By Harry Haun
29 Nov 2006

Stunning-looking by Tavern light, Amy Irving gamely played Mother for the play. "I get to be Mother Earth in this one — and, in the next one, not so much," she says with a sexy smile. "It's nice to be able to move from mother to Jennifer Ehle's contemporary."

Her husband in the play, Alexander Bakunin, is played with his customary flair and vigor by Richard Easton, who won a Tony for the last Stoppard-O'Brien collaboration, The Invention of Love. Easton collapsed on stage Oct. 18 during a performance of Voyage, and the opening was delayed from Nov. 5 to Nov. 27 to allow the appropriate amount of time for him to recover from a procedure he received to correct a heart arrhythmia.

"I feel fine," he beams. "I'm terribly sore — and the ribs are still a bit sore. It's just cleared the top of my breathing now, but, after five weeks, finally I can get a full breath."

He begins and ends Voyage, his life and vision fading with the sunset at play's end. But he promises to be back for Shipwreck. "I have a different part, a very silly part. I have one scene as a mad Russian consul. He leaps to his feet every time the Czar is mentioned."

The star of the first Stoppard-O'Brien-Lincoln Center team-effort, Hapgood, was very much in attendance on opening night. Stockard Channing has no immediate stage plans, beyond a Town Hall appearance Dec. 1 in a benefit reading of The Laramie Project marking what would have been the 30th birthday of Matthew Shepard. She will reprise her Emmy-winning role of his mother in an all-star cast that includes Judith Light, Cyndi Lauper and Mary-Louise Parker. Her film, "3 Needles," opens the same day.

Lincoln Center Theatre execs Andre Bishop and Bernard Gersten made sure the cast usually inhabiting The Clean House got booked for Voyage, and all five showed up: Blair Brown, John Dossett with wife Michele Pawk, Jill Clayburgh with daughter Lily Rabe (enjoying, like Swoosie Kurtz, a night off from Heartbreak House), Vanessa Aspillaga with her Central Park As You Like It player David Cromwell (who shines in Voyage — but "don't blink, baby" in the other two) and Concetta Tomei. That show's stage manager, Roy Harris, was also in attendance and reports that his new cookbook, "More Recipes & Reminiscence," and Sarah Ruhl's script for The Clean House were both selling strong for the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Gypsy of the Year fund-raising competition.

"Everybody in the cast has given me an extra recipe, and we have stuffed them into the book. You should taste 'Jill Clayburgh's Flourless Chocolate Cake'! It's fabulous!"

Zoe Caldwell made her entrance in her basic dramatic black: A Callas carryover? A Medea carryover? Maybe, considering the turf, a Bernarda Alba outfit? My guess is the latter. After all, she will be making her first New York appearance in 12 years Feb. 1 at the Classic Stage Company in A Spanish Play by [the French] Yasmina Reza.

Actor-turned-director Mark Lamos was in town, between gigs and cities. "I did Alfred Uhry's play at the Guthrie, Edgardo Mine, and next week I start rehearing Somerset Maugham's The Circle at ACT in San Francisco with Kathleen Widdoes and some ACT alums. Lamos and fellow Voyage patron Uhry both live in the hope Edgardo Mine, much done regionally, will get to NYC.

Meanwhile, Hal Prince is putting Uhry back on Broadway in LoveMusik (spring 2007 at the Biltmore), with Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy as Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. "The thing that I'm worried about is it's sort of an artichoke," frets Uhry. "Anyone much older than we are has no idea who those people are." Weill died at age 50 in 1950, too soon, too soon.

Playwrights present and accounted included ex-Czech prexy Vaclav Havel (a pal of Sir Tom's), Paul Rudnick (fresh from his Regrets Only bouquets), William Finn, John Weidman, A.R. Gurney (due next with Crazy Mary starring Sigourney Weaver) and David Ives.

Others spotted: Helen Stenborg, producer Daryl Roth, Michael Cumpsty, director Dan Sullivan, Kate Burton, Sam Rockwell, Mamie Gummer and Martha Stewart.

Lyricist Susan Birkenhead, crowing that she has finished The Flamingo Kid, began the day in Milano — a groggy way to start a Stoppard play, what, what? She and her husband, Gere Couture, spent the Thanksgiving holidays in Venice "since it's sorta 'our city.'"

Other twosomes in attendance: Katie Finneran with her regular beau, actor Will Kenney (if they wed, she'll be Katie Kenney — think about it, hon), Tony winner and now Tony nominator Joanna Gleason with actor-hubby Chris Sarandon, Barbara Cook with Harvey Evans and Heather Goldenhersh (who played Sister James in Doubt and kinda became a habit with O'Byrne).

At the party, director O'Brien somewhat resembled a veteran of foreign wars between engagements, momentarily happy to make it ashore. "It was a great honor to do this piece. I love Tom. I love working with him. I love his kindness. It's so funny for a guy from Michigan to speak this way, but we've become very good friends. We love working together. We love being together."

The beat will go on, at least a couple of other revolutions, and Sir Tom will be sticking around for them. "Oh, yeah," insists O'Brien. "I can't let him go now. We're all ready to tech the second one. And then the third one starts after that. I'm in harness until mid-February."

Billy Crudup, director Jack O'Brien and Josh Hamilton.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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