PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: The 39 Steps Stitching Hitch Together
By Harry Haun
17 Jan 2008
Edwards logged up lots of 39 Steps himself in preparing for the Brit-twit who passed for
hero in the generation before 007, but he was ever-mindful of The Aitken edict: Don't Do
Donat. "More than watching him, I watched the whole genre of that kind of film acting,"
Edwards explained. "That's what I was trying to know. I didn't want to do a Robert
Donat take-off per se. I wanted to try and take off on that era of film histrionics." He still
counts himself a fan. "Hugely 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips,' all that, even when I was a kid."
Director Aitken also had a prior appreciation of Donat. "His modernity is what I liked so
much. You know how acting dates so quickly? Donat is giving a performance that would pass mustard now. His voice is a caress that sorta shades constantly into irony. He just
does that so lightly. We, of course, have to take those qualities and make them bigger."
A sizable galaxy of stars in attendance on opening night was upstaged and outglittered by the director herself. She moved with effortless grace through the evening as if she hadn't a worry in the world, dressed in a handsome, Orientally designed mandarin jacket. One might suspect an homage to Donat who wore a similar get-up in his final film, 1958's "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" but no: "It's not in the catalogue," she demurred. "I'm
wearing my dead relative's jewelry, my grandmother's frock and a coat." It was nice way of saying she wanted to have her loved ones with her on her first big night on Broadway.
The loved one beside her most of the night, in vaguely rumpled tweed, was indeed a
Writer her husband. "When I was teaching drama at Yale," she recalled, "someone sent
me comfort packages of novels. One week he sent me the entire works which wasn't
very much in those days of Patrick McGrath. I rang my friend, who's a literary agent, and said, 'This guy's fantastic. Why have I not noticed him? He's obviously English.' And he said, Well, he lives here. And would you like to meet him tonight because I'm having dinner with him?' So I leapt on the train, and I married him six weeks later."
McGrath, whose latest book, "Trauma," was just published by Random House, has had
two novels turned into movies "Spider" by
David Cronenberg in 2002 with
Ralph Fiennes, and "Asylum" by
David MacKenzie in 2005 with
Natasha Richardson.
Aitken backslid and took a role in "Asylum." Until she started directing full time a
decade ago, she was one of the West End's best reviewed and best regarded character
actresses, with a specialty in Noel Coward comedies. She recently directed his 1924 Easy Virtue in Chichester and will start rehearsing a West End revival of it in August that
will star Natasha Richardson. (The movie version of Easy Virtue, it is ironic to note, was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927; a remake of it is in the works for Jennifer Biel.)
First-nighters included a raft of Tony winners: Bill Irwin, Audra McDonald (with her
110 in the Shade director, Lonny Price), lyricist Lisa Lampert (drowsily chaperoned by
Bob Martin), directors-choreographers Kathleen Marshall and Tommy Tune (the latter
was off with the patrol at dawn to The Windy City to see for the first time the Goodman
Theatre which will launch its season in the fall with his Turn of the Century, written by
"the boys" of Jersey Boys, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice), lyricist David Zippel
(who just had his great song, "Another Mister Right Left," summarily nailed by Teri
Ralston at The Metropolitan Room), Blythe Danner and, relatively fresh from Mauritius, Katie Finneran on the arm of Peter Coyote (who's narrating Ken Burns'
new 12-hour documentary series on the national parks).
Others present: Malcolm Gets, dance legend Jacques d'Amboise, director Mark
Wing-Davey (readying Brett C. Leonard's Unconditional for a LAByrinth launching
at The Public), Alison Fraser (off to St. Martin's on Thursday for some quality
R&R before beginning the LuPone Gypsy on Broadway), Craig Lucas, director Mark
Brokaw, The Overwhelming author J.T. Rogers and set designer John Lee Beatty.
Caroline McCormick, waiting for hubby Byron Jennings to finish his prize-winning
mustache-twirling in Is He Dead?, made intermission chit-chat with Old Acquaintance Margaret Colin and Broadway's first Mrs. Potts, Beth Fowler. The latter said that she
was bound for Steel Magnolias at the Paper Mill Playhouse with Kelly Bishop and
that she was spending this week workshopping a musical version of Please Don't Eat
the Daisies, which is based more on the Jean Kerr book than the Doris Day movie; Kaitlin
Hopkins and Gregg Edelman are playing Day and David Niven to her Spring Byington.
Colin said her TV show, "Gossip Girl," has been picked up and will resume New York
filming as soon as the writers strike is settled ("I play the evil Eleanor, one of the
neglected moms," she trilled happily, and it sure sounds like License To Kill from here).
Playwright Stephen Karam and director Jason Moore were there, representing Speech
and Debate, their sleeper hit in the bowels of the Laura Pels Theatre. Moore's Avenue Q is doing 85 percent capacity in its fifth year (!) and made a big step forward with his third
project by shrewdly signing up Spamalot Tony nominee Christopher Sieber for a stretch
in Shrek. Joel Vig, late of Hairspray and now of cabaret, said his sold-out show ten days
ago at The Metropolitan Room is prompting a second Vig gig there. Film prof Dr.
Richard Brown weighed in just in case an expert witness was needed for The 39 Steps. The expert really on the 39 Steps case was there: dialogue coach Stephen Gabis.
Simon Jones, whose recorded voice opens The 39 Steps with some plummy cautionary
words about cellphones and such, was otherwise on vocal rest after a robust The Actors Company Theatre/TACT
reading of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution over the weekend, but he'll be
up and at 'em Jan. 21 for The Gingold Group's monthly reading of GBS at The Players Club. The next Shaw show will Geneva, with Carole Shelley and George S. Irving.
"I've been reading about you," Roundabout's Todd Haimes said in passing to Jones'
wife, Nancy, referring to Michael Palin's "Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years." It
seems she is the publicist who put that Monty crew on the map in America. Another
keeping-up-with-the-Joneses tidbit: This was the day their 18-year-old, Tim, left the nest.
He was immediately replaced with a 55-foot television screen, which may help . . .
 |
 |
The cast of The 39 Steps takes its opening night bows.
|
| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
