By Harry Haun
23 Jan 2009
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A veteran of August Wilson angst (and most recently Leslie Lee's in The First Breeze of Summer), Pressley relished this becalming change of pace. "It has been such a gift to be on a different planet," she trilled. "Richard's writing is so rich. I've always said, 'It's a different kind of animal this particular play and it's the writing.' Richard Greenberg saw this character, and I've just been given the opportunity to bring it to life and what an honor it is. There's a stillness to Olivia Shaw that David Grindley insisted upon insisted that I focus in on a stillness, and with that stillness comes a dignity and a grace. It's all there because she sees all and she demands all."
It's hard not to ask author Greenberg, whose adaptation of Pal Joey opened last month and whose American Plan opens this month, what he is doing next month.
Nothing, he said, "but a month later, I go to South Coast Rep and work on a new play there, Our Mother's Brief Affair. That's the storyline for quite a while, then it shifts."
Two things prompted the play in the first place: "One, I was staying in the Catskills at a house that I hated, and I wanted to write my way out. It was really the house itself. I know that there is no such thing as a haunted house but this one was.
"Also, I saw a moment between an adult woman and her elderly mother that I found sorta shocking and compelling, and it made me think about them a lot, so I had them in mind a while, and I was interested in tracing back that relationship to its roots."
No, those roots didn't go back to "Now, Voyager." He never saw that Bette Davis-Gladys Cooper sudser, but he did see the movie version of The Heiress, and he readily concedes, "Oh, I know there's a little hauntings of Henry James in it."
"I'll say," said Cherry Jones, after the curtain had fallen, quickly admitting to memories of Morris Townsend, the no-show suitor to her Tony-winning Heiress. "How could I not think of that?" she asked. "A girl with a suitcase, getting stood up?"
Her other Tony-nominated role Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt was also on her mind since, earlier in the day, Oscar nominations were doled out to all four of the principals in the movie version (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis) just as the original stage quartet was Tony-nominated (Jones, Brian F. O'Byrne, Heather Goldenhersh and Adriane Lenox).
"I was so thrilled today that they were all nominated and that John's screenplay was nominated. I think that's fantastic." She did have her doubts about Hoffman being in the right category (supporting, unlike O'Byrne). "Oh, you know how it is. You know how they play that game. They do the same thing here [for the Tonys], right?"
Of course, she said, she watched the inauguration and "with a great empathy." [She plays the President of the United States on TV's "24" series.] "I only wish Obama had had my Supreme Court Justice. He would have gotten it right," she laughed.
Lenox, who won a Tony for Doubt, too, was one of several Tony winners at the opening. Others included four-timer Boyd Gaines (who should have copped another for Journey's End), two-timer Donna Murphy, playwright Alfred Uhry, Marian Seldes, choreographer-turning-director Rob Ashford, Phyllis Newman, composer Henry Krieger (taking his Dreamgirls to Korea in another week) and Victoria Clark.
Another Journey's End recruit and Tony winner (for I Am My Own Wife), Jefferson Mays, was waxing eloquent about the new revival: "I think Mercedes did a wonderful job in my role," he quipped, "just brilliant. It's an extraordinary play and an exquisite production. I was just talking to Jonathan Fensom, the set designer, and said it was one of the most dynamic sets I've ever seen in my life. It was a true character. The lake, the sort of primordial ooze over which everyone was precariously balanced and that wonderful dock that was going to nowhere." He also liked the scene-changing sweep of curtains that were painted as a thick forest. "It was the most elegant use of curtains. And then just the acting across the boards was so beautiful. It's a rare thing to have this sort of evening in theatre."
Mays' next project is a revival of the late Simon Gray's Quartermaine's Terms, which director Maria (The 39 Steps) Aiken is putting up this summer. "It's a beautiful, Chekhovian play. We're doing it in Williamstown and then hopefully elsewhere. Jay Binder's here, and he's casting it. I'm going to interrogate him in a few minutes."
The star of Grindley's next Broadway offering, Matthew Broderick, arrived with the glamorous Mrs., Sarah Jessica Parker, touching off their paparazzi frenzy. On March 10, Broderick starts rehearsing a revival of Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist. Grindley directed a very well received version of it in the U.K. at the Donmar Warehouse in 2005.
Also attending: Sarah Paulson (doing "Cupid" with Bobby Canavale for ABC), director Richard Maltby Jr. (moving The Story of My Life into the Booth on Saturday to begin performances on Tuesday), Judy Blazer, Geraldine Hughes (returning to the stage swing of things after "Gran Torino" "I was Clint Eastwood's daughter-in-law who stole all the jewels"), playwright Theresa Rebeck, Patricia Clarkson (Greenberg's ex-roommate and abiding muse although sidetracked with film work in recent years), director Gordon Greenberg (no kin to Richard), Blanche Baker (back in the business again: "I took a break because I have four children, and I just recently went back. I did a film with Kevin Bacon called 'Taking Chance' for HBO"), Joan Rivers, Harriet D. Foy, Rynel Johnson, Liz Smith, Pal Joey director Joe Mantello and Jon Robin Baitz, jazz singer-pianist Peter Cincotti, a luscious-looking Orfeh ("I just finished Legally Blonde, and I'm still resting from the musical-theatre grind it has been ten years so I can concentrate more on film and television right now.") and her Andy Karl.
David Rabe and Jill Clayburgh were beaming like proud parents of the leading lady, which they indeed were. "I'm a nervous wreck," confessed Clayburgh, who nevertheless looked elegant in what she offhandedly called "a very old Christian Dior." She has had it with TV for a while and is shopping around for theatre projects. Greenberg's A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, brought her back to Broadway after a 20-year intermission, and she hints he may be the author of her next stage outing.
Another proud parent at the party was William Morris top honcho David Kolodner, sporting the most colorful and commented-on tie of the night a primitive art design Grandma Moses might have come out of permanent retirement to do. It was the handiwork of his daughter, who turns ten next week. "If you're lucky, you'll catch me with the one my son did. I have twins. I got them a kit for the holidays. I said, 'It's a present for you, but it turns into a present for me.' It was two white ties with an array of paints." With a little bit of luck, he'll never go near a Tie-Rack store again . . .
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| The curtain call of The American Plan.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
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