By Harry Haun
13 Apr 2007

Hillsboro, as painted here by Hughes, is not all that different from Grover's Corners. "I do believe that 'Inherit the Wind Meets Our Town' is an apt description. I just felt it could be done cleanly and with the kind of invigorating speed if you dispensed with some of the literal scenery. Wilder is one of my favorite playwrights, and his credo about purely theatrical experiences that don't so much to do with scenery was on my mind."

Santo Loquasto's set deftly suggests both courtroom and church, replete with risers where 63 paying customers can sit onstage, helping the already sizable-for-a-drama cast give the illusion of a packed-to-the-rafters assemblage. As patrons file into the Lyceum, a gospel quartet is in full sway, led by David M. Lutken, that tall drink of water who appeared to good country-fried effect in Ring of Fire and Woody Guthrie's American Song.

Lutken's parents were present for the opening, and they were pleased their son followed their advice. "My pre-show hymns are the recommendations of my father and mother," said the good son. "My mother grew up in Canton, Mississippi, right next to the Baptist church so she heard them singing all the time." She suggested "Beulah Land," and her son said, "Well, I believe I can do that."

Lutken added, "I give all the credit to Mr. Hughes because he talked me into doing the job that he conceived of, which was to put real Baptist/Appalachian music into this play."

Of late, Lutken has been overseas doing a Guthrie show called This Land Is Your Land. "I'm going to the Edinburgh Festival in August with Woody Says, a new adaptation of the same material. Basically it's a one-man show, but I'll have my musician friends with me."

One of Lutken's gospel gals — Katie Klaus — just hit Broadway this year and has run a pretty dizzy gamut from Bob Dylan (The Times They Are A-Changin') to Stephen Sondheim (the young Sally in the Encores! Follies) to, now, this.

O'Hare, who nimbly pranced out Hornbeck slightly to the right of Prof. Harold Hill, confessed he's having a field day with the character (as if you didn't already suspect it). "It's political, and I get to act. When was the last time that happened?" he asked.

Some of his best work is done without a word, just drinking in the court pyrotechnics. "It's great because the arguments are so intelligent and compelling, and the performances of Chris and Brian are so great that it's not hard at all to watch. Tonight was very easy."

His Hornbeck is following two Tonys (Randall and Heald) and, in the film, Gene Kelly. "It's hard being in someone's shadow like that, but to be compared to them is an honor."

The always-excellent Byron Jennings has a high old time of it as the heavy — the town's sanctimonious reverend. "It's a little difficult being the villain of the piece, but I have a very intense 15 minutes that makes the evening worthwhile for me. I enjoy it very much."

Caroline McCormick, the also-chronically-employed Mrs. Jennings, said she's opening Sunday at the Pearl Theatre in S. N. Behrman's 1932 opus, Biography. "It's a great old play," she said. "I can't believe it hasn't been done." (Its last Broadway run was 1934.)

"I play a portrait artist who paints all these famous people. Somebody asks her to write her biography. Then, all the men in her life come out of woodwork telling her not to."

Sixteen-year-old Conor Donovan, who won a Theatre World Award playing McCormick's son in Privilege and was a resident of Grover's Corners when Paul Newman stage-managed it, plays a Darwin-tainted teen in "Heavenly" Hillsboro.

Lately he has been busying himself with movies: "I was in Texas for a few weeks in the winter doing a film, 'Gary the Tennis Coach.' It's a comedy coming out this summer. Gary is Seann William Scott. I'm one of his players on a high school tennis team. It's a screwball comedy about all these kids he rounds up and turns them into state champions."

Jeff Steitzer, who plays the Hillsboro mayor and understudies Brady, keeps the Southern bluster to a minimum, he said. "At the audition, I was a little more Guy Kibbee. and then Doug slowly began taking all of that away. I guess he didn't want it to appear that we were making fun of those people. I grew up in the Midwest so I recognize those people."

The glamour goblet of the evening went to Jill Clayburgh, looking divinely sexy in a new gown. She just did a pilot titled, promisingly, "Dirty Sexy Money," having spent last year doing three plays in a row. She was beaming that the third of these — Keith Bunin's The Busy World Is Hushed — was rating award consideration. "Wasn't it fun that we were nominated for those Lucille Lortel awards?" she (actually) squealed. "It was a beautiful play. I was very happy. That play did not get the reviews I thought it deserved."

Second prize in the beauty department was snapped up by Clayburgh's daughter Lily Rabe. She's movie-making with DeNiro right now.

Christopher Evan Welch, himself award-worthy for his wonderful work in The Scene, said he will play Mercutio in the park this summer to Oscar Isaac and Lauren Ambrose's Romeo and Juliet. Camryn Manheim and Austin Pendleton will do nurse and friar.

Other first-nighters included Blair Brown and Marsha Mason (who, alliteration be damned, will team for the opening play next season at Playwrights Horizons — Brown to direct and Marsha to star), producers Barry and Fran Weissler, Fran Drescher, Annabella Sciorra on the arm of Bobby Cannavale (who's in talks about Terrence McNally's next, Unnatural Acts), Edie Falco (who's planning to be on Broadway next season in The Rose Tattoo), Joan Rivers, novelist Frank McCourt, Mike Wallace (who hasn't caught Stephen Rowe's uncanny impersonation of him in Frost/Nixon — Frank Langella invited him to the opening on April 22) and Brian Murray (McCarter-bound for Edward Albee's new play, Me, Myself and I, after the Gaslight aka Angel Street run at Irish Rep).

The company of Inherit the Wind takes its opening night bows.
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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