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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: All Shook Up: The King Plays The Palace
By Harry Haun
28 Mar 2005
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DiPietro; Ashley; Tommy Hilfiger; Brian Stokes Mitchell; Roberson; Mario Cantone; Stephen Oremus; Brian Dennehy; Mario Vasquez; Gambatese & Jackson; Nikki M. James; Korey; Michael Benjamin Washington & Matthew Morris; Gary Griffin and Trujilla
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Finally—on March 24—and posthumously, The King played the Palace, and the place rocked with the music made famous by Elvis Presley.
As opening nights go, this one brought out some unexpected celebs—designer Tommy Hilfinger and record mogul Clive Davis, for starters—but there was your Brian Stokes Mitchells and your Phyllis Newmans. Fresh from her hugely successful "Nothin' Like a Dame" benefit, Newman was scaling herself down for a bit in this Monday night benefit, the 20th anniversary performance of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at the Music Box.
"I play the mother. I haven't decided yet whether she's Jewish or Katharine Hepburn."
Not that the show could stand up to much fact-checking, but Presley's Boswell, Pamela Clarke Keogh, swept into the Palace with authority. Elvis Presley: The Man, The Life,
The Legend is the title of her biography. "It's a great night for Elvis fans," she said. "I'm very much looking forward to it."
Charles Randolph Wright, who's reached prominence as a writer (of Blue) and has been pursuing it as a director (starting with the Maurice Hines tour of Guys and Dolls), was an early arrival. "I'm directing a piece for Roger Rees's first summer at Williamstown that is amazing," he said. "I'm not supposed to say what it is right now—he'll kill me—but it'll probably have the last slot at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, in August. I'm juggling my schedule right now. My first film as a director is coming out this summer, too, called On the One. Ken Roberson, who choreographed All Shook Up, choreographed my movie, and just about everybody in New York is in it—Novella Nelson, Eartha Kitt, Patti LaBelle, Tim Reid, Ben Vereen. It's about twin brothers—one is a rap star in Los Angeles, the other is a minister in Harlem—and they hate each other. It's a musical."
Working his black locks, Mario Cantone did a dead-on Elvis imitation for the TV cameras on his way into the Palace, and at the party he was heaping praise on all hands involved. "I loved it. You know what's so funny? It's so much better than a show like this kind of show should be. That starts with Chris Ashley. It doesn't take itself seriously. Stephen Oremus's musical arrangements are phenomenal. Sharon Wilkins, that boy Mark Price, great! Where is that hooker? I've been looking for him all night."
Laugh Whore, Cantone's uproarious one-man show earlier this season at the Cort, was caught by the Showtime cameras, and will air May 28. "They tried to cut it to an hour and couldn't. It'll be 90 minutes," down 30 from the Broadway version. He just wrapped his next feature film, Retirement, with Peter Falk, Rip Torn and George Segal. "Taylor Negron and I play a gay `Thelma and Louise' couple, and we got to write all of my own story. Big reach."
Dirty Blonde's Claudia Shear came with her new husband—a Harry—and, like that song from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, he had refinement. "I'll have to check that song out," she said. John Ellison Conlee, who played the Harry in the recent Encores! reprise of Tree, made the opening as well. Shear said she had two irons in the fire at the moment: "I'm writing a screenplay for Revolution Studios which Darren Starr (of "Sex and the City") is directing, and I just had a meeting with Jim Nicola about doing a new play at New York Theatre Workshop" where she arrived [Blown Sideway Through Life].
Retired studio chief Sherry Lansing was another surprise attendee, a friend of the court. "Bernie and Barney [producers Kukoff and Rosenzweig] are two of my closest and oldest friends. I've known them since I was in my 20s. I came here to cheer them on and I had a great time. I was on my feet. I wanted to dance. I thought the cast was extraordinary. This is the best show. It'll run forever."
This was one of the few showbiz forays Lansing has allowed herself since her exit from the top. "I'm actually really involved in nonprofit work so I don't have any plans to do any movies, ever," she said. "I wanted to set up my own foundation, and I did, and I'm doing work in cancer research. When I turned 60, I decided that's what I wanted to do. I love the movie business—and, of course, if there's a movie some day I'm passionate about, I'll do it—but right now I'm devoting myself to public service and giving back."
Rosenzweig's wife, actress Sharon Gless ("Cagney and Lacey," "Queer as Folk"), was resplendant in rhinestones—a string belt from which dangled the letters E L V I S against an all-black ensemble. When Brian Dennehy (London-bound April 2 with his Death of a Salesman) complimented her on her outfit, she replied, "We got money in the show," and meaning not just her husband either. "This is the first time I've invested in a play," she said. "All opening nights should be this good. It's very loving." Her husband nodded and recalled the show's underattended wintery reception at Chicago's Cadillac Palace. "That was scary," he said. "It was an old movie house, a real barn, not a good legitimate house."
But the center of most of the photo-flashing was that famously former "American Idol," Mario Vasquez. "It's my first Broadway opening," he gushed, "and then I heard the party's at the Copa. Oh, my God!" Did he exit "Idol" for Broadway? "I'm not going to confirm anything. You have to keep your options open. As a New Yorker, you can't be stupid and be close-minded. You gotta be open to everything. Broadway is something I've thought about before. It's something I'm thinking about now, too. You never know."
Cheyenne Jackson, the understudy who stepped up to the Presley plate when producers and Jarrod Emick couldn't agree on a fee, was similarly "overwhelmed" by the opening-night chaos at the Copacabana on West 34th Street. His parents who brought him up on Elvis records, will be seeing Their Son, The Broadway Star next month.
On the long and bumpy road to Broadway, Jackson's peroxided blond locks turned Elvis jet-black—a cosmetic change that the actor "most definitely" appreciated, thank you very much—while Curtis Holbrook's dark brown hair went blond. The latter plays the mayor's upstart military-school son, and it was thought that lightening his hair would contrast better with his African-American love interest (Nikki M. James). "It was actually our costume designer [David C. Woolard] who suggested that change," said Holbrook. "I think that's what makes our show so strong. They could have just thrown together Elvis songs with a story and it could have been fine—people would have enjoyed it, whatever—but every single person is so passionate about their job that they went the distance to fine-tune every little thing. The sets! If you go up on stage, on the gas station there's a bus schedule with times of departures and arrivals. Those kinds of things create a world and make the whole show that much stronger. That's why it works so well."
As the Shelley Fabares facsimile to Jackson's surrogate Elvis, Jenn Gambatese said her tomboy part went though "lots of little changes" getting to the Palace, but that was okay with her. "Chris and Joe and everyone involved have been so adaptable, which is what you really have to be if you're changing things every day. What I've found since Chicago is that my character has a lot more edge. I feel fiercer. I feel like a tough guy."
She didn't look so tough—in fact, downright girlish in her Betsy Johnson party-dress, a refreshing switch from the grease-monkey garb she dons in the play to pal around with Jackson. There was, she admitted, plenty of smiling and crying at the curtain call. "It has been such a long process—many, many months now of very hard work—so it was very emotional. It's fun tonight, but I think it would be more fun if we weren't all so tired." Continued...
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