By Harry Haun
20 Apr 2006

All hands hit the Cipriani looking pretty bushed by the evening, but playing to the end of the string and running the glittering gauntlet of flashbulbs and TV cameras as fast as their handlers could herd them through it. No photographs were allowed at the party inside.

Greenberg hit E over high C in his praise for his star—“smart,” “wonderful,” “adorable,” he trilled. “Like, you would have ordered this if you could, so it’s been just unbelievably charming to discover that someone this big would be so accessible and cooperative. If anyone has the right to a moment of divaness, it would be Julia—and there wasn’t any.”

The day before the opening, Greenberg moved on this his next play, The House in Town, which Doug Hughes is directing toward a June 19 opening at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theatre. Jessica Hecht, Mark Harelik, Armand Schultz and Dan Bittner are the stars, but Greenberg is a little hesitant to say what it’s about. “Let’s just say it takes place in the early months of 1929 and focuses on a marriage on NYC’s 23rd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. The complex I lived in for 15 years is just being built. It centers on the house across the street, which was then known as Millionaire’s Row.”

Roberts’ husband, cameraman Daniel Moder, was showing relief at having made it beyond the opening night performance. “That was the biggest hurdle,” he said. “She’s making it on her own, and she’s doing, I think, phenomenal work. I’m so proud.”

At the party, Roberts lit up at the sight of novelist-turning-screenwriter Michael ("The Hours") Cummingham and made a point of pulling her hubby over to meet him. “We’re working on a movie together,” Cunningham relayed later.”The title of the novel is `Good Grief,' but I think the movie may have a different title. Julia would play a young woman who loses her husband, journeys through the grieving process and comes back to life. I’ll submit the draft now that Julia has the show up on its feet and we can really explore it.”

The stress of such a high-profile Broadway opening was practically palpable, and even the Security had Security. The procession of celebrities befitted the Hollywood royalty in the center ring. Oprah Winfrey led the big parade, followed by a graying Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Mayor Bloomberg and Diana Taylor, Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Jerry Dixon and Mario Cantone (Boston’s only banned favorite son, heading home for his first concert there in 12 years), Elaine Stritch (in her white Stanley Steamer smock), James Gandolfini (who spent a “Sopranos” hiatus with Roberts and Brad Pitt playing a gay gangster in need of Tony Soprano-type therapy in "The Mexican"), Rocco DiSpirito, Matthew Bourne, Lynn Nottage, choreographer Wayne Cilento, Sam Rockwell, baseball giant Cal Ripken Jr., Claudia Shear, Amy Ryan, bandsman Dave Matthews (who used Roberts in his “Dreamgirl” video), Tovah Feldshuh (who will be apparently playing Hello, Dolly! at the Paper Mill Playhouse June 10-July 23 in a new key: “The key to Dolly is Dolly Gallagher Levi,” she declared); Norbert Leo Butz and Laura Benanti (who arrived late and not together from their respective shows, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Wedding Singer), Celia Weston (who co-starred in Rudd’s Broadway debut, The Last Night of Ballyhoo), Rosie Perez, director George C. Wolfe, Kristen Johnston (who’s playing Drew Barrymore’s sister—smart casting that, although Johnston says it’s a little Mutt-and-Jeff-y—in "Words and Music by...," currently before the cameras in New York), composer William Finn and, ominous-looking as ever, James Lipton.

Director Mantello had a raft of former co-workers in attendance. His lover and his wife from Angels in America—David Marshall Grant and Marcia Gay Harden—never quite got together for a Not-Together-Again photo-op, but they were in attendance. (Grant is hoping for Drama Desk/Outer Critics Circle award nominations for his Pen stars, Reed Birney and J. Smith-Cameron.) Mantello’s Love! Valour! Compassion! contingent included its Tony-winning author Terrence McNally (whose Some Men, a cavalcade of same-sex marriages, world-premiering May 12-June 11 at Philadelphia Theatre Company prior to a fall gig here at Second Stage) and John Benjamin Hickey (who just did an ABC pilot called “A House Divided,” a modern-day Civil War story which he lords over as President of the United States—and the native of Plano, TX wants it known that he is doing it without an accent or anything that would suggest “what we have now”). Numbering among his Wicked friends were the original Wizard (Joel Grey) and adapter Winnie Holzman, who leaves Monday with Mantello to cast their show in London, was on the arm of Mark Nelson (today an actor at Long Wharf in Underneath the Lentil, tomorrow a director—of Tina Howe’s Coastal Disturbances at the Berkshire Theatre Festival).

The critical dust has settled for Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, whose Based on a Totally True Story opened last week at Manhattan Theatre Club. “I knew it would be not everyone’s cup ot tea, but I’m so proud of this production, and I’m very pleased with the way it was received,” he said. Now, he and director Michael Bush have moved on to Good Boys and True, which will get a reading Monday night. The subject is, suddenly, topical: “It’s about a high school senior who’s on a prep-school football team and gets caught up on a scandal. His mother is trying to figure out if he was actually involved in this incident, and, if he was, why he would have been.” Victoria Clark and Peter Stadlen head the cast.

Those hordes of Hallejulia nuts dispersed after the curtain rose and returned the minute it came down, but the difficult-to-time intermission was fan-free, despite the stars conspiucously present. Elizabeth Ashley was looking forlornly across the street at Sam’s, which, like Barrymore’s before it, is set to shutter April 20. If you only knew the amount of my life that I spent there centuries ago, when it was Charley’s,” she sighed sadly.

Asked what her next career move would be, she said, “I’m waiting for this one to come up with what he wants my next thing to be.” By “this one,” she meant the man on her arm, pal/producer/publicist Jeffrey Richards, who put her in his Enchanted April and The Best Man and tried his dardest to put her in his next. Unfortunately, his next is The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, opening with an all-star, all-male cast May 7 at the Schoenfeld. A pity, because the addition of a Madame Queeg might have been a colorful extra.

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

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