By Harry Haun
03 Dec 2004

"There is one other person who injured his shoulder and his neck and was not in the show at all tonight, unfortunately, but he is such a huge part of the company. His name is Hoon Lee. We've had heroic swings and understudies who have somehow gone on for us on a moment's notice. Literally, at five o'clock on the night of our first preview, I injured my knee, and an understudy and a swing went on for me that very night. Roundabout has been so great about allowing me to integrate myself back into the show gradually."

A buff Paola Montalban is the new Manjiro—and no to the obvious: "If I were related to Ricardo, do you think I'd be doing this show? I'd be doing The Wrath of Khan, Part 5."

To have Tom Jones and Anne Kaufman Schneider at your Broadway debut is a small indication of how deeply Miyamoto is into duplicating The Great American Musical in Japan. His credits run from Urinetown to Annie Get Your Gun to Into the Woods.

"Amon is doing a big new production of The Fantasticks as soon as he gets back to Japan," said Jones. "It toured a year or so ago, and I've seen a video of it. It's totally unlike any production of The Fantasticks that I have ever seen. Very interesting!"

Jones will be going into rehearsal Dec. 13 with his first show sans composer Harvey Schmidt, his longtime-collaborator. Joseph Thalken has provided the music for his new musicalization of Harold and Maude, which will premiere Jan. 9 at the Paper Mill Playhouse with Estelle Parsons, Eric Millegan, Donna English, Danny Burstein and Donna Lynne Champlin—"five actors and an orchestra of ten. They're outnumbered."

English finished a gig Sunday up at Goodspeed with Rex Smith, a new musical called Princesses (lyrics and direction by City of Angels' David Zippel; music by his Mulan composer, Matthew Wilder). Next stop is Seattle, said Zippel at the Guastavino's party. "April is rehearsals. We open at the very end of May. And our producers [Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley] plan to bring on in to Broadway in this summer."

Schneider will be spending this coming Sunday participating in a talk-back for The Talk of the Town, a zippy little musical salute to ye olde Algonquin crew (which included such worthies as her father, Alexander Woollcott, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Marc Connelly, Robert Benchley) down at the Bank Street Theatre. The Times review wasn't all that encouraging, she admitted, but she trooped down for a look-see/listen-to anyway "and I was charmed by it. So I told them I'd come down and talk on it Sunday. The songs are not bad at all."

Copenhagen Tony winner Blair Brown is busy directing her first play—at Passage Theatre in Trenton—Rosemary and I by the author of Nine Armenians, Leslie Ayvazian. "We start rehearsals right after Christmas and open in February. I'm thrilled about it."

Agent Mark Subias had something to be thrilled about, too. One of his clients, Will Eno, has a new play which producer Daryl Roth will install in her DR2 Theatre in January. "It's called Tom Payne (based on nothing), and it's a solo piece for James Urbaniak, the downtown theatre actor. It's an existential crisis, very funny, very dark."

Eno just won Newsday's Oppy Award as Most Promising Playwright for The Flu Season, which, when done at the Blue Heron, was favored by The Times' Margo Jefferson.

Set designer David Gallo, with eyebrows like Salvador Dali's mustache, said he was just back from the circus—literally: he designed the 135th edition of the Ringling Brothers, Barney & Bailey Circus—in to make his opening Monday. Gem of the Ocean is his latest August Wilson set. It'll be populated by Phylica Rashad and Ruben Santiago-Hudson.

Next, Gallo said, "we'll hopefully get started on The It Girl. It's going to be nice to do the '20s flapper thing and not do the Thoroughly Modern Millie thing." (The It Girl is a biography of Clara Bow, shoehorned into her most famous flick, It, by Michael Small, director B.T. McNicholl and composer Paul McKibbins.) "We don't actually have a schedule right now. They're talking about Feb. 14. We're going to be at Dodger Stages."

Oklahoma!'s Tony-winning Jud Fry, Shuler Hensley, and Stephanie March headed up the "Law and Order: SVU" cheering section at the opening. Wong plays forensic psychologist George Huang on that, and they were relaying best wishes from the show.

"I just got back from four weeks in Mexico, filming the Zorro sequel with Antonio Bandaras and Catherine Zeta-Jones," said Hensley. "Film and television—that's mainly what I've been doing lately, but I'm just itching to get back to theatre again."

Roundabout's founding director, Gene Feist, was beaming that he gave Wong his first job in the theatre: House manager, he said. And Wong managed the house pretty well on opening night. What goes around comes Roundabout, apparently.

B.D. Wong leads the cast during their opening night curtain call
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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