By Harry Haun
28 Apr 2010

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Prebble admitted she rolled up her sleeves and rewrote for Broadway a play that was already acclaimed in Britain. "Absolutely, I did," she said. "There were certain lines in the play that the American cast picked up on that seemed slightly English. We have a Texan in our cast named Brandon [J. Dirden]. He's from Houston, and he lived through the whole thing, and he was always giving me great advice about little tweaks.

"I did quite a few of just line rewrites. And also I actually cut some scenes from the Broadway show so there was some quite substantial rewriting. That was about, simply, that American audiences are much more familiar with the story than a British audience — I picked up on that in previews so we did some cuts."

The homework Prebble put in is awesome and conspicuous. "About a year's worth of research," she guessed. "After about a year, you have to think, 'Well, I've got to stop now and actually write.' Physically, you can get bogged down in research and commit to it so much that you never actually do any writing. So I felt I knew everything I needed to know about Enron when I had to put the books away and just start writing for character and story."

She uses the actual names of the Enron culprits, with one exception: the hard, sexy blonde on the premises played by Mazzie. "She's a combination of several female executives, and I didn't feel comfortable assigning one of those women's names to her because I wanted her to do something very specific in the narrative. I wanted her to behave in a certain way. I actually didn't feel comfortable giving a real name to that person when I was using them as a dramatic device."

Comparisons to Faye Dunaway in "Network" drew ooooohs from author and actress alike. And, no, Mazzie — in a rare unmusical outing — doesn't feel naked without a song. She has been acting in musicals all along, she insisted. "The thing that upsets me is that people think that just because you sing you're not an actor. I'm an actor first. I just happen to be able to sing. I happen to be able to interpret a song, through my acting ability. And I happen to be able to pull my chords together and make a tune. I guess that's gravy, in a sense. But I'm an actor first."

Mazzie was last to arrive at the cramped press room — on the arm of her hubby and frequent singer partner, Jason Danieley, who stood beside her smiling for the cameras until a publicist finally shooed him away so she could do interviews. He drifted my way, like Norman Maine. Turns out, he's lifting his voice all over the place: "I'm doing an Actors Fund benefit at Feinstein's on May 5 with my band, The Frontier Heroes.

"This past weekend, I played Kalamazoo, MI. Marin had to, of course, bow out of a concert we were supposed to do there because of Enron so Karen [Ziemba, Danieley's stage wife in Curtains] stepped in, and I created a whole evening for the two of us. And I have 100 percent approval from my wife."

Evidently so. Living proof soon showed up, and Ziemba posed for pictures with the happy couple. But I worry. Danieley's going deeper into music, and Mazzie's going deeper into acting — it all sounds like "The Barkleys of Broadway" to me.

Ziemba's going the straight and musically narrow route, too. She just finished a nonmusical role in A.R. Gurney, Jr.'s Sylvia, and now, she said, "I'm going to do a new Steven Dietz play at The Penguin Rep up at Stony Point, NY — Shooting Star, a two-hander which has never been done." In addition, she will be doing her one-woman show at the gala benefit for Long Wharf Theatre.

"I had a good time, not a great one," assessed Dick Cavett "It was partly because I only had five hours sleep, and I watched the Goldman Sachs hearings today. I watched that this afternoon and then the play tonight — it was a perfect lead-in. Did they move Heaven and Earth to open on the same day as the hearings?"

Woody Allen improbably led off the photo tip-sheet but characteristically avoided the ordeal. Then, there were Guy Pearce; model Yaya DaCosta; Tony-and-Emmy winner Cherry Jones, who has lapsed back into her nun habit for the "Mother and Child" flick; the sometimes "Mr. Big," Chris Noth; Danes 'n' Dancy (Claire and Hugh to you); Stephanie March minus Bobby Flay; and Stephen Pasquale minus Laura Benanti; Mamie Gummer; Eric Bogosian, beyond Time Stands Still; James Van Der Beek; Mary Lynn Rajskub of TV's "24"; Raul Esparza; Tamara Tunie; Marian Seldes; Kathleen Chalfant; Jessica Collins of "Tru Calling"; Milena Govich; singer Peter Cincotti; Jim and Julie Dale; Kunken's wife, the rising Off-Broadway director Jenn Thompson (TACT's The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, The Late Christopher Bean); Jill Clayburgh; Nathan Purdee of "One Life To Live"; Aaron Tveit, in transition from Next to Normal to Catch Me If You Can; and Pia Glenn, the bump-and-grind Condoleezza Rice for Will Ferrell's George W.