By Harry Haun
10 Dec 2004

"If you play this role and you love to sing and act—how could you not have a good time?" reasoned Beach. "And, of course, as a gay man who has been in a relationship for 15 years I totally identify with it. It's a role I always knew I'd play some day. I saw the show the night before it opened originally. My friends said, 'Too bad, Gary, you're too young for it.' They can't say that anymore. I just knew I'd play that role, but I never thought I'd have the opportunity to play it in a first-class production, with all these great people. I thought I'd do it in stock someplace. I'm not kidding when I say it's a dream come true".

La Cage aux Folles has been Zaks-cast for character, with a lovely assortment of character comics filling in the fringe characters. The precise, pencil-thin Ruth Williamson and the beefy, blustery Michael Mulhern drew welcoming applause of recognition on opening night. In Williamson's case, it was welcoming-back applause.

"I've had four years of film and television in L.A.," she said. "I have a recurring role on the series Nip/Tuck and gotten a lot of attention for that. And I did a lot of theatre out there. In fact, I did Vera in Mame out there. That's how I hooked up with Jerry Herman."

Her secret project these days is a one-woman show she has written on the life of Kay Thompson, who helped create The MGM Sound and was a brilliant singer-comedienne herself. "It's written now," Williamson said, "and I've been in touch with the estate. They've read it, and they like it so while I'm here in town I'm going to shop it around.

"It's called Pure Heaven, and it begins in Rome in 1963 when she just dropped out of sight. She had the world by the tail—she'd done Funny Face, and everybody wanted her for movies and television—yet she dropped everything and moved to Rome. My question is why. So that's where my play picks up. She tells the story of her life, from Rome."

Gavin Creel, the male ingenue of the proceedings, seems to be carving his whole Broadway career exclusively out of Marriott Marquis shows. "Whatever's coming in next—I don't care what it is—I'm in it," he shrugged, resigned to the fate. "I did Thoroughly Modern Millie here—it was my Broadway debut—and I didn't have as much fun at that opening night as I am now. I'm just relaxed and having a good time this time."

Nor is Rachel York a stranger to the Marquis, having made her Broadway arrival there too (as Julie Andrews' romantic rival in Victor/Victoria.) She was one of the stars who "commuted" four flights up from the theatre to the post-party in the Grand Ballroom. "Right now," she said, "I'm looking for an apartment in New York because I'm starting in a show called Dessa Rose at Lincoln Center." She and title player La Chanze play women trekking through the pre-Civil War South in the Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty musical that director Graciella Daniele starts previewing Feb. 17 at the Mitzi Newhouse.

Making a jubilant entrance in the Grand Ballroom as a three-man conga line were composer Joseph Thalken and actors David Pittu and Peter Bartlett, the latter two from the Mitchell-choreographed Never Gonna Dance of last season. "We just can't seem to let go of it," shrieked the zany Bartlett when the conga line finally conked out.

Thalken goes into rehearsal Monday with a new musical, co-authored with The Fantasticks' Tom Jones, called Harold and Maude. It'll world-premiere Jan. 9 at the Paper Mill Playhouse with Estelle Parsons, Eric Millegan, Donna English, Danny Burstein and Donna Lynne Champlin. He said he was not nervous— "yet!"

Pittu, who directed Thalken's previous musical Was, is bound for New Zealand, of all places, to do King Kong, of all things. It is being remade by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackman. "It's two weeks in January," Pittu said. "I play a theatre owner whom Naomi Watts asks for a job. It's the Depression, and she wants to be in my chorus line."

Like his fellow conga-linese, Bartlett is in the retread groove. "Tomorrow I'm auditioning for the movie of The Producers. I hope Miss Stroman will use me. [She did for The Frogs.] I'm up for the costume designer who's part of Roger De Bris' SWAT team of designers. I'm going as William Ivey Long. I am! The blazer, the khakis, the red tie."

The real Long was receiving endless compliments for his giddy get-ups including a costume that brings on Beach and, in a quick swish, turns into an entirely different costume. "Oh, isn't that fun? I make the dress on little models at my worktable at home. I make them in miniature, and then I figure out that if I can make them work as a doll, maybe we have a chance. Gary has gotten it down so fast now it's really amazing."

Joan Collins, with hubby in tow, was arguably the prize ornamentation of the first-night glitz—but there were a couple of Oscar winners giving out their glow, too—Celeste Holm and Patricia Neal—Celeste, one of the last standing Oklahoma! originals, looking smart in a white beaded suit, and Neal, fresh from the salute that raised enough funds for her own star on Hollywood Boulevard. (She is also, let the record show, the person who received the very first Tony Award—for Another Part of the Forest—back in 1947.)

Lynn Redgrave, arriving with her daughter Annabel Clark, is a prospective Oscar contender this year—for her small, but unifying and heartfelt, cameo at the end of Kinsey.

The opening-night crowd was star-filled with the likes of Star Jones, Tommy Tune, Richard Kind (who jumps into the Broadway Producers a week from Tuesday), Rosie O'Donnell, Regis Philbin, Margaret Colin, Scott Whitman and Marc Shaiman, Margaret Whiting, costume designer Willa Kim, Rue McClanahan, Jai Rodriguez and directors Joe Mantello, Wayne Cilento, Milos Forman and Kathleen Marshall.