By Harry Haun
28 Mar 2005
Veteran character actor John Jellison, who has the almost mute role of the lady mayor's sheriff sidekick, does not have an easy time of it. "It's a challenge, actually—well, to keep concentration," he admitted, "so I get down there early for all the cues and take it very seriously." When he finally speaks, it almost comes as a shock to the audience. "That particular moment in the show solves a whole host of problems for the play so I do take some comfort in that, in that my speech starts a chain of events that ties up the plot."
"This was the best opening night I've ever had," trilled the hilarious Alix Korey, who has a dandy time (and "Jailhouse Rock") as the oppressively repressive mayor trying to impose her Mamie Eisenhower Decency Act on her small-town citizens. "Chris Ashley is the best, and the cast is a frighteningly loving group of people. No divas! Chris was so helpful to me. He let me try a lot of things and always steered me in the right direction."
The third seasoned vet in the show, Jonathan Hadary, plays the heroine's dad—a widower who turns into a late-blooming lothario with a particular weakness for the two ladies who plainly have the best pipes on the premises—Leah Hocking, as a curvaceous museum curator, and Sharon Wilkins, as the proprietress of the local good-eats.
Despite his years of service on the stage, this is the first time that Hadary has ever played the Palace. "I auditioned there once," he said, "and got the job" (a tour of The Grand Tour). "The Palace is a beautiful, beautiful house to play. It was worth the wait."
Matthew Morrison, late of Hairspray and now of The Light in the Piazza, and Michael Benjamin Washington, the flitty maid in the new La Cage aux Folles, joined the festivities after their respective shows closed, chatting it up like chums at the bar—and never mind they could wind up competing in the same Tony category at season's end. Morrison was the last addition to the Piazza—he plays the young Italian smitten with a curiously child-like American woman—and he found waiting for him a new song from Adam Guettel. He spelled it: "Il Mondo Vuoto" ("The World Is Empty").
Interesting sidebar: The show's title page in Playbill lists Roberson's choreography below "Additional Choreography by Sergio Trujilla." Can this be a theatrical first? One can only wait to see how the Tony nominating committee addresses this bizarre billing.
At the table marked for him, Trujilla found himself in very good company indeed, as befits a choreographer star-on-the-rise: on the left, his discoverer, choreographer Jerry Mitchell; on the right, director Gary Griffin, who used his dances in the "Encores!" of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Now, Trujilla has lined up like dominos: The Mambo Kings and Jersey Girls for Broadway and Christine Baranski's Mame at the Kennedy Center.
Griffin's next project is another "Encores!"—The Apple Tree, which will grow at City Center May 12-15 with Kristin Chenoweth. "We'll know the other two [cast members] in a couple of days," promised Griffin. Next show will be the Chicago wunderkind's first for Broadway: The Color Purple with LaChanze, who's currently filling the title role of Dessa Rose, the Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty musical that bowed this week at Lincoln Center. "Again, the rest of the cast we'll know soon. We're trying to nail down what theatre we'll be at, and, once that's decided, we'll know all the schedule. I'm thrilled about it. First of all, it's a great story, and I think this music team has come up with an amazing idea for how to tell it musically. It was so born to be a musical."
Adriane Lenox, who appeared in the Atlanta world-premiere of The Color Purple and is currently delivering a Tony-baiting performance in Doubt at the Walter Kerr, was at the party in her official, off-stage role of wife. Her husband, Zane Mark, did the dance music arrangements for All Shook Up. "He also did the dance music arrangements for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," she trumpeted, "so he's represented twice this season."
As is the outrageously inventive set designer, David Rockwell—for the same two shows.
One of the country's foremost architects, Rockwell was recently recruited for Broadway (by Ashley, actually, for The Rocky Horror Show), subsequently putting an animated sheen to Hairspray and solving the big physical dramatic problem of Omnium Gatherum, an Off-Broadway opus in which a chi-chi dinner party goes straight to Hell. As you can readily deduce from the evidence, sets that move and dance wittily are a specialty with him.
"I fell in love with theatre when I was six at community theatre in Deal, NJ, where my mom was a choreographer," Rockwell confessed, adding for the unoriented, "Deal is near Ashbury Park, which inspired tonight's second-act set—the dilapidated fairground.
"My first Broadway show was Fiddler on the Roof, at age 10. I was so struck by the way transitions in theatre emotionally involve you so, yes, I love the idea of sets dancing with people." He'll hang up his dancing shoes and slide rule for a brief but well-earned vacation, then he'll get busy designing a theatre to house Phantom of the Opera in Vegas and another for Hairspray. There's also a possibility of reteaming with the South Park guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, with whom he teamed last year for Team America.
"What I'm looking for is a chance to collaborate with really interesting people. That's what thrills me about theatre. Architecture, my day job, is about being an auteur. Theatre is about collaborating." Asked what he thought Norman Rockwell might have accomplished on Broadway, had he been inclined (or allowed) to kick up his heels in theatre, he responded with assurance: "Uncle Norman would have just rocked the house."
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| The cast gives their opening night curtain call
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
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