if Sky is not as high on the marquee as he usually is, Bierko (The Music Man) knows a star spot when he has one and is savoring the moment, but, he cautioned, "It's very hard work. You gotta learn to drive the Ferrari that these people built 60 years ago, but, once you get her out on the road and open her up — My God, it's fun. If it seems easy, it's because Des, Sergio and Ted [Sperling] help us enormously."

He gave a special bow in the direction of his leading lady, too. "I'm working opposite a brilliant actress. If I talk to her and keep my eyes on her, I'm fine. Anytime I wander away from that and try to do something, that's when I get nervous. All I have to do is talk to Kate Jennings Grant, and I'm fine. Oh my God, she's so talented."

Since her arrival in New York theatre as the vulnerable young war-widow in Summer of '42, Grant has had the image of an ethereal person whom the audience loves to see "let go" — and that's Sarah Brown, the self-professed "mission doll," to a T. "It's so fun to be so buttoned up at the beginning and then let it rip in Havana," the actress admitted. "Sarah is a complicated woman. People tend to think it's a boring part or she's afraid, and I always think of her as a complicated, passionate woman who has great faith and great passion. This is the day they collide, so I think it's a fantastic journey. I think she has developed a sense of humor about herself and that she loses control over her life. The control freak in me is learning a lot playing her."

She gave her director his due. "The best thing Des did for me was to make me feel, as a relatively unknown actress, I deserved this part, that I earned it. He took me aside on Day One and held me in his arms and said, 'You deserve to be here.' And, oh, it was the greatest gift. Throughout rehearsal, he took time to tell actors when something is working. So many times, directors only talk to you when it's not, and he just made me feel confident. That's half the battle for any actor, I think."

Casting helps a lot, too. Lauren Graham, who plays the single mother on TV's "Gilmore Girls," is making her Broadway debut here as Miss Adelaide, "the well-known fiancιe" (for 14 years) of good old less-than-reliable Nathan Detroit.

"The TV show was such an important thing in my life," she said, "but I don't relate to it as much as, maybe, people who are still watching it do. I really relate to Adelaide, and I thought a lot about her. She's very truthful and very funny."

Graham's Adelaide is less adenoidal and Brooklynese than the original (Vivian Blaine) and the most recent (Tony-winning Faith Prince) — neither of whom she saw — but she found some new laughs. "I don't think about it as finding laughs, but I do think about it as finding a character. This was totally new, and I feel very proud about that. There are musicals I am familiar with, and this is not one of them so I felt I could just kinda approach it the way I wanted to and not be haunted by somebody else. With a great piece of literature, you can always reinterpret it. I really believe this is a masterpiece. As we started to work on it, I just thought, like, 'This writing — it's so modern — and it really stands up.' I think there are laughs today just as they were originally. I don't know if that's good or bad for men and women, but it's true."

Tituss Burgess continues his show-stopping streak on Broadway, first with the Oscar-winning "Under the Sea" in The Little Mermaid and now with that rousing mock-revival number, "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat," measuring up to other Nicely-Nicely Johnsons (Stubby Kaye, Ken Page, Walter Bobbie) nicely-nicely indeed. "The thing I like most about the character is that when he says 'Nicely-nicely,' he means it. Everything is just nicely-nicely, thank you very much."

Gregory Rush, bracing to make his entrance in Exit the King this month at the Barrymore ("We're about to go into tech week, and we preview next weekend"), pleaded no relation to the mission doll played by Jessica Rush. Not only that, there are a rush of Rushes on Broadway at the moment — three by his count, Deborah Rush in Blithe Spirit being the third. "The only Rush I ever knew of was Barbara Rush. I met her four years ago. I remember her from scary movies in the '50s."

Giving proper glitz to this Broadway return of Guys and Dolls: Ben Vereen (who says his next career move will be a musical Pope Joan, co-directed by Michael Butler: "We'll take it to Europe first, then back here"), Matthew Broderick (who starts turning into The Philanthropist March 10 for Roundabout), columnist Roger Friedman, Becky Ann and Dylan Baker (a summer-stock Adelaide and a Brandy Bottle Bates, now both of TV's "Kings"), Jerry Zaks (who directed a brain-burning brilliant Guys and Dolls in 1992), Jack Noseworthy (bound for the big screen in an unruly Bruce Willis romp called "Surrogates"), Kevin Bacon (who had co-starred with Platt in "Frost/Nixon" and "Flatliners") and wife Kyra Sedgwick, director Doug Hughes (who's starting up David Mamet's Oleanna with Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles next month at the Taper in L.A. — and then, maybe, New York: "Stranger things have happened!"), Mariska Hargitay and Talk Radio's Peter Hermann, director Gary Griffin (who recently helmed Music in the Air for Encores! and will next direct an all-English, Trujillo-choreographed West Side Story at McAnuff's Stratford Festival), Constantine Maroulis (deep into Broadway's upcoming Rock of Ages), Valerie Harper (heading for Washington's Arena Stage in May and, likely, Broadway in the fall as Tallulah Bankhead in Looped), Cheyenne Jackson (Woody in Encores!'s next, Finian's Rainbow), Victoria Clark (prepping The Firebrand of Florence for a one-nighter at Alice Tully Hall on March 12, then trooping off to Durham to film a Horton Foote screenplay, "Mean Street," for director John Doyle), S. Epatha Merkerson, The Dodgers' Michael David and Lauren Mitchell, Next to Normal's Alice Ripley, producer Marty Richards, Exit the King's Andrea Martin, WOR's Joan Hamburg (trumpeting the new flick of her writer-director son, John, "I Love You, Man," due March 20: "It's funny!" sez Mom), Judy Kuhn (a high-school Adelaine), Biff Liff and an "Ugly Betty" trio: Eric Maibus, Anna Ortiz and Mark Indelicato.