By Harry Haun
03 May 2004

The other is the HBO movie which Wolfe wrapped just as Caroline was going into rehearsals and will be editing until the end of summer. "Lackawanna Blues" was originally a one-man-show written and performed by Tony-winning Ruben Santiago Hudson. Now, it has a cast of 30, almost all drawn from the rolls of The Public: Liev Schreiber, Rosie Perez, S. Epatha Merkerson, Carmen Ejogo, Jimmy Smits, Lou Gossett, Mos Def, Kathleen Chalfant plus Halle Berry. "Put in all those names," charged George C.

Another who felt that Caroline, or Change gained in its move uptown was one who was inside of it: Veanne Cox, whose comedy camouflages the fact she's a well-meaning do-badder who creates the crisis in Change in the first place. "I actually only just came into the life of Rose, my character, in the Broadway production," she confessed. "Down when I was doing it at The Public, interestingly enough, I think the space limitations there kept me a victim. I know that sounds odd, but it kept me apologetic. For some reason, getting on the Broadway stage give you a breadth of spaciousness. It brings out the magic in a girl."

Her hubby in the play is depicted as a still-grieving widower and ineffectual father by David Costabile. "There's something touching to me about somebody who tries so hard and is so misguided," he said. "It's great to play a guy that deeply flawed." And there's an extra dividend: The character is a clarinetist, justifying all those clarinet lessons. "Payoff!"

Also adept at the clarinet and the histrionics, Denis O'Hare did the first two workshops of Caroline and showed up to see how it came out. "It broke my heart," he said, but he can find some solace from the notices for Assassins in which he kills President Garfield — if only he read reviews. He hasn't gotten around to reading the raves he got for Take Me Out (but the Tony might be a clue for him). His partner, Hugo Redwood, keeps them from him, on orders. "He's got a great poker face. I can't tell what the review is."

A second Assassin in the room was Mario Cantone, who plays the guy who goes so demented on West Side Story that he tries to kill Nixon. In a Sondheim show, how is it that he gets to sing Bernstein? "Ah," said Mario the Smart, "but the lyrics are Steve's." Interestingly, JFK's assassination figures in both Assassins and Caroline, or Change.

Two casts of A Raisin in the Sun, a generation apart, came out for Caroline's Broadway coming-out: Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee from the original run, and Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad and Sanaa Lathan from the current revival. Combs was practically giddy with relief from his opening-night nerves. "For me — I'm the new kid on the block — it's a learning experience," he said. "It couldn't have worked out better, based on the experience that I had. Day by day, it goes to such levels. It's like hunting for treasure, and you know you're getting so close to getting there. It has been a blessed experience. Broadway — there's nothing like it. And the theatre community has treated me great."

There was also a large display of Public support, as in The Public — starting with Joe Papp's widow, Gail, who was delighted to have another Public show move uptown.

Yet another is in the works, too. Larry Kramer said, "We're getting close to moving The Normal Heart to Broadway." The play — technically, a Worth Street Theatre staging housed at The Public — set the long-running record at The Public 20 years ago, and its revival with Raul Esparza and Joanna Gleason is doing brisk biz.

New Yorker reviewer John Lahr, who collected a Drama Desk Award for pulling the right words out of Elaine Stritch for their Public-to-Broadway present, Elaine Stritch: At Liberty, said the movie version of that show-and-some-documentary footage-beyond-that (by D.A. Pennebaker), will play the Tribeca Film Festival on May 3. "Oh, it's very good," decreed the critic. "They combined the footage of the filmed show in London with Elaine backstage in England doing her thing." Pennebaker's famous documentary on the Company cast recording calamities where Stritch stresses out will be showing May 6, with Stritch in attendance. Invitations have also gone out to Sondheim and Hal Prince.

Peter Dinklage, who's having a run of title roles lately on stage (Richard III for The Public this fall) and screen ("The Station Agent"), was among the first-nighters, as was his co star in the latter, Bobby Cannavale, last seen at The Public in Fucking A and currently lensing a new musical written and directed by John Turturro (!). "It's got a fantastic cast," he insisted, and he seemed to be right: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Tony Goldwyn, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Julia Stiles, Christopher Walken and Aida Turturro. The title is Romance & Cigarettes. It's decribed as "Pennies From Heaven" meets "The Honeymooners." Only in Bensonhurt, folks!

One final footnote: There appears to be honor about Pulitzer Prize winners. Kushner is not only playing the Eugene O'Neill, he's screenplaying him as well: "Oddly enough, I'm working on a script about Eugene O'Neill right now. It's on his early life, right after his sea plays and just before Long Day's Journey Into Night. That took place in the summer, and this [takes] place in January [of the same year]. It was something that happened to him when he was 23."