By Harry Haun
27 Oct 2006
Songwriter and director Craig Carnelia beamed proudly from the sidelines while Brescia was being interviewed. "We're not technically engaged," he explained, "but I am her life partner forever and forever. You can say that. Those are our plans."
Carnelia's professional plans? "I'm having a new songbook published in about a month, which I'm very excited about, and I'm having a show of mine that I’m very proud of called The Good War [i.e., World War II] that's about to be leased for production all around the country. It's another show that I did for Studs Terkel. This new company called Theatrical Rights Worldwide just picked it up and is about to lease it around the country. It's vintage songs, but very much tinkered with and rearranged. It's probably my favorite thing that I’ve been part of. I wrote it with David Bell who's been a frequent collaborator of mine, actually."
Kathleen Turner led the star parade, limping a bit from foot surgery, followed by two-time Tony winner Bebe Neuwirth, Tony Roberts, designer Arnold Scassi, playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (whose Dark Matters is unveiled Nov. 20 at Rattlestick) and Shannon DeVine (a.k.a. Mrs. U.S.A.). Jackie Mason slipped his tickets to his attorney, Raoul Felder, who struck star poses for the assembled photographers.
Three actors from Todd Field's acclaimed and darkly satiric new film, "Little Children," had an impromptu reunion at the play and party — Phyllis Somerville and Noah Emmerich, who collide tragically over her pedophile son, and Gregg Edelman, who plays Kate Winslet's kinky hubby. Somerville, a seasoned Off-Broadway staple, has one more episode of "Kidnapped" to go and is set to do a reading for the LAByrinth Company, her stage homebase. Emmerich, who was Mitch to Patricia Clarkson's Blanche in the Kennedy Center revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, continues to have his sign out for New York theatre work. "I just finished 'Pride and Glory,' a cop movie with Edward Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight — I think, a really special film, actually," he said. "I don't know what's next for me. I'd love to get back on the stage."
Charles Busch, the Margo Channing of that event, was full of news —up to a point — about Our Leading Lady, his play about the Laura Keane., who was starring in Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre the famous fateful night Abraham Lincoln was in the audience: "We've found our leading lady — but I can't tell you who it is yet." All I could get out of him was initials — or, rather, non-initials. "It's not C.B. I'm not in it at all — me the authoress, in my sensible shoes and fox piece and broach. I'm too dignified for that."
Lynne Meadow, artistic director for Manhattan Theatre Club, will direct the piece herself, as she did Busch's supersuccessful The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. "It's our reunion," said Busch, "although we started working on it not that long after we started Allergist's Wife — but it's taken so long to get going. We were supposed to do it last year, and it was announced, and I didn't think the play was ready so I pulled it and did a complete rewrite on it. And I think it's so much better now. I'm really glad we didn't do it." Our Leading Lady begins previewing Feb. 22, 2007, for a March 15 world-premiere at City Center Stage II.
Nancy Opel, who has the title role in Abingdon’s new-hit-in-town, My Deah (John Epperson's Dixie edition of Euripides' Medea), arrived at the party, still beaming from the reviews and the news that her show has been extended extra innings til Nov. 26.
Every director-choreographer hyphenate on Broadway or on their circuitous way here seemed to turn out and embrace the gospel according to Tharp — Jeff Calhoun (due Nov. 2 with Grey Gardens at the Walter Kerr), Jerry Mitchell(due April 29, 2007, with Legally Blonde at the Palace), Rob Ashford (elated that Curtains may lift at the now-empty-in-'07 Al Hirschfeld) — and, lording over 'em all, all "5-foot-18-inches" of him, Tommy Tune, who finished his Doctor Dolittle tour in August in Chicago with a glowing notice from Chris Jones that has left a lovely afterglow. But all that is over now, save for the paintings.
"Did you know about my painting?" Tune said, slowly opening a Pandora's box. "I did a series of 18 paintings called 'The Dr. Dolittle Family,' then I turned them into lithographs and sold them in the lobbies of all the theatres that we played." He leaned forward and, entre nous, asided, "I made more money with my art than I did with my performing."
Calhoun, who got a long leg up in the business when Tune tapped him for the '94 revival of Grease, saif he'll start rehearsals next month for the first stage adaptation of The Disney Channel's TV movie, "High School Musical." When that's launched in Atlanta Jan. 13-21, he heads for L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum to resume work on Sleeping Beauty, which has a score by GrooveLily and a book by Spelling Bee Tony winner Rachel Sheinkin.
I sat a few rows in front of the long-stemmed Tune at the theatre and volunteered to scrunch down if he couldn't see. He laughed. "When I start down the theatre aisle," he replied, "everybody in the audience starts praying, 'Please, God, don't let him sit in front of me.' Then I sit down, and they’re happy because I’m just tall in the legs." It's true. He folds up like deckchairs. "It's all in the legs." He should have that printed up on business cards.
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| The cast of The Times They Are A-Changin' take its opening night bows.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
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