By Harry Haun Also making it two-in-a-row were Counting Crows' Adam Duritz, who was highly complimentary to Finn about the score, and Mario Cantone, whose Broadway show Laugh Whore hits the Showtime fan on May 28. Cantone's partner, actor Jerry Dixon, is going great guns as a director these days. In fact, he's shooting it out with himself on May 9: Norm Lewis: Just Chillin', which he helmed, bows at Joe's Pub at exactly the same time the musical he's directing—Barnstorming—is featured in the Monday night reading series at the Stamford Performing Arts Center. Norm, I suspect you're soloing.
Lea DeLaria, Ferguson's one-woman band and cheering section, was very much there for her frequent co-star. "Let's count, shall we?" she said, whipping out her digits. "On the Town, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Little Fish, a movie called Mercury in Retrograde and my Christmas show. Five times. We're The Lunts!" Her record was just released last month. "It's called 'Double Standard,' and it's currently No. 9 on the Billboard chart. And I'm touring. I'm all over the place. And I'll be back here the 22nd."
M. Butterfly's Tony-winning author, David Henry Hwang, was rooting for Llana, for whom he revised Flower Drum Song. "I read in The Post that I might be doing the John Lennon musical, but it also said I haven't been approached, and I haven't been approached," he wryly noted. "I've been working on a Disney musical for a while which will be coming in fairly soon—called Tarzan—and I'm doing a new play which will be done at The Public, not this coming season but the season after. It's called Yellow Face, and it sorta relates to Face Value" (which abruptly sank without a trace right before its Broadway opening).
Speaking of Disney animation (and Into the Woods before that), a character in that show is the subject of a new feature-length cartoon from Uncle Walt's company called Rapunzel Unbraided, being scored by Jeanine Tesori, who reports that Kristin Chenoweth just recorded the first Tesori-Alexa Jung ditty, "What Would I Be Like?"
03 May 2005
Enjoying a night out of Chicago, Brent Barrett admitted that he was looking forward to summering in Seattle—from the end of July to August—in Princesses, the David Zippel-written-and-directed musical. Coming in after that? "That is the hope."
Now with school in session, Lapine can turn his attention to more adult matters—like his play which he'll direct at Playwrights Horizons: Fran's Bed. Mia Farrow will fill it.
The stars Lapine created in Spelling Bee sing the same chorus of praise for him, but none better than Fogler: "Our show, in all of its reincarnations, has always been a pretty hysterical show. What James did was give it a heart. He really grounded everybody in reality. Not only are people laughing at the beginning, but they're crying at the end. We didn't have that before him."
