PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: After the Night and the Music : Betwixt and Between
By Harry Haun
Elaine May; Stanley Donen; J. Smith-Cameron; Eddie Korbich; Kenneth Lonergan; Brian Kerwin; Jere Burns; Daniel Sullivan; Carolyn McCormack; John Patrick Shanley; Terrence McNally photo by Aubrey Reuben
Don't look now, but a brand-new Broadway season has taken off—before the one that just ended has been accorded its proper period and paragraph. After the Night and the Music falls into that nebulous netherland between the Tony cutoff date and the Tony Awards, bowing formally June 1 at the Biltmore—a full two weeks after its "opening night" party.
Even the play's author, Elaine May —a woman of exquisite timing—was a bit thrown by the prematurity of it all. "This is like a mid preview opening—isn't that kinda weird?" the dismayed Miss May said on May 19, scanning the crowd tumbling into the Copacabana's main room. "I've no idea how that works. This is the only time I've worked totally with Manhattan Theatre Club. They have procedures. I've just worked with Julian before."
Julian is Julian Schlossberg , her friend and most frequent producer, a co-producer with MTC of this play and her Power Plays . He also came up with the title, plucked from a lyric in "You and the Night and the Music," an evergreen that Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz originally planted in their big Broadway revue of 1934, Revenge with Music .
"Julian thinks of all the titles of my plays," May admitted. "He put some real thought into this one. He gave the piece a read, and he said, `It should be this,' so I named it that."
Framed posters of Revenge with Music were given out to the various creative personnel, much to the delight of May's longtime main-squeeze, Stanley Donen , the famed filmmaker (Singin' in the Rain, Two for the Road, Funny Face ). "I knew those guys, Dietz and Schwartz—they were workers with me," he exclaimed happily. Grudgingly, he conceded that that show was a little before his time—"but not much." He was ten then, but six years later he'd find Broadway and his future collaborator, Gene Kelly, in Pal Joey .
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The dance history of Donen and the Copa was quite apt for
After the Night and the Music since its curtain raiser—called "Curtain Raiser"—is a boy-meets-girl-on-a-dancefloor set-up and nicely stacked with more Dietz and-Schwartz like "Dancing in the Dark." For comic effect, May envisions a scary pairing out of Jules Feiffer—a chip-on-her-shoulder siren with glacial glances that stop men cold (
J. Smith-Cameron ) and a puppydog persistent nebbish oblivious to the obvious danger signs (
Eddie Korbich ). A dance of wills ensues.
"You know why I like this play?" asked Korbich. "It's a play. I love musicals. That's my bread and butter"—he was Tobias in Sweeney Todd and Mr. Snow in Carousel , among many others—"but, after 20 years of musicals, it's wonderful to do a play. It's fantastic.
"When I found out I'd be working with J. Smith-Cameron, whom I've admired for years, I was kinda scared—you know, the musical boy going in playing with the big people—then I realized she was just as afraid to dance, so we were scared together, and it was great."
Smith-Cameron was quick to return the compliment. "I didn't know I could dance," she confessed, "and it's really fun. That Eddie Korbich! I call him Eddie the Brick. In our first couple of previews when we were really nervous, doing new dances steps every night, trying different things, he would just look at me on stage and wink, and it'd relax me."
After this Night and the Music , she returns to her usual nonmusical groove. Next is a movie written and directed by her husband, playwright Kenneth Lonergan , who hired her for his Oscar-nominated debut picture, You Can Count on Me . It's called Margaret (although there is not a character named that in the film). "Then, in the spring, I'll do David Marshall Grant 's play, Pen , at Playwrights Horizons. Will Fears will direct."
Lonergan, sitting next to her, leaned forward. "Did you tell him about your role in my 'disappointing second feature'?" he asided, cynically anticipating the cliched critical reaction. "Yes, I did," Mrs. Lonergan dutifully replied. He added some asterisks to this news: "We'll supposedly start filming, here in the city, in September, but don't hold me to that. I haven't got a cast yet. Matthew Broderick will be in it. He has a small featured role, and, if he does well in that part, I may consider him for something bigger later."
Randy Skinner , who set a fleet of dancing feet to tapping in 42nd Street , confined his choreographic skills to these four feet for the ballroom segment—"a month in the country" for someone with his epic workload: "Right now, I'm in the middle of casting three companies of White Christmas . We're going to do San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston at the same time—roughly from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve." (It's a seasonal thing, you see—based on Irving Berlin's 1954 songfest flick.) Offers have gone out to the quartet who did the show last year—Brian d'Arcy James, Jeffry Denman, Anastasia Barzee and Meredith Patterson in parts originally played by Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen—"but I don't know who's coming back."
Coming back to the immediate business at hand, Skinner had high praise for May's dance knowledge. "Elaine is a great lady. I had a ball with her, and she really knows what she's talking about. When I read the script, I could see the images. She had all the terminology down correct. It made it wonderfully easy. I said, 'You have everything perfect, Elaine.'"
Guilty as charged: "I do know dancing," May admitted. "I taught it when I first got here."
After the Night and the Music is identified on the cover page under the title as "Three New Plays in Two Acts" (translation: three one-acts, punctuated with an intermission). "Curtain Raiser" gives rise to "Giving Up Smoking," about four lost and lonely New York souls trying to make it through the night with the help of cellphones and videos of The Wizard of Oz . Act II is titled, entendre intended, "Swing Time"—some foursome foreplay that might be described as this millenium's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice , with extra angst.
The chameleon-like Smith-Cameron is finally recognizable in the third opus. So shrewdly has Paul Huntley camouflaged her with his transforming wigs in Act I that you keep consulting your Playbill to see when she's coming on—only to discover she's already on!
Similarly, the generically good-looking Brian Kerwin slips by utterly unnoticed in "Curtain Raiser" behind an ill-fitting toupee and a very sad mustache—Kerwin's idea, he'll tell you. "After a few days of tech, I said, 'I look the same in all three plays. What are the chances that this guy is wearing a truly bad toupee?'" Excellent, as it apparently turns out.
Jere Burns and May's daughter, Jeannie Berlin , join Kerwin and Smith-Cameron for the two four-handers. Joanna Glushak and the Broadway-bowing Deirde Madigan , who have bits in the first play, understudy the ladies, and the guys are covered a couple of Grade-A known quantities, Joel Blum and Peter Marx (nee Peter Slutsker); Marx followed Blum's Tony-nominated turn in Broadway's last Show Boat —Frank Schultz (of Frank and Ellie/"Life Upon the Wicked Stage" fame)—and Korbich toured in that part. Continued...
