By Harry Haun
11 Apr 2005

Harvey Fierstein cashed in his chips after his Fiddler on the Roof matinee and went home, but, otherwise, the opening night crowd looked like a Broadway block party, with stars from the immediate neighborhood pouring into the Booth, smelling a new hit.

"I just finished a matinee and strolled over," said Dirty Rotten Scoundrel John Lithgow. Ditto Richard Kind and Brooks Ashmanskas from The Producers. Dame Edna Everage was represented by her manager, Barry Humphries, and his son, Rupert.

After putting in a hard day at the office (as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, which officially reaches Studio 54 April 26), Amy Ryan arrived for a relatively lighthearted evening in the theatre, on the arm of her On the Mountain co-star, Ebon Moss Bachrach.

Flying the Spamalot colors, Christopher Sieber commuted from the adjacent Shubert and was asked what he felt like, playing to capacity and appreciative crowds. "Like a rock star," he answered. "When you walk out for the curtain call, the cheering is deafening." Jim Caruso butted into the conversation with "You know what that's like, Harry." His Monday night "Cast Party" events continue at Birdland, with Maureen McGovern spending her night away from Little Women there this week. In the wings: Jeff Daniels who sings, plays the guitar and writes songs like "If William Shatner Can, I Can Too."

Caruso also sang the praises of the star's mother, GeorgeAnne Crudup, who was present with her other two sons, Brooks and Tommy (who runs the talent department for Tony Danza's TV show). "She's the hippest lady I ever met in my life," Caruso sang out with gusto. "I get all of my clothes from her at Ralph Lauren. She's beautiful and smart and has taken her kids to the theatre since they were babies. She's a great lady."

John Bolton, who stands by for Sieber and three or four others in Spamalot, also trekked over. A show he did in Washington last spring—Frank Loesser's last, Señor Discretion Himself—will try again this winter at the Pasadena Playhouse, and he has been pitched the part he did. And a show he did in San Francisco last summer—The Opposite of Sex—has gone through "some very good changes," angling for Broadway in the fall. He's thinking, He's thinking...

Director Walter Bobbie, of Sweet Charity a block away at the Hirschfeld, extended his hand to director Crowley and congratulated him as they went into the Booth. "I don't say 'Break a leg' anymore," quipped Bobbie, who is waiting for his leading lady, Christina Applegate, to mend from a broken foot but is beginning previews April 11 with Charlotte d'Amboise. Sure-footed Denis O'Hare said he was "glad to be back, with a job." He was greeted warm-heartedly by one of his recent fellow Assassins, Alexander Gemignani.

Raul Esparza, parking his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for a very dark night out, was all a-gush about the cheery responses the show has been drawing in previews (it opens April 28 at the former Ford Center for the Performing Arts, the newly dubbed Hilton Theatre)

"The audiences have been extraordinary, and it's so much fun to do," Esparza exclaimed. "I keep saying, 'I'm going to The Magic Kingdom.' (I know it's not a Disney show.) When that overture starts, it's just wonderful. It's a delightful, gentle, loving show. And it's been packed! I've never performed before so many kids in my life! It's lovely."

Another Chitty Chitty denizen, Robert Sella, was crowing about his new son—named, clearly for success with the ladies and maybe the marquee—Valentino Sella, who right now is with his mother, Enid Graham, visiting her mother in Texas, but she'll be back in a couple of weeks to begin rehearsing The Constant Wife with Kate Burton, Lynn Redgrave, Kathryn Meisle, Michael Cumpsty, John Dossett, Dennis Holtz, Kathleen McNenny and John Ellison Conlee. The latter, who has been musically occupied of late (saluting Sheldon Harnick at the 92nd St. Y, playing Alice Ripley's significant other in the "Encores!" edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and handling the mortal title role in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater for York Theatre's "Musicals in Mufti" series), said he was happy to go easy on the musical scales for a spell. "I play the guy who sneezes in Act II. It's a brilliant sneezing part. They don't writing sneezing parts like that any more."

Conlee's Full Monty co-hort, Patrick Wilson, was back among us after a heavy whirl of filmmaking (The Alamo, The Phantom of the Opera). "I just wrapped a movie called American Gothic, and I'm doing a movie called Running With Scissors." And is a return to the Broadway stage in the cards? "If all the dates can be worked out," he vows, you'll see him in the Robert Redford role in the upcoming revival of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park.

Others in attendance included Harvey Keitel, Julianne Moore, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, Nancy Opel (holding the Fiddler flag) with David Ives, Penny Fuller, Claudia Shear, Hurlyburly's Josh Hamilton with Kelli Thorn, director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall, Edie Falco, Oscar nominee (for Maria Full of Grace) Catalina Sandino Moreno, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Brian F. O'Byrne and Heather Goldenhersh (both from Doubt), Anthony ("ER") Edwards and the ABBA boys, Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.

For one of the first-nighters, the evening was a little like going home again: David Bowie, whose only previous contact with Broadway was at the Booth, replacing Philip Anglim in the original production of The Elephant Man. (Interestingly, Crudup did the revival of The Elephant Man.) "It was a wonderful way to go back," he said. "What a superb play! It certainly did seem nostalgic to me. Even the smell of the place." And did that stir up some Broadway juices? "Actually, that has occurred to me. We'll see what the future brings." And would the future be bringing him in a musical? "I'm not saying."

The cast gives their opening night curtain call
photo by Aubrey Reuben

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