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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: The Good Body
By Harry Haun
16 Nov 2004
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From Top: Eve Ensler, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Marisa Tomei, Havey Keitel, Julia Stiles, Shiva Rose and Dylan McDermott, Joe Mantello, Kate Burton, Mario Cantone and Susan Hilferty
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | The elevator doors at Guastavino's slowly open on its second floor — known to a rarefied few as Club Guastavino — and in step four Oscars, named (alphabetically) Sally Field and Jane Fonda, both longtime champions of feminist icon Eve Ensler, bringing a sense of occasion and glamour to the occasion of Ensler's Broadway debut in The Good Body.
I love them. I really love them. So what am I going to do? Get out of the elevator? Not bloody likely. "Main floor, ladies?" I ask benignly, pushing some button or other that closes the door. Then I smile, introduce myself and whip out my trusty tape recorder.
Neither actually grimaces, but it's plain from the parsimonious repartee which follows that they feel their skin is being peeled away in strips. Fonda manages a smile as best she can with that man-in-the-forest wildness in her eyes — it is The Famous Fonda Smile, and more than enough — plus, she looks spectacular in an exotic Afghanistan coat which she wore in honor of the last scene in Ensler's one-woman show that bowed Nov. 15 at the Booth.
I turn my attention to Field and tell her how I traveled to Washington in July to see her in The Glass Menagerie at the Kennedy Center's salute to Tennessee Williams. "Did you?" she coos back. "My little Laura [actress Jennifer Dundas] is here with me tonight."
"One of the best renderings of that play I've ever seen," I say with complete sincerity. "I wish New York had a chance to see it." Field smiles wanly. "Well, we want to," she says helplessly, "but there's another production getting ready to come in" (with Jessica Lange in March, from producer Bill Kenwright and director David Leveaux). "I hear they're struggling," she postscripts sotto voce and then takes the high road: "We wish them well."
At this crucial juncture, it is suddenly discovered that the elevator isn't moving at all, so somebody presses the proper button, and the descent belatedly commences in earnest.
I turn back to the uneasy Fonda, who only recently started tiptoeing back into show business — opposite Jennifer Lopez, as the just-finished "Monster-in Law," her first flick in 14 years — and ask if she has any stage plans, knowing full well the answer. Save for a tribute here and there (like one to Lillian Hellman at Circle in the Square), Fonda hasn't been on Broadway since the 1963 Actors Studio revival of Strange Interlude. (Hollywood called.)
"I have no plans," she declares cleanly, adding with a smile, "I don't say never anymore."
That smile might be because the elevator has returned her and Field to the first floor and the opening-night party-in progress, which instantly benefits from their star light. As you could guess from actresses at home playing Hellman and Norma Rae, they use their celebrity sparingly and to causes or crusaders with whom they are politically in sync.
Fonda, in fact, has been instrumental in helping Ensler raise more than $26 million to support her V-Day Foundation, a nonprofit movement that funds grassroots groups working to stop violence against women and girls and helping those who are survivors of violence. A percentage of the profits for The Good Body will go to this foundation.
The cavernous Guastavino's suddenly makes sense as the party site for a one-person show when these two two-time Oscar winners enter — and fill — the room. Marisa Tomei, also an Oscar winner, and Harvey Keitel round out the Old Hollywood contingent at the bash. Continued...
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