“Hello, Cousin,” exclaimed Daniel Craig, extending the right hand of fellowship to his “Americanized” cousin, the equally British-born actor, Simon Jones, when the latter bopped by after A Steady Rain Nov. 25 with his wife, Nancy, and son, Tim.
This hands-across-the-Green Room, backstage at the Schoenfeld, marked the first time the two Englishmen ever connected, and it was achieved easily with only one degree of separation: Geoffrey Polischuk, who had been Rupert Everett’s dresser in Jones’ last Broadway outing, Blithe Spirit, is currently Hugh Jackman’s dresser for A Steady Rain, so, said Jones, “I asked him to find out if Daniel would be interested in meeting. Turns out, Daniel had, in fact, heard of me and did know who I was and said he would be happy to see me, so we got tickets on Wednesday and, as soon as they’d sold their sweaty T-shirts [for a BC/EFA fundraiser], we went around to see them, and we had a little family chat. It was nice to linger. I sent him a family photo of his great-grandparents, who are my grandparents.”
You can bet Jim Dale was one of the first in line for Nightingale, Lynn Redgrave’s one-woman my-granny-and-me show at Manhattan Theatre Club’s City Center Stage I. “I loved every minute of it,” he cheered, “a very specialized evening.”
They were Oscar-losers together — she as Best Actress for “Georgy Girl,” he as lyricist for the title song (”Hey there, Georgy Girl…”) — “and we’ve been friends ever since.” They frequently cross paths walking their dogs in Central Park.
“I met Lynn at the Academy Awards in 1967,” he recalled recently. “Funny thing about that evening — I still remember it — we had just lost, and Bob Hope, who was hosting the show, said, ‘The winners will now go on to the Hilton to celebrate, and the losers will follow me up the down ramp of the Los Angeles Freeway.’ That’s just the way you feel when you lose an Academy Award. Once your name’s not mentioned, you feel like saying, ‘Can we stop? Can we pick it up from where we were coming down the aisle? Let’s do Take Two. It’ll be different this time.’”
The true greenhorn among the White Christmas troupers who've taken over the Marquis again this year (through Jan. 3) is Melissa Errico, who, in the Rosemary Clooney slot, makes her first Broadway appearance since 2004's Dracula: The Musical. Motherhood, it seems, got happily in the way.
“It’s a real balancing act for me, mentally,” she admitted. “I have ten-month twins at home, I drop one kid off at pre-school, so I have a lot going on in a whole picture. But to actually be in a play again, to be back in the rehearsal room, feels good to me.”
She’s using this limited 64-performance run as sort of “trainer wheels” to negotiate any future conflicts that come up between professional and domestic commitments.
“I’ve been invited by [director-designer] Tony Walton to do Candida at the Irish Rep, and I would very much like to do that. I want to see how it feels not putting the babies to bed every night. Children are a lot about bedtime. And so, to not be able to go home when they’re this little — I want to see how all this feels.
“This is my training to see what I can, in my heart, bear to do. I love theatre, and I will keep doing it, if I’m blessed enough to still be wanted, but I have to take stock of that because being mother, right now, is my most important role.”
Errico shared more thoughts on her return to the stage, and her role as mom, with Andrew Gans for his Nov. 27 Diva Talk column.
Just in time to trim the tree, the creators of the Fox musical series have released the holiday single “Last Christmas” on iTunes.
The cast, led by Lea Michele, performs the song, which was originally recorded by the pop group Wham! The single, it should be noted, is not scheduled to appear in the Dec. 9 season finale of “Glee.” The series will return April 13, 2010.
“Last Christmas” is a bonus track that is being issued separately from “Glee: The Music Volume 2,” which is scheduled to drop Dec. 8. “Glee: The Music Volume 1″ is now in stores.
Director Ken Russ Schmoll, who helmed Ann Marie Healy’s new LCT3 play, What Once We Felt, has signed up for the U.S. premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s new opera, Proserpina at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston in May.
But, first, he’s planning to helm a play for 13P, the downtown playwriting organization. It’s a two-hander by Madeleine George about a lesbian couple, called The Zero Hour. It’s not to be confused with the Zero Hour at Theatre at Saint Clement’s (Jim Brochu’s one-man show on Zero Mostel) or the “Zero Hour!” that Arthur (”Airport”) Hailey wrote for TV and movies (ptomaine poisoning knocks out the cockpit of a commercial airliner, forcing war-torn passenger Dana Andrews back to the controls — ah, the good old days when airlines still served meals!).
As would have been expected, the Thanksgiving Eve airing of “Glee” took a tumble in overnight ratings, with the FOX dramedy posting its lowest-ever numbers for an original episode.
The evening before turkey day is typically low-rated, and networks eschew airing first-run programming as a result. FOX forged ahead with an original episode of “Glee,” however, and the Nov. 25 airing garnered only 6.08 million viewers (down 17 percent from the previous week) and a 2.5 rating in the 18-49 adult demographic (down 22 percent), according to TVByTheNumbers.com.
Given the popularity of “Glee” among the DVR set, the overnight numbers are likely a temporary setback as Gleeks catch up on the episode via DVR, iTunes, and Hulu in coming days.
The national touring company of The Color Purple has raised over $300,000 to put New Orleans families back into their homes after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Crescent City in 2005.
Beginning in September, The Color Purple touring cast began raising funds which have been used by the St. Bernard Project to begin rebuilding homes for 20 families who have been displaced since the disaster. The good news comes as The Color Purple begins its engagement at New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson Theatre, marking the first Broadway tour to play the venue since it was shuttered in the aftermath of Katrina.
The families who will benefit from The Color Purple’s fundraising efforts will be invited to attend the New Orleans opening night of the Tony-nominated musical based on the Alice Walker novel.
The Yale Repertory Theatre is offering a sneak peek at the new Andy Warhol musical POP!, which began performances in New Haven Nov. 27.
Randy Harrison, known for his roles on “Queer as Folk” and Broadway’s Wicked, stars as the late pop artist in the new musical, which features book and lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman and music by Anna K. Jacobs. Mark Brokaw directs.
The following clip of rehearsal footage features the cast of POP! including Leslie Kritzer (A Catered Affair, Rooms, Funny Girl), Brian Charles Rooney (Allies, Bedbugs!!!, Threepenny Opera), Doug Kreeger (Rooms, The Visit, Thrill Me), Cristen Paige (How Now, Dow Jones, The Visit), Danny Binstock and Emily Swallow (High Fidelity, Romantic Poetry).
Based on first-day sales reports, the solo debut album from “Britain’s Got Talent” runner-up Susan Boyle is shaping up to be a huge seller, according to Billboard magazine.
The CD from the 48-year-old Scottish singer is on track to sell at least 550,000 units, though if retailers can keep the recording in stock, sales could go even higher, allowing Boyle to challenge Eminem’s “The Relapse” for the title of top debut week of 2009.
Boyle’s CD, titled “I Dreamed a Dream,” includes the iconic song from Les Miserables, as well as standards such as “Cry Me a River” and “Wild Horses.”
Another singer unheard of a year ago but predicted to have a smash sales debut is Adam Lambert, whose CD “For Your Entertainment” was also released Nov. 23. The former musical theatre performer, who shot to fame as the runner up to this year’s edition of “American Idol” is expected to sell about 225,000 units of his CD.
Official sales numbers will be released on Wednesday.
Compulsion was the name of Meyer Levin’s 1956 novel and 1957 play, which was suggested by the Leopold and Loeb thrill-killing case. Now, it is the title of a new play by Rinne Groff, and the topic is Levin himself.
Levin, who brought the existence of Anne Frank’s diary to public attention and battled the rest of his life to bring it farther — into a play and film. (Instead, the husband-and-wife writing team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich won the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for the play and did the screenplay.)
“He even wound up suing Otto Frank,” noted Mandy Patinkin, who will play the Levin-like character when the play premieres Jan. 29 at Yale Repertory Theatre.
The Public’s Oskar Eustis, who is directing and co-producing the play with Berkeley Rep, said it will then play Berkeley and he will bring it home to The Public after that.
