By Harry Haun
16 Aug 2006

“Josh” is Josh Marquette, hair designer for The Drowsy Chaperone. Wearing an every-which-way-but-loose shag (and, again, fitting in), he obviously gave at the office. (His Pepe Le Pew pompadour for Danny Burstein’s Aldolpho is a comic masterpiece.)

Xanadu director Christopher Ashley and I Am My Own Wife playwright Doug Wright were an old two for the evening, pals since Buzzsaw Berkeley days. Ashley is putting the finishing touches on the All Shook Up tour, which will open Sept. 12 in Milwaukee with Joe Mandragona, Jenny Fellner and Susan Anton; then, ten days later, he takes up the velvet whip for Paul Rudnick’s Regrets Only, which starts previewing Oct. 19 at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I with Christine Baranski and George Grizzard. After that the December workshop of Xanadu with Ben Vereen and Jane Krakowski .

Wright has been rewriting the first act of Grey Gardens to strengthen the critical hosannas when it opens at the Walter Kerr Nov. 2, starring Christine Ebersole in her Tony-qualifying performance of “Little Edie” Beale. She doubles as “Big Edie” in Act I, which is undergoing some major escavation. New songs? “I think the answer is a tentative yes,” Wright replied cagily. “There’s going to be some new work, definitely. We’re continuing to work on the first act because we see this as an opportunity to bring the piece all the way to completion. Playwrights Horizons was our New Haven.”

During this period of revisions, a helpful piece of research has fallen into the laps of the show’s creators: "The Beales of Grey Gardens," 90 minutes of outtakes trimmed from "Grey Gardens," the original 1976 documentary by Albert Maysles and his late brother, David. Currently it’s a Friday and Saturday midnight special at IFC Theatre, and Wright and his collaborators, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, checked it out. “It was so inspiring, so fascinating, to see because there were so many hunches we had about the ladies where we were working solely from the first film that were borne out in the new material—just in terms of what their respective paths had been, the idea that both women were territorial about their men, a lot of the behavioral dynamics you see planted in `Grey Gardens.'”

Scott Pask, a Tony nominee for The Pillowman and one of the most prolific set designers on the scene right now, concocted a comfy set for the two to do their thing. Mellman and his 88 keys reside happily underneath a gigantic sheltering marijuana leaf; Bond spends most of his time up a tree, equipped with clever little pockets for stashing bottles and resting glasses. In this send-up of a lounge-act gone blearily amok, the booze flows freely.

No grass (of any variety) seems to be growing on Pask. Tarzan designer-director Bob Crowley, recognizing a wunderkind-on-the-rise when he sees one, has tapped him to help him build The [three-part] Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center, but Pask’s first task will be The Vertical Hour, the David Hare play which director Sam Mendes plans to world-premiere Nov. 30 at the Music Box with Julianna Moore and Bill Nighy.

Pask, who arrived at the party with his twin Bruce (editor of men’s fashion at The New York Times), was not the only Scott of note present. Scott Wittman, whose second Broadway score (with partner Marc Shaiman) officially arrives Aug. 17 with Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me. He also directed the piece. The critics came on Sunday, he said, and the color seemed to be returning to his face. His outlook, generally, was good.

“But it’s not over,” he laughed. “It’s never over.” On Sunday, he hops a plane for Montreal where his Tony-winning Hairspray is before the movie cameras with John Travolta dragging out Harvey Fierstein’s Tony-winning role. “Christopher Walken just signed to play Travolta’s husband, and I’m happy about that”—not Jim Broadbent , as previously reported (here). “We’ve done three or four new songs for the movie.”

Mustached drag king Murray Hill surveyed the opening-night scene and gave it a high-time nod. “I’ve know these kids for ten years—we started in New York at the same so I’m honored to be here—and it’s exciting they’re here on Broadway. It gives everybody else hope, all the kids who’ve been sluggin’ downtown. It’s a big night. The Beastie Boys are here tonight, The Wauwau Sisters, a lot of these people who might not have been above 14th Street. Kiki’s really bringing everybody uptown. I’ve never seen a downtown set showered. I wish there were more opening nights so these kids would shower more.”

Kiki and Herb take their opening bows on Broadway.

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