By Harry Haun The day before The History Boys opened, the New York Public Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium filled to overflowing to hear Bennett read from "Untold Stories," his memoirs just published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The day after the play opened, he returned to the auditorium to introduce excerpts from his plays— Forty Years On, Kafka’s Dick, Single Spies, The Lady in the Van and The Madness of George III —directed by Jack O’Brien and performed by Eileen Atkins, Philip Bosco, Richard Easton, Christine Ebersole and Robert Sean Leonard. TV cameras had to be set up for the overflow.
Hytner, who helmed The Lady in the Van as well as Bennett’s adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s "The Wind in the Willows," had the unmistakable look of jubilation as he roamed the post-premiere party at Tavern on the Green. The firefly lighting became him.
“The four plays I’ve done with Alan are the best things I’ve ever done,” he declared with no small measure of joy, "and he is the best thing to happen in my professional life.”
24 Apr 2006
In this all-male environ, her character provides some pretty pungent gender-balancing all by herself, but feminism isn’t what the actress saw in the role. It was, in a word, “soul.”
Hisses, figurative and sometimes literal, roll right off Clive Merrison. He doesn’t see the headmaster as a heavy. “A lot of people think the headmaster has a very good point,” he pointed out. “In America, as in England, parents want results. I hope I speak his case well.”
He’s happy to make his Broadway beachhead with the Boys. “Frances and I did not do Sydney or Hong Kong because the tour would be too long for us. We’re 60 years old, and we’ve got children and dogs.” When it is noted Griffiths turns 59 in two months, Merrison said, “But he’s a great bear of an actor. There’s a very thin man in him trying to get out.
“These days, the exchange between American and English Equity is so much better. People say, ‘There’s an awful lot of Brits on Broadway.’ Well. there’s an awful lot of Americans on the West End. And that’s how it should be—although I have to say I think the theatre community is much friendlier than it is in England. American actors say, ‘What happened?’ Here the theatre community holds out the hand of friendship.”
Sacha Dhawan, Samuel Anderson, Dominic Cooper, Andrew Knott, Samuel Barnett, Russell Tovey, Jamie Parker and James Corden constitute The History Boys.
Cooper, who has the sexual immediacy of the very young Tony Curtis, seems the most conspicuous bet for surefire stardom, playing the main lothario-on-the-loose. There’s a scene late in the second act where he turns his ladykilling allure on one of his male teachers, and gays in the audiences break out into a cold sweat. “I’m glad to hear that,” Cooper cheerfully responds. The scene always appealed to me because it’s difficult to play without being arrogant. At the beginning, when we first starting rehearsing it, I found it quite difficult to get away from being manipulative and uncaring, but that’s not it at all. What he’s doing at the end is trying to get the guy to express himself as a person, as a human being, and it’s a more heartfelt thing. He’s the kind of kid in school you envied because he had everything. It was a challenge to play him without being showy or arrogant.”
Barnett, who plays a budding gay who is smitten with Cooper’s character, is a kingsize heartbreak as well—and gets to sing, full out, in an untrained voice several evergreens, including Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” He wasn’t receiving any compliments on his singing, however. “All I can tell you is that the singing has gotten better,” he admitted.
Disney Theatrical chief Thomas Schumacher arrived with his Tarzan in tow (Josh Strickland), that show’s music man, Phil Collins, and its designer-director, the fabulous Bob Crowley, who did the classroom sets for The History Boys. The entire cast of Faith Healer (Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid) made an united front, as were two-thirds of the Bermuda Avenue Triangle (Renee Taylor and Joe Bologna), who are planning to complete that Triangle with Lainie Kazan for a gig at the Brentwood in L.A.
Anne Kaufman Schneider was escorted by her dad’s “script doctor” (David Ives, who’s adapting the Pulitzer Prize-winner her father wrote with The Gershwins and Morrie Ryskind, Of Thee I Sing, for an Encores! encore May 11-15 at City Center). Lawrence Pressman, one of the Show People currently in residence at Second Stage, was fielding compliments and giving the author (Paul Weitz) full credit: “A friend of mine knows this writer’s work and said she thought he loves his characters. He can make fun of them because it’s all done out of affection.” Lee Wilkof, holding pat with his poker hand for another six weeks of The Odd Couple, said he has been working with a friend on a screenplay he hopes to direct: “It’s about the Equity Lounge in the Equity building. Actors do auditions there, hang out there at the beginning of their careers and at the end.”
A number of Brits about Broadway showed up as chauvinistic support (Awake and Sing!’s Zoe Wanamaker, Dirty Rotten Scoundrel’s Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins, who has inherited Jones’ Tony-winning role in Doubt). Other countrymen heard from: Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry, The Drowsy Chaperone’s Edward Hibbert (trilling/shilling for The History Boys with “New York is richer for this!”) and a slimmed-down Cameron Mackintosh (“Love of musical theatre keeps the pounds off.”).
The Brother Cerveris, Todd and Tony-winning Michael—the latter in flashy facsimile of prep-school attire—palled around the party. Mike Nichols didn’t enter the Tavern but gave a limolift to David Prete and Joe Roland, who co-starred in the Nichols-produced On the Line, which closed its short run at the Cherry Lane with the April 23 matinee. Kate Burton arrived with her skyscraper son, Morgan Ritchie, and said she was looking forward to starting rehearsals Tuesday on a new play—“a rarity for me” (Theresa Rebeck’s The Water’s Edge with Mamie Gummer and Tony Goldwyn at Second Stage June 14).
Also in attendance: Brian Dennehy, Candice Bergen, Spamalot’s Christopher Sieber (who’s doing the Kevin Kline role in the musical Soapdish that director Jason Moore and writer Robert Harling—both of the recent Steel Magnolias—are workshopping), Christine Andreas, Malcolm Gets, Rufus Wainwright, Cicely Tyson, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’s Tim Daly, designers Kate and Andy Spade, directors Doug Hughes and George C. Wolfe, playwrights Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and John Guare
The cast is starting to splinter right away. Titanic’s titanically talented Bill Buell takes over on Tuesday for Colin Haigh, who plays the smallish role of the TV director at the top of Act II, and doubles as understudy for Hector and the headmaster. Haigh came to open the show with as much original cast as possible.
Sarah Paulson, back from The Cherry Orchard in Los Angeles with Annette Bening, and Jane Krakowski, back from Guys and Dolls in London with Ewan McGregor, both snared TV pilots. Paulson co-starred with Matthew Perry in “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” for NBC; Krawkowski co-starred with James Van Der Beek in “Sex, Power, Love and Politics” for CBS. But both long for the stage. “If I could only do theatre and pay my rent,” said Krakowski, “I would be so happy. I love the theatre world so much I don’t want to do anything else but.”
Barbara Walters, prowling the Tavern with a distinguished-looking escort like a stately flamingo, flicked off her findings of the evening with commendable directness:. “I thought it simply wonderful. It’s the biggest hit of the season.” Hard to argue with that.
