Back in February, my Big Hollywood colleague and super-funny-dude Tim Slagle wrote a series of posts on the Broadway musical “Avenue Q”.  The show was going through a mini-crisis/publicity stunt because one of the big punch lines to the song “For Now” was no longer valid:

A song called “For Now” has the puppets reassure each other that most things in life are temporary, like hair and sex. Until recently, one of those temporary things was “George Bush.” Knowing that Obama was to be shortly inaugurated, the producers and writers were perplexed for a replacement. I know it should be obvious to everyone else, but Broadway producers don’t think like you and I. So they threw a contest to decide a better verse.

Two weeks later, Slagle followed up with the big announcement of the new lyric:

So what did they decide to use? The winning lyric is: ”George Bush WAS only for now.”  Brilliant. I guess like “South Pacific” and “Bye-Bye Birdie,” some vintage musical theater is better when presented in the time frame that it was originally written. “Avenue Q” will now be forever remembered as a Bush-era production, although the impact has noticeably waned. ”We now know that although George Bush’s presidency was only for now,” show creator, Robert Lopez noted, ”the comic potential of ‘George Bush’ seems like it may last forever.”

Not so fast. This week, “Avenue Q” did something that Broadway shows rarely do.  They closed their production and re-located to an Off-Broadway house.  During the process of re-opening the show in a smaller venue, the writers took the time to really give some thought to the “George Bush WAS for now” lyric and they have finally found their perfect replacement.

It seems that the real purpose of this line is not to get a huge laugh.  No, it seems that the real purpose is to find the worst possible, evil, racist, homo-phobic, war-mongering, lying, right-wing boogie man and insert their name into the lyric to ridicule and diminish them.  Circa 2004 that person was President Bush. Today, the only person that fits that description is, well, not really a person at all.  You see, the writers of “Avenue Q” have apparently been paying very close attention to the White House’s latest full-court press against… the press!  The new lyric is:

“Fox News is only for now.”

I’m waiting for you to stop the hysterical laughter and applause at this brilliant, Sondheim-like lyric.

Fox News, the highest rated news outlet for over a decade.  Fox News, the network whose 3 AM show out-ranks CNN’s prime time fare.   Fox News is only “for now.” But “Avenue Q” is forever.  Uh, huh.  I expect that Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly will be reporting on the tenth anniversary of “Avenue Q”’s closing.

Let’s face it folks, after having to close its Tony Award-winning production on Broadway, revamping the financial structure of the show, begging the actors’ union to allow them to reduce the performers’ salaries (which the spineless union allowed) and moving to a theatre half the size of the tiny little Golden which housed the show for the last five years, I think it is clear that “Avenue Q” is only for now…. BARELY!

The play received quite positive reviews.  Here are some interesting things I read in the reviews…

In Elysa Gardner’s positive review in USA Today, she refers to the contrasting times in which the play is now produced versus the original production:

When David Mamet’s Oleanna premiered in 1992, it was widely perceived as a response to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in which Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by former assistant Anita Hill.  It has been 18 years since that real-life drama played out. But as the very different controversy now surrounding David Letterman reminds us, the debate over what constitutes an abuse of power between a male authority figure and a female subordinate isn’t going away.

I find it interesting that the Hill/Thomas debate is compared to the Letterman story.  Was Clarence Thomas ever accused by Anita Hill of anything even remotely close to what Letterman has ADMITTED to?  I don’t think there is a debate about “what constitutes an abuse of power between a male authority figure and a female subordinate” with regard to Letterman, do you?  Does Letterman?  Does anyone?

Later, Gardner properly hits the nail on the head:

Mamet, after all, seems less interested in condemning women or men than exploring the complicated dynamics between them, made no simpler by such modern inventions as academic equality and political correctness.

Brava, Elysa.

Meanwhile, unlike Gardner, the NY Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli doesn’t see ANY topical issues reflected in “Oleanna” and she uses the occasion of this play’s opening to put Mr. Mamet on the couch a la Sigmund Freud:

But watching the play 17 years later is like watching something made during the Red Scare of the ’50s. “Oleanna” speaks volumes not only about an era dominated by the shared paranoia of conservatives and lefty activists, but also about its creator’s id. And what surged from Mamet’s brain is the closest Broadway now has to a slasher movie.

In Ben Brantley’s all-powerful NY Times review, further mind reading of Mr. Mamet occurs: [emphasis added]

What’s so infernally ingenious about “Oleanna” is that as its characters vivisect what we have just witnessed, we become less and less sure of what we saw. Anyway, that’s what occurs in performance — or should.  Think about it afterward, or read the script, and you’ll realize that the sympathies of Mr. Mamet, a man’s man among playwrights, are definitely with John, however flawed he may be. It also becomes clear that Carol, as a character, is full of holes, most conspicuously in the way she uses words.

John Simon wisely avoids any direct criticism of Mr. Mamet (Mamet effectively castrated Simon in print last year thus rendering the critic incapable of objectively musing on the playwright’s talent), and he also differs with Ben Brantley’s suggestion that the play is skewered in the man’s direction:

The entire play is a clever enough piece of equivocation, allowing viewers to approve or reprehend either character according to their notions of feminism and sexism. The writing clearly and deliberately aims at provocation, at which it succeeds rather better than at credibility.

David Sheward in Backstage takes a different approach.  In honoring this production, he decides to slam the original, Mamet-directed version:

Under Mamet’s direction, Rebecca Pidgeon (the playwright’s wife) played the co-ed as a vacuous fool obviously manipulated by an offstage group of evil feminists into ruining the life of the nice-guy prof played by sweet, teddy-bearish W.H. Macy. Many saw the powerful one-act as a backlash against the excesses of political correctness and the women’s movement. In Doug Hughes’ reconsidered staging (now on Broadway after a run in Los Angeles), with a pair of powerhouse performances by Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman, the terms of combat are more equal and the outcome more ambiguous.

And over at Talkin’ Broadway, Matthew Murray is not a fan of this production at all, but unlike his counter-parts, he does not take this as an opportunity to personally slam, label or psycho-analyze the playwright.  On the contrary, he actually compliments him and the play:

The beautiful thing about Mamet’s incomparably incendiary play, however, is that it inspires fervent disagreement about which character represents what – stories of post-performance shouting matches and even fistfights have dogged the show for years.

But the prize for assault by play review has to go to David Rooney in Variety.  Here are a few choice quotes:

…Mamet stacks the deck too heavily in favor of the former to make the drama a fair contest — or to escape the charges of misogyny that have long dogged this play.

…Carol is possibly the most complex female role created by Mamet, a writer whose women are more often ciphers than believably fleshed-out characters.

…Hughes’ sleek production is psychologically needling and uncomfortable to watch in a way that surely honors Mamet’s intentions

…Designer Neil Patel amplifies the abrasive nature of the material

…But while Pullman makes John’s undoing a harrowing spectacle, the sheer acrimony of Mamet’s stance against Carol blunts the confrontation.

In case you’re having trouble reading the hidden message in Rooney’s review, let me help you out:  Mamet hates women. (He is a conservative, after all.)

More reviews are sure to trickle in as the week goes on, and If I find anything particularly obnoxious, I’ll bring them to your attention.  In the meantime, as the show is a limited engagement, do yourself a favor and see it if you are in New York.

“I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.” – David Mamet

As I discussed in my very first post here at Big Hollywood, many in the theatre world were surprised to read David Mamet’s amazing article, “Why I am No Longer A Brain-Dead Liberal” in the Village Voice.  In my post, I used the play “Oleanna” as an example of a conservative lean that I recognized in Mamet’s work when it premiered off-Broadway in 1992.  I concluded with a couple of questions:

The real test will be when Mamet offers a new work for public consumption.  Will it be viewed through a new spectrum?  Will critics recognize Mamet’s un-deniable brilliance?  Or, will a hidden meaning be searched for in every scene and in every rapid-fire dialogue sequence?

It turns out we won’t have to wait long for an answer.  Our current Broadway season will feature two major productions from Mr. Mamet, and both deal with the most controversial political issues of our time:  Race and Gender.

This week, the Mark Taper Forum’s revival of the aforementioned “Oleanna” will open on Broadway.  ”Oleanna” was universally hailed when presented in the wake of the Clarence Thomas hearings.  Many of the critics praised Mamet for being so even-handed in its presentation that it was hard for people to really know if the accused man was truly guilty of sexual harassment.  Now that Mamet has “outed” himself, will they still see “Oleanna” and Mamet as “even-handed?”

Later this winter will see the opening of the brilliantly and economically titled:  ”Race” directed by Mamet, himself.  Precious few details have been leaked about the plot other than a quick description in Mr. Mamet’s recent, must-read NY Times op-ed:

In my play a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman. It is a play about lies.

How will “Race” be received in the Era of Obama with the knowledge that Mamet is no longer a “brain-dead liberal”?

I plan to use my space here at Big Hollywood to let you know.  I will be providing a run-down of the critics’ reactions to these plays and any direct, personal attacks on Mr. Mamet and/or his politics.

In the true tradition of Broadway, I can provide you a “preview.” The Atlantic Theatre Company just opened two Mamet one-acts under the single title:  “Two Unrelated Plays” by David Mamet.   There is a very useful website called “Critic-O-Meter” which compiles all of the reviews for plays that open in New York.  I use the site often as a resource.  The proprietors of the site provide a quick synopsis of the reviews before linking to each, individual one.  In its synopsis of the Mamet one-acts, the site provided this helpful information:

Despite writing some bona-fide classics, David Mamet hasn’t written a good play since The Cryptogram, devoting most of his time to creating a third-rate 24, excoriating Jews who aren’t into ethnic cleansing as self-hating and– in his essays in the Times and the Voice– doing his borscht-belt imitation of Ann Coulter’s schtick. Ah well, he has a banner season ahead of him anyway, including a revival of Oleanna (the first step in his artistic downfall) and a new play called Race, both of which open on Broadway this season.

Mr. Mamet:  Welcome to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

This day makes me pissed off.

And I’m not just pissed at the terrorists.  I’m pissed at the panty-waist theatre community I am a member of.

Case in point:  ”One of the first plays about Muslim life in the United States debuts in a time and place fraught with symbolism: Sept. 11th, in New York City.”

The two-act play which the playwright likens to a Muslim-American “Death of a Salesman” opens tonight at the Nuyorkian Poets Cafe, about 2 miles from ground zero.

I have a thought:  Could we maybe have one or two plays written about our heroic soldiers or the brave first-responders, or a human drama about the devestation the families of victims of 9/11 have had to endure BEFORE we have a play about the struggles of Muslim life in the United States?

The play is called “The Domestic Crusaders” and its web page describes the play in this way:

With a background of 9-11 and the scapegoating of Muslim Americans, the tensions and sparks fly among the three generations, culminating in an intense family battle as each “crusader” struggles to assert and impose their respective voices and opinions, while still attempting to maintain and understand that unifying thread that makes them part of the same family.

According to the MSNBC article, playwright Wajahat Ali was heavily influenced by the 9/11 attacks:

When the World Trade Center towers fell, Ali was the head of the Muslim Student Association at the University of California, Berkeley. As the son of a Pakistani immigrant family who “never hid my Muslim identity,” Ali says the tragedy came to define his college years.

He devoted 70-80 percent of his time to activism — organizing Jumaa prayers outdoors on campus, distributing flyers, inviting students to discussion panels — in a relentless effort to fight what he considered misinformation about Islam.

Apparently, Ali has had trouble getting his play produced.  The reason?

“I think it was because the hysteria, the fear, that kind of represented the voice of the Bush administration were still lingering,” Ali says. “Even Dixie Chicks, the whitest women in America, who loved Jesus and the Apocalypse, were branded as traitors…. here I am, with a multi-syllabic Arabic name. I am sure people freaked out.”

But now Ali’s play will premiere tonight, on 9/11, in New York City.  Ali says: “Right now, it’s 2009. It’s kind of a different atmosphere.”

Yeah, it sure is.  And that’s another reason why I’m pissed off.

I bet that headline got your attention!  But, as you’ll see a little later in this post, the scene in question is not really a “rape” at all.  But that didn’t keep the NY Daily News from running this headline yesterday:

‘Bye Bye Birdie’ revival on Broadway drops scene for ‘gang rape’ concern

“Just a copy editor trying to get attention by over-exaggerating a story,” you think?  That’s what I thought, too.  But here is the story with Gina Gershon’s quote:

According to Gina Gershon, who stars as Rose in the upcoming revival, the production has said bye bye to a frisky dance sequence that has been in the show since its debut in 1960.  In the scene, Rose, originated on stage by Chita Rivera and on film by Janet Leigh, crashes a Shriners banquet, flirts and cavorts on, around and underneath a table with the fez-heads.  As written, it’s a funny dance showcase. So why is it too hot to handle in 2009? Gershon told The News’ theater critic Joe Dziemianowicz, “It seemed a little too gang rape-y.”

The Daily News takes the words right out of my mouth when it says:

That should come as interesting news to countless high schools, parochial academies and theater camps where this number has been performed for nearly 50 years.

Before I give you my guess as to what is really going on here, I will let you judge for yourself.  Here is Chita Rivera performing Gower Champion’s original Broadway choreography:

It’s not my favorite scene from a 60’s musical, but I don’t think it could be objectively described as a “Gang Rape”… unless you mean that the character of Rose is raping the gang of Shriners!!!

So, what is this REALLY all about?  Here is my hunch:

Whenever a Hollywood star is cast to do a Broadway musical, the first question everyone asks is:  ”Can he/she sing?”  In the cases of Glenn Close and Hugh Jackman, the answer was “YES!”  In the case of Faye Dunaway, the answer was “Oh God, NO!”

But, in the case of Rose in “Bye, Bye Birdie,” the relevant question is not whether Gershon can sing, because Rose’s songs are not very challenging… no, what defines the role of Rose is following in the footsteps of Chita Rivera and living up to the distant memory of her dancing.  Rivera is a Broadway legend who enjoys a reputation of holding an audience captivated with her body and how she moved it.  So, the big question in relation to Gershon being announced as Rose in this revival was not “Can she sing?”; it was “Can she dance?”

Now, I try my best not to be too snarky or catty in my posts.  And I’ve already noted this revival as something I am personally looking forward to…  but, based on this little kerfuffle over cutting this dance sequence and the really lame excuse (”gang rape-y”?  come on!), I think it is fair to say that the answer is, “No, she can’t dance.. at least not well enough to hold the stage for a dance sequence like this.”

As we’ve all seen on “Dancing With the Stars,” if you are paired with a great dancer, you can learn enough and practice enough to be a good enough partner to look like you can dance.  But when you are alone on stage dancing without a partner as Rose is in this number… well, that is something you can’t fake.  And to me, this sounds like a good director and a good choreographer protecting their star and coming up with a press agent’s excuse for cutting a number.

Further evidence of this?  The show is set to begin previews on September 15.  This means the show has been in rehearsal for a couple of weeks.  If the producers and director of this show wanted to cut this number for the reason they are stating now, the decision would have been made a while ago.  You have to believe that they tried it out, and it wasn’t working.  (Unless you believe that they only now have realized that the scene is “Gang Rape-y” after spending the time creating the scene, rehearsing the scene, costuming the scene… etc…)

By the way, revivals have recently been subject to political correct revisions.  The most common is the song “I’m an Indian Too” being excised from Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun.”  The Native American community (how PC am I???) have found these lyrics from the 1946 play offensive:

Like the Chippewa,
Iroquois,
Omaha…
Like those Indians
I’m an Indian too
A Sioux
A Sioux

Just like Rising Moon
Falling Pants
Running Nose
Like those Indians
I’m an Indian too
A Sioux
A Sioux

Some Indian drummers they’re without a care
I may run away
With Big Chief Sun-of-A-Bear

And I’ll have totem poles
Tomahawk
Small papoose
Which will go to prove
I’m an Indian too
A sioux
A sioux
A sioux
Oh, I’m an indian
I’m an Indian
I’m an honest Injun Indian

I’m an Indian, too.

What has always bugged me about this song being removed is the CONTEXT of the song in the show (context still means SOMETHING, doesn’t it?).  Annie sings it right after Chief Sitting Bull adopts her into the Sioux tribe.  She is honored, proud and happy to be adopted.

Here is rare footage of Mary Martin in the original 1946 production:

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Now, obviously this scene is not meant as a historically accurate depiction of a traditional Sioux ceremony, but is it mean-spirited, insulting, derisive?  Not in my politically incorrect opinion.

So, I guess I’m saying…  Gina, if you can dance it, BRING ON THE GANG RAPE SCENE!

Stage Right is on Facebook.

Just as last season brought a record number of plays as well as stellar gross sales (despite doom-sayers in the industry) this season already looks locked and loaded with a huge number of shows scheduled to open between October 1st and the first week of May (the traditional Tony nomination cut-off).  So to help the readers of Big Hollywood plan their trip to the Great White Way (we can still say that, can’t we?), I submit the top 10 things to look for from the center/right perspective:

10.  ”Superior Donuts” – A transfer from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre (one of my personal favorite regional houses in America), the play stars “Spinal Tap”’s Michael McKean as an aging hippie who owns a donut shop in a largely black neighborhood and Jon Michael Hill (do all young Broadway actors HAVE to go by three names now?) as a 21-year-old from the neighborhood who talks his way into a job at the shop.  From the New York Times review:  ”In one of the play’s most amusing exchanges Franco challenges Arthur to name 10 black poets. Arthur names a few, then stands dumb, a look of deep concentration on his face. “It’s like watching George Bush on ‘Jeopardy!’ ” Franco cracks.”

9.  ”Hamlet” – Uber-UN activist Jude Law stars as the Danish prince in a Broadway transfer from London’s famed Donmar Warehouse theatre company.  His performance was almost universally praised by Fleet Street’s snarky critics.  This production has Hamlet delivering his “To be, or not to be” soliloquy in an on-stage snowfall.

8.  ”Bye, Bye, Birdie” – One of the first musicals to embrace pop music with a back-beat, “Bye, Bye, Birdie” will receive a revival at New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company.  It will star Gina Gershon, Dee Hoty, Bill Irwin and (wait for it….) John Stamos.  All I can say is this production has the potential to be fantastic, or to be a complete disaster… don’t expect anything in between.

7.  ”The Neil Simon Plays:  Brighton Beach Memoirs & Broadway Bound” – Revivals of two of the three plays which made up the Neil Simon “BB” trilogy will play in repertory this Fall (I’m guessing the middle play, “Biloxi Blues,” is omitted because Brighton Beach and Broadway Bound share the exact same set which is the Brighton Beach home of Simon’s alter-ego, Eugene, so it is much easier to play them in Rep.  Biloxi takes place in an Army barracks as it follow Eugene through basic training).  The revivals will star Laurie Metcalf.

6.  ”In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play)” – After having its world premiere at Berkley Rep., this play is transferring to Broadway via Lincoln Center Theatre.  The New York Times describes the play as:  “A fanciful but compassionate consideration of the treatment, and the mistreatment, of women in the late 19th century” and the show’s website calls it “a comedy about marriage, intimacy and electricity.” Hmmm…  In the words of Forrest Gump:  ”And that’s all I have to say about that.”

5.  ”Race” – World Premiere of David Mamet’s newest play starring James Spader, Kerry Washington and Richard Thomas.  When asked about details of the plot, producer Jefferey Richards said:  ”The title speaks for itself.”  Mamet, Spader and a play called “Race.”  Seriously, ENOUGH SAID!

4.  ”A Steady Rain” – Starring Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman, this play is one of the most anticipated of the Fall.  A press report describes the Chicago premiere as: “A Steady Rain chronicles love and rage on the streets of Chicago as a domestic disturbance call sends two Chicago cops, friends since childhood, on a harrowing journey that will test their loyalties and change their lives forever.” But, as the NY Post succinctly said: “Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman in police uniforms? All the boys will be there!”

3.  ”The Addams Family” – A musical adaptation of the famous, macabre characters starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwerth.  I am both embarrassed and proud that I am SO looking forward to this show!

2.  ”The Royal Family“  – George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s famous parody of the Barrymore family, this revival will star Rosemary Harris, Stephen Collins, John Glover, Tony Roberts, Jan Maxwell, Ana Gasteyer and Reg Rogers.  Its view of celebrity and privilege in the tunnel-vision perspective of an actor’s life resonates just as perfectly today as it did in 1927.  Really looking forward to see this cast play those characters (especially since I went to school with one of them!).

1.  ”Oleanna” – The Broadway premiere of Mamet’s 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play (it appeared off-Broadway at that time making this production it’s Broadway premiere).  When originally produced, this play was a compelling, challenging and electrifying reflection of the ground-breaking Clarence Thomas hearing that had split the nation the year before.  The 1992 production starring William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon was universally praised for its thought-provoking approach to the issue of sexual harassment and the use of rhetoric as a weapon in politically correct America.  None other than Frank Rich gave it one of his strongest endorsements as theatre critic of the New York Times.  But, a funny thing happened between 1992 and today, David Mamet famously proclaimed himself “No longer a brain-dead liberal.”  Will this breach of liberal dogma and orthodoxy in any way affect the theatre community’s once universal praise of “Oleanna”?  I know I will be looking very closely at how it is received by the critics as well as industry insiders.  This new revival premiered in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles.

Stage Right is on Facebook.

“Reagan” is a one-man play that doesn’t portray the 40th president as a fascist. It’s by Lionel Chetwynd, whose scripts for television and film include “The Hanoi Hilton,” “Color of Justice,” “Kissinger and Nixon” and “DC 9/11: Time of Crisis.” ….  Chetwynd declined to comment on “Reagan,” except to say with a laugh, “It will change lives and the course of history.” A copy of an early script portrays Reagan as thoughtful, determined, sly (when necessary) and winning. Talking to the audience from the main room of his California ranch, Reagan explains his journey from FDR Democrat to conservative Republican. Along the way, he offers a spirited defense of conservative principles. At least three top directors have passed on the play because, says a source, “They can’t stand Ronald Reagan.”

The other play cited is “Girls in Trouble (Formerly Three Abortions)” by Jonathan Reynolds.

In “Girls in Trouble,” Reynolds presents a balanced view of pro-lifers while taking some swipes at the NPR crowd. The play ends with a harrowing confrontation between two women — one pro-life, the other pro-choice — that’s not for the squeamish. “Thus far, its claim to fame is that it’s been turned down by all the theaters in New York,” Reynolds says of his play. “It was commissioned by the Long Wharf, but they wouldn’t put it on. There was a theater in the suburbs of Washington, DC, that said they wanted to present the ‘other side’ of the abortion debate. But when they read it, they said it would “infuriate our audience.” Oskar Eustis, the head of the Public Theater, told Reynolds that his staff “didn’t go for it,” but that he would take a look at it himself.

Forgive me for not jumping up and doing a victory dance quite yet… It has always seemed a no-brainer to me that a positive telling of the Ronald Reagan story would be a hugely popular hit.  Not only is his story compelling, inspiring and quintessentially American, but he was and continues to be incredibly popular.  The drama contained within the pages of Peggy Noonan’s “When Character Was King” screams for a stage adaptation.  I hope Chetwynd’s work does Duke justice… the fact that many directors have turned down the piece is a sign that it does.

But, to me the real story in this article is less about the plays that are being shopped as it is a story about the doors that are shut to plays that have this kind of content.  My favorite passage is Oskar Eustis at the fledgling Public Theater.  The staff of the Public “didn’t go for it.”  Hm.  The staff of the Public has succeeded in running the once thriving non-profit to the brink of bankruptcy in recent years.  Maybe we, the theatre-going public don’t go for your staff, Mr. Eustis.  And what a weak-kneed response, too.  Can anyone imagine the original founder of The Public Theater… that titan of New York non-profit theatre Joe Papp, saying that his organization would not produce a play because “his staff didn’t go for it”?  No, Papp would be a man and take the responsibility himself.

I think it would be instructive to take a look at what Eustis’ staff DID “go for” in the 2008 and 2009 seasons.  Perusing their website you will see that these seasons’ plays are chuck full of diversity.  You can’t GET any more diverse than the Public Theater right now.  Black, White, Native American, straight, gay, male, female, Latino, Asian… diversity, thy name is Eustis.  So, what is missing?  How about diversity of THOUGHT AND OPINION?

The diversity that is being celebrated at the Public Theater is the laziest kind of diversity.  Diversity of appearance.  Big deal.  It’s like Eustis is at a dinner party and he makes himself feel good by saying “Some of my best plays are black.”  I thought the over-educated, uber-intellectual, non-profit theatre staffs were a little more interested in being challenged with new ideas.  I thought they are in favor of “speaking truth to power.”  I thought maybe the staffs at non-profit theatres, fresh from Yale Drama School and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, were originally drawn to the non-profit theatre world so through their art they could give voice to the voiceless and speak for those who do not have an outlet to speak for themselves.  Instead, Mr. Eustis’ staff give us “Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them” and “The Good Negro.”  Yes staff, those plays will truly be intellectually challenging to your well-educated, upper-class, liberal, New York audience.  Truth to power, my brothers and sisters!  Pat yourselves on the backs; you should be so proud.

Is it cool that there are a couple of playwrights getting attention for shopping conservative-themed plays in New York?  Yes.  Is it really cool that the New York Post wrote an article which pretty much ridicules the New York intelligencia for not having enough room in their club for even one play every few years that doesn’t preach to the secular choir?  Yes.  Is it enough that these plays have been written and are talked about even if they never get produced?  Hell no.  Let’s not let this story end here.  Apply the pressure to Mr. Eustis and his staff now.  If there is room in the budget for “Tales of an Urban Indian” then there should be room for a positive play about Reagan or a play which dares to suggest that maybe abortion is wrong.

Somewhere, out in the wilderness, on the pages of Big Hollywood, there was a lone voice of reason.  A pragmatic and practical man laying out the facts for you, the ever-interested and conservative reader.  That man, one Stage Right, was shrewd enough to label the producers as “panty-waste industry folk” and explained that their propensity to panic and pull the emergency brake is partly attributed to their liberal tendencies.

Your average liberal hears a statistic like “46 million without health insurance” and they pull the panic cord.  The next logical step, rather than looking at WHY those people don’t have insurance, is to force a mediocre, government planned health care bureaucracy down everyone’s throat (even the 260 million of us who DO have insurance) because it is a CRISIS!

In my post in January, I calmly showed the schedule of future bookings planned in the run up to the Tony Awards and I pointed out that nearly every house would be occupied by the end of the season.  Furthermore, I pointed out that you don’t judge the health of the theatre industry based on the shows that are closing, you judge it based on the planned shows in the future.  And based on that criteria, the 2008-2009 season was looking to be one of the best.

Now, Variety has come around to vindicate your favorite commercial theatre blogger:

During the 2008-09 season, productions logged a cumulative sales tally of $943.3 million, breaking the record held by the 2006-07 season — and managing to do so during the most unsettling fiscal downturn in decades.  Restaurants may be closing, European vacations are being cancelled, alimony payments may be late, and prestigious private schools are losing students. But for various reasons, folks are still turning out for theater.  After a turbulent fall and a particularly worrying winter that saw the shuttering of more than a dozen shows, the season snowballed to 43 new productions, the highest count for a single season since 50 shows launched in 1982-83. (Thirty-six shows opened during the 2007-08 season.)

As I pointed out, Broadway is populated by a bunch of victim-mentality whiners who love to see themselves as the ugly step-cousin of the beautiful and rich Hollywood Industry.  Many of the folks who tend to find themselves working in theatre as a career are often the types who wallow in self-pity and who don’t see the glass as half-full… they see the glass as being way too big in the first place!

I have longed for a time when our industry stopped seeing itself as something that required subsidies and our art as something that is entertaining and wonderful rather than some sort of medicine that your are SUPPOSED to like.  Theatre remains mysterious and inaccessible because many of the folks who run the show like it that way… it makes them feel intelligent, different and special.

Luckily, there are still some grown-ups in the room.  The Variety article ends with a quote from Philip Smith, Chairman of the Shubert Organization.  Smith is a pro’s pro who has literally seen it all.  The coda from Mr. Smith:

“Things look no different than they have in the past,” says Philip J. Smith, co-topper of Broadway landlord the Shubert Org. “Of course, when winter sets in, it may dry up, but right now I don’t see how it could happen.”

Than you, Mr. Smith.  It’s true everyone, the sky is NOT falling.  Come to Broadway and see a show!

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During a recent interview on my radio program “The Andrea Shea King Show”, Hollywood conservative Burt Boyar, longtime friend and biographer of the late great Sammy Davis, Jr., said he’s concerned that the true story about the talented entertainer who fought and broke through racial barriers will never be seen on the silver screen. Two years ago, Boyar had negotiated a deal to sell his two biographies to filmmakers who were all set to tell the story on celluloid.

Reflection: Sammy Davis Jr. snaps a photo of himself and Jerry Lewis posing in the reflection of a mirror.

What entanglements are keeping the former member of the Rat Pack’s compelling life from being made into a movie?  A life studded with Tinseltown’s glittering constellation of stars whose orbits intersected his?   Luminaries like Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Liz and Burton, Paul Newman, Berle, Bacall, Bennett, Damone… when Hollywood was at its most glamorous?

Who is Burt Boyar? And why does he care?

The treasure hunt for answers begins on Broadway, circa 1954 when Burt and his wife Jane were moving within the inner circle of New York City’s theater district.  His daily column  “Burt Boyar’s Broadway,” a widely read ‘who’s who’ of the theatrical world, was prominently positioned on the front page of the Morning Telegraph.

The Boyars were hitting the hot spots — the El Morocco, the Copa, the Latin Quarter, the Stork Club — gleaning tantalizing tidbits to toss to ten million readers as they sipped their morning coffee over the morning news.  “Burt Boyar’s Broadway” was published in every Newhouse and Annenberg newspaper.  A mere mention in the column was gold, shining nuggets of priceless publicity coveted by actors and their press agents.   Manhattan’s most sought after couple were out every evening.  “Jane and I would go to every nightclub in town to see who was around and form the basis of what I was writing about. We went to virtually everything,” Boyar begins.

“In fact, we were on the ‘first night’ list, which was a wonderful thing and often a horrible thing at the same time.  Every show that opened, we automatically received tickets for opening night and we had our same seats, just like all the critics.  And you think, ‘My gosh, how glamorous can you be?  You go to every theater opening in New York!’  But if you think about it, there are some 200 shows every year. Of them, there are maybe five hits. And you have to sit through every one of the others.  You cannot imagine what it was like. You sit there wondering, ‘How did they ever pay for this?  Who would put up money to finance this?  How do we get out of here?’  But you couldn’t leave early, because then you’d be accused of writing about something you hadn’t seen,” he jokes.

Boyar also wrote a weekly column for TV Guide.  “I had a lot of audience and so naturally I got invited everywhere,” he says.

At about this time, Sammy Davis, Jr. was performing in “Mr. Wonderful,” a dog of a show that was getting lousy reviews — except for the last 40 minutes when Davis was onstage.  Critics loved his Vegas-Copa-Miami Beach nightclub act.  Boyar took note, and rang him up.

“When I called Sammy, he said, ‘What do you say we have dinner one night?’  So that very night we went out to dinner, Jane, Sammy and I, to Danny’s Hideaway, which was a theatrical steak house.  It’s closed now but it was a very hot spot in those days.  As dinner was coming to an end, he excused himself and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go do the show, but what do you say we have dinner…’ And he thought a second and then he said,  ‘how about having dinner five nights a week?’   And as it turned out, we had dinner seven nights a week!”  It would be the beginning of a long friendship.

Boyar does his best Jolson imitation for Sammy's camera while Jane Boyar enjoys the show.

“We were always together from then on.  It’s one of those wonderful things that happens occasionally in your life — you meet someone with whom you have an enormous chemistry — and it was just instantaneous best friends.  I admired his talent tremendously.  He was unquestionably the world’s greatest entertainer. And he was such a charming man offstage. He dressed beautifully and he conducted himself with such courtliness.  It’s hard, really, to believe he had never had any education whatsoever. His education was the theaters that he played since the age of three. So I guess that has very good value because when you consider that in vaudeville, he would play before six audiences a day.  You’d get a lot of touch with the public, and you’d learn a great deal from people.”

In Black and White

A white hot star onstage, black negro offstage, Sammy Davis, Jr. “wasn’t treated well because of his skin color, at least not until he was such a big star that they couldn’t keep him out.”  Boyar recalled the denigration Davis endured.  “I cannot describe the pain of seeing a friend receive standing ovations in those days when they had to be earned, then leave the theater and be called a ‘nigger.’

“He was not treated well by either the whites or the blacks.  I remember when he was playing New York City, he was playing the Copacabana and I got him a reservation at the hotel around the corner — the Sherry Netherland — and he was completely criticized, roundly criticized by both the white press and the negro press for not staying at the Hotel Teresa in uptown Harlem, which is what all black entertainers would do when they played the Copa.”  The Teresa Hotel, known as the ‘Waldorf of Harlem,’ was built in 1913 and wasn’t desegregated until 1940.  Frequented by local celebrities, it was a Harlem hot spot.  By comparison the Sherry Netherland, in the heart of midtown Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, was always considered five-star, world class.

“Sammy said, ‘Look. I’m going to go as first class as my fame and my money will allow. I want to live as well as anybody else in my position.’  So he stayed at the Sherry Netherland, which was wonderful.”

In his prologue to “Sammy, An Autobiography,” Burt wrote: “After an especially hurtful racist outrage, Sammy murmured ‘We really should let them know.  We really should tell them.’  We talked about how, and it evolved into a book…”

“I began writing ‘Yes I Can’ and the column at the same time.  I thought I could do both,” Boyar says.  “And we’d travel with Sammy.  We’d go to Las Vegas and Chicago, and Tahoe and Florida, wherever there was entertainment, wherever I might possibly write a column at the same time.  But it became impossible to serve the two masters.  You really couldn’t do justice to either of them.  So we took what we thought was a one year leave of absence on the column, and six years later we finished the book, and so the column was gone.  The only thing about it that made me feel badly was a man by the name of Bruce Horton who was the head of the Register and Tribune syndicate, and he was out there selling our column — he sold us to the Detroit Free Press and the Toronto Star, a lot of big papers — and here I was, about to take time off and tell him I can’t produce. I’m sure I embarrassed him and he had every right to be furious with me, although he never said a word.  But that was the only misgiving I had about it.”

The couple lived on the road with Sammy on and off for the next four years, running a tape recorder every night into which Sammy would reminisce and recount the gems and shards that made up the mosaic of his life.

“We did (hang out with Sammy) for the first couple of years,” Burt says.  “The rest of the time we were on our own, just writing and rewriting.  After “Yes I Can” came out in 1965, we had no column, and suddenly we were making a lot of money and it was ‘Wow! This is a great life!  We don’t have to be up until four or five in the morning, we get up when the sun comes out!’”

The Boyars later moved to Spain where they resided for 28 years.  There they wrote two more books, “World Class” about the world of tennis, and “Hitler Stopped By Franco,” a book that evolved from their friendship with Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s daughter Carmen and her family.  Over the years, they kept in touch with Sammy by mail and telephone.  Following Jane’s death in 1997, Boyar subsequently combined both biographies into a single edition titled “Sammy – An Autobiography.”  He eventually returned to America, settling in the Los Angeles area where he still makes his home today.

The present scene:  An empty theater, a darkened screen.  Somewhere in the distance, Sammy is dancing and singing on an ethereal stage, entertaining a roomful of heavenly hosts.

The movie version of ‘Yes I Can’ is mired in litigation and has been for some time.  Burt explains, “I often hear people say, ‘Such and such a movie took ten or fifteen years to make.’  I now know why.  It is the most extraordinary thing.  What happens is you have a property that looks like it could be a moneymaker.  People come out of the woodwork that claim to have rights, and no movie company wants to invest 60 or 70 million dollars and are unable to distribute it because of a lawsuit.  So they insist that everyone must sign off — every potential rights holder must sign off.   In our case, I own half of the copyright.  Sammy owned the other half, and when he died it was left to Altovise, his wife.”  Altovise Davis, Sammy’s wife of twenty years, died March 14, 2009, nine years after Sammy passed away from throat cancer.

“It was complicated before that, but she had a manager who had made some kind of a contract with her in which he wound up controlling more of Sammy’s life than she.  He had far more to say about it than she.  And we had a this fabulous deal through two wonderful producers, Craig Zaden and Neil Meron who produced Chicago and Hairspray and the last Jack Nicholson movie, “The Bucket List.”   They were really, really excited about it and they sold it to New Line and everybody was really ready to go, we’re ready to sign it.  And the deal that was negotiated after six or seven months of negotiating was really as good as it can get.  And then this manager suddenly appears on the scene — a man with whom I had gotten along with perfectly well earlier, and he suddenly said, ‘We have to quarterback this’.

“I guess he meant ‘We have to be in charge, we have to continue the negotiations’.  Well, I thought, this is ridiculous.  It’s already ready to sign, and he said, ‘No, we have to  quarterback it because it involves Sammy Davis Jr.’s life rights.  Which doesn’t exist — there’s no legal term such as ‘life rights’.

“Anyway, I thought, ‘Well all right, what harm can be done?’  So he brings in this lawyer from New York who was not a movie lawyer, and the man decides he’s going to teach Hollywood how to be Hollywood!  And he makes demands that are deal breakers.

“The first one was Altovise, who was originally a dancer, but had not danced in probably 30 years, and had never been a choreographer.”

Altovise, a trained actor and dancer, met Sammy in the mid-1960s when they were both appearing in Broadway musicals, he as the lead in “Golden Boy” and she in the chorus line of “High Spirits.”  She successfully auditioned for a London stage production of “Golden Boy” and, after its run, she joined his nightclub act as a dancer.

“The first demand was that Altovise had to be the choreographer of the movie.  Complete deal breaker.  There’s no way that you can take a major musical and have a novice attempt to choreograph it.  Nor did she want to, which I learned later.  At the time I wasn’t in touch with her and so I didn’t realize that it wasn’t she who had demanded it.  It was the manager.  He was just looking for more revenue.”

“Then he had to own the soundtrack.  That was another deal breaker.  Obviously, if you’re a studio and you invest 60 or 70 million dollars in a movie, you want every revenue source there can be, and you’re not going to give it to a man who has no track record as a record producer or anything.  It was all just a hustle.

“So we finally went to court to get rid of him, and we have been in court for 680 thousand dollars, which is one way of putting it – those are the legal fees we’ve run up on this project so far.  And more to come.  I could not imagine that these people would be so idiotic to hang on when they had absolutely no grounds for the thing that they were asking for.  They were killing a golden goose.”

“Also, according to the copyright law, at the time in 1965 when ‘Yes I Can’ was published, the law was that when a man dies, his copyrights go to his wife and to his children, without specifying in what percentages or what way – fifty-fifty?   It’s up to them to decide.  And Altovise had very generously agreed to split evenly with the children – there are four children, so that was no problem.

“The problem is not that I can’t go out and do the movie on my own, but no studio will take the risk of a major investment when there’s a potential of a lawsuit, even if they’re nuisance lawsuits.  If that potential exists, they don’t want to get involved.  This has happened before and they have wound up having to pay as much as 15 million dollars in blackmail, actually, to be able to release the film they’ve already shot.  So they don’t ever want to get involved in that again. And who can blame them?”

So the film project sits on a shelf, hamstrung through greed and avarice.  However, Boyar managed to salvage thousands of Sammy’s photos and negatives. “Everybody who was close to him knew he was taking pictures because he always carried a camera,” Boyar says.

“The photos were in a warehouse just stuffed away in boxes, not protected, not really taken care of the way you should take care of them.  Thousands of prints, thousands of negatives.  And probably within a few years, they would’ve been lost.  They’d be worthless.  They weren’t sorted, they weren’t in any particular order because Sammy never cared.”

He recalls Sammy’s obsession with the latest and best equipment. “Of course once I had a little education, Sammy once said, ‘I needed a new Nikon this and a Canon that, both with eighteen lenses and sixty-two filters.  In terms of addiction, I think there is nothing more powerful than men’s toys.  This may sound a little paranoid but I am positive that somewhere in Germany, in Japan, there are men awake in the middle of the night thinking, ‘Now Sammy Davis has an extra $50,000, let’s think of something he doesn’t have that we can sell him, the ultimate, the definitive… he’ll jump to be the first one to have it and we’ll get that $50,000.’ I am positive of that.’”

Burt knew Sammy didn’t have plans for his photography.  “He never thought, ‘Well, I’ll publish pictures of Frank and Peter and Dean.’  His pleasure in photography was to take pictures of people that he liked, and if he liked the picture, he would send it to you — an 11 by 14.  He had no future plans for his photography.  It was purely for pleasure.  So he never bothered keeping records carefully and keeping the negatives attached to the proof sheets.  So it was a tremendous job separating them, but we did it.”

In a labor of love that came close to matching the affection Davis had for his latest single lens reflex, Boyar selected hundreds of images that have been included in a coffee table book collection of Hollywood’s glory days, seen through the lens of Sammy’s myriad collection of Nikons, Canons, and Rollieflex cameras.  ‘Photo By Sammy Davis, Jr.’ went into print in 2007, the last book published by Judith Regan.

Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin preparing to go on stage.

“The book contains photos of Hollywood stars that no one else had access to.  For example, Frank Sinatra in his pajamas.  Now only someone like Sammy would be there to take that picture and Frank would only allow someone like Sammy to take it.

“There is a characteristic picture of Sinatra playing with his fingernails. When he was just about to go on, he was always very nervous and he would work out his nerves on his fingernails.  And so there’s a picture of him standing with Dean and he’s working on his nails.  These are things that only Sammy understood,” Boyar explains.  “The stories that accompany them are from taped conversations Sammy and I had over the course of our friendship. We used a handful of them in Sammy’s autobiographies.”

Sammy caught Peter Lawford the morning after a big one.

There are other pictures – Peter Lawford with a hangover.  “He looked like he was desperately in need of a steam room,” Boyar comments.

“There is a picture of me in the book.  It’s about three quarters of the way in.”  Sure enough, there’s Boyar captured in Sammy’s lens, vamping an Al Jolson routine as wife Jane laughs in delight. But the back-story wasn’t so funny.

“What happened is one night we were out, and somebody called Sidney Poitier a black, and in those days that was a very negative statement.  And it drove Sammy up the wall.  I’ve never seen him so upset.  He generally was very, very put together and he was very accustomed to racial epithets, so things didn’t bother him.   But I guess because he loved Sidney, it really did bother him and he was really, really angry, just really upset.  And we got back to his hotel room and he looked at me and he said, ‘Do that corny Jolson thing you do.’   Which was — I used to love Al Jolson, so I would do Jolson.  I knew all the songs. And so I started singing and I didn’t realize that Sammy was actually taking pictures of me at the time because I was so involved with my performance.  Imagine the audacity of singing to the world’s greatest entertainer!  Anyway I did it until finally he was laughing and the moment had passed and it was done.

“I didn’t know the pictures existed until Vanity Fair was doing a ten-page take-out for the magazine, a ten-page article on the book, and David Friend, who does special features for them, came here to look at the pictures and he says, ‘Hey, this is you!”  It was a negative and I would have never spotted it because I don’t have an eye for that sort of thing, but David had been a Life Magazine photo editor and as a photo editor he had a very, very sharp eye.  I was delighted to have it.  Sammy played the greatest role in my life.  Having the opportunity to write those books really made a whole life for Jane and myself.”

The legendary entertainer’s images, confined within the cover of a book, might not be moving pictures projected on the silver screen, but somehow there is sweet irony that Sammy himself created the montage of his life, directing and choreographing his story through his own camera lens, from beginning to end.

Books by Burt Boyar:

“PHOTO BY SAMMY DAVIS, JR.” Text by Burt Boyar

“YES I CAN” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

“WHY ME?” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

“SAMMY – An Autobiography” by Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jane and Burt Boyar

Other books by Burt Boyar:

“HITLER STOPPED BY FRANCO” by Jane and Burt Boyar

“WORLD CLASS” by Jane and Burt Boyar

I’m tempted to brag about how close I was with my Tony Award Predictions and make that the biggest story coming out of Sunday’s Tony Award Show, but instead I’ll stay humble.

From the perspective of the Broadway industry (the people and companies that represent the institution of Broadway and who work in the industry tend to think in terms of studios rather than production companies), the Shubert Organization was the big winner.  The Shuberts are the happy landlord to Best Musical winner “Billy Elliot” and Best Play winner “God of Carnage.”  The Shuberts also serve as co-producer of “God of Carnage.”

From an individual show’s perspective, certainly “Billy Elliot” was the big winner with a total of 10 awards.  One major award they didn’t win was the Best Score of a Musical that seemed like a shoe-in for Elton John.  Instead it went to Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey for “Next to Normal” that show also won the Best Actress award for its star, Alice Ripley.

Just as important for a show as the awards it wins, is how the show is presented in the three-hour telecast on CBS.  Even if a show doesn’t reap any prizes, it will still sell tickets if it can creates a buzz.  The “Buzz” factor from Sunday night goes to “Rock of Ages” with a close second for the revival of “Hair.”  “Rock of Ages,” a fable set in the 1980’s on the Sunset Strip and features glam rock favorites from the era not only presented itself as an unabashed valentine to the music, fashions and hair of that era, but it was also the unexpected recipients of enormous press attention:

Sunday night’s Tony Awards gave Bret Michaels and Poison the opportunity to bring an Eighties anthem to an unlikely audience — the Broadway theater world — and celebrate hair-metal musical Rock of Ages in front of millions of people. But as Rock Daily reported yesterday, their performance of “Nothin’ But a Good Time” ended with anything but: a moving set piece smashed Michaels in the face when he tried to scoot below it before Stockard Channing began her part of the opening number. The result of the frontman’s injuries has been revealed this morning: a fractured nose and busted lip requiring three stitches.

Here’s the video:

“Cry Tough,” indeed.

My sources tell me that although “Rock of Ages” won no awards, their daily advance sales (daily wrap) are way up compared to the week before the awards.  Likewise, “Billy Elliot” saw an increase of over 300% in their daily wrap for Monday compared to the Friday before the Tonys.  “God of Carnage” almost tripled their wrap.  On the other end of the spectrum, despite a generally favorable critical response to the musical number from “Next to Normal,” their wrap on Monday had only about a 50% bump and as of Tuesday their numbers have leveled off to their pre-Tonys level.  This might be in part due to the odd acceptance speech from its star, Alice Ripley:

Here’s one more tidbit:  My spies inside Radio City Music Hall tell me that the moment Liza Minelli left the stage after accepting her Tony for Best Special Theatrical Performance, the same category Will Ferrell was up for with his “You’re Welcome America: A Final Evening with George W. Bush,” Mr. Ferrell was up and out of his seat and heading out for the evening.  What a good sport.

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