By Harry Haun
15 Oct 2004
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| From Top: Mary-Louise Parker, Rosie Perez, Jeremy Shamos (left) and Craig Lucas, Mandy Moore, Brenda Blethyn (left) and Edie Falco |
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Manhattan Theatre Club's elegantly restored home-away-from-City Center, The Biltmore Theatre on West 47th, started off MTC's second Broadway season Oct. 14 with a revival of Craig Lucas' 1988 play Reckless—and extra special luster from Mary-Louise Parker.
Not that proof of her twinkle 'n' shine was needed after her Tony-winning work in MTC's Proof, but Parker was happy to oblige anyway, having initiated the project in the first place. She was anxious to give this dizzy heroine a whirl. "She's just a hopeless optimist," the actress shrugged helplessly at the post-premiere party across the street from the theatre at The Supper Club. "That's pretty much the opposite of me. She keeps trying no matter what happens to her, trying to be positive, and I find that quite beautiful."
As a runaway housefrau with so much to run away from—in particular, a professionally committed hit-man hired by her husband on Christmas Eve—Parker leads a merry chase, springing from Springfield to Springfield for 14 years. (There are said to be a Springfield in every state in the union, although director Mark Brokaw was hard-pressed to pinpoint Springfield, Hawaii. "We only get as far as Springfield, California," he offered lamely.)
"I wanted to work again with Craig—and with Mark," is Parker's primary motivation for such Reckless behavior. Brokaw directed her to an Obie for How I Learned To Drive, while Lucas is something of a lucky scribe for her and always has been (Prelude to a Kiss, Longtime Companion, even Mia Farrow's 1995 movie version of Reckless in which Parker played the paraplegic deaf mute Rosie Perez now inhabits on Broadway).
It's the first time Perez has originated a role on Broadway—a longtime goal of hers—and she couldn't have been prouder. "It felt fantastic," she trilled. "I was very, very nervous when I first wheeled out there, then after the second scene I was fine, and I had a ball."
Multi-tasking is one of the job descriptions for the Reckless cast. Perez essays three roles; Olga Merediz, Thomas Sadoski and Jeremy Shamos do four or more; but the title-holder in the fast-change, multi-character department is Tony-winning veteran Debra Monk, who manages to get off a half-dozen doctors with vastly different temperaments and hair styles ("Wigs," she says, "by the great Paul Huntley")—plus a chicken ("I'm very proud of that chicken"). It keeps a gal busy: "All the costumes have been built to be ripped off—like Chippendale's. My dressers work really hard. They put new wigs, new makeup, everything in seconds. There's one change that's 20 seconds."
Monk has more madness on the immediate horizon. In March she heads to Boston to do 1987's Laughing Wild by (and with) Christopher Durang at the Huntington Theatre.
Michael O'Keefe, who plays a grieving widower who champagnes himself into an early grave in the play, is another who has New England business beyond the play. "I'm getting a degree at Bennington College in the creative writing program," he said. "I'm a year into the program, and I have my third residency in January." Is this switch in professions a mid-life crisis? "I'm going to be 50 in April so it could be a mid-life crisis. My first mid-life crisis was when I bought a 1970 SS Chevelle, which was my every-day car for eight years, so I suppose that going to college now could qualify as my second midlife crisis."
The theatre professionals were out in full force Thursday night, this being the first Broadway opening of the fall season, battening down the hatches for more to come.
At the center of the papparazzi explosion was Mandy Moore, at what some say was her first Broadway opening. She obliged the press with poses on her way into the Biltmore, but the light-bulb fireworks greeting her as she left the theatre sent her scurrying back inside the lobby where she took time to recompose herself. Fame is like that sometimes.
At the opposite end of that celebrity-commotion spectrum was the low keyed presence of composer John Kander, his first public outing since the passing of his longtime partner, lyricist Fred Ebb. His attendance was interpreted as a show of support for pal Monk, who knocked across two showstoppers in their failed musical of 1996, Steel Pier. Continued...
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