In an exceptional Broadway season, the anticipation for Sunday’s Tony Awards is palpable. This week, the Broadway League and American Theater Wing hosted a swank cocktail party at the Sofitel Hotel. So packed was a second floor banquet hall, waiters could not move their trays through the crush of Broadway elite: former Tony winners, current contenders, and hopefuls.
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If Friends’ Chandler Bing had evolved into a martini guzzler he might resemble Jack, a character invented by Matthew Perry for his play The End of Longing, now in a snappy MCC production at the Lucille Lortel Theater directed by Lindsay Posner. From the start, at a L.A. restaurant where Jack tries to pick up two attractive women with lines no man should ever use, you see the cycles of alcohol induced bravado/insecurity at work. Needless to say, the booze has taken its toll on his looks; Jack is attractive in a sort of bloated way, still sexy enough to bed a blond knockout named Stephanie (Jennifer Morrison) who turns out to be a high priced escort. Connecting in unexpected ways, they negotiate their addictions. As a first-time playwright hewing close to familiar material, Perry succeeds in making the route to love humorous and moving, if more attuned to the ethos of television sitcom. -
Florine Stettheimer had a charmed life, to judge from the expansive, colorful, and grand exhibition at the Jewish Museum. An artist born to wealth, she painted her milieu: “Spring Sale at Bendel’s,” “Asbury Park South,” parades, parties, picnics, groups together enjoying life, and portraits like the one of Marcel Duchamp and Rrose Selavy, or her sisters Ettie, a novelist, and Carrie. On some, she crafted the frames. She partied with a who’s who of art world luminaries, knowing everyone to be known in the New York art scene at the turn of the century, and often threw the soirees herself. -
Few sights are as chilling as the ghost of Hamlet, Sr. in silhouette moving slowly through the arabesque in Waterwell’s excellent production of Hamlet at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture. Wearing a tall hat befitting an Arab prince, this figure has presence and authority, a Hyperion among satyrs, to riff on his son’s description, especially as compared to Claudius, the king’s brother who, looking a bit like the town tailor, rendered him a specter by pouring poison in his ear. Hamlet’s burden is to avenge his father’s murder. No spoiler here. Almost everyone is familiar with the plot of Shakespeare’s play; however, in language spiced with Farsi, the creative team – particularly, the star Arian Moayed who adapted this play and director Tom Ridgely— mixes themes of identity and geography with the familiar Freudian spin. Set in pre-WWI Persia, the play’s political leap into modernity, its cycles of violence, progress and reactionary force, parallel Persia becoming Iran. -
Among the many joys of this year’s New York Public Library Spring Dinner held in the Celeste Bartos Auditorium of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the spacious hall where Salman Rushdie, while still in hiding, gave a reading and talk, and where French intellectual Bernard Henri Levy beseeched some brave woman to have sex with GW Bush to encourage his impeachment, if that’s all it would take, was a performance by Bernadette Peters of “There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame” from South Pacific, and “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods, that Stephen Sondheim classic. Peters revealed: though she comes from Queens, N. Y., the first time she came to this, the NYPL’s gorgeous central branch, was for the recent opening of another Sondheim revival, Sunday in the Park with George. -
Touring with her father Tony Bennett since she was a little girl, Antonia Bennett learned a thing or two about performing. For her impressive debut at the Café Carlyle, she sings classics from the American songbook backed by a first rate jazz band, with Spike Wilner on piano, especially good on a jazzy “Tea for Two,” Paul Nowinsky on bass, and Anthony Pinciotti on drums. A demure redhead with a lovely voice, Antonia Bennett introduced George Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It:” “I love to sing this as a love song, but it’s about prostitutes.” The audience ate it up. Tony Bennett and his wife Susan, seated near the stage in this intimate room, cheered his daughter on. He had tweeted, he loved May anticipating Antonia’s special Café Carlyle run. -
As noted in the past: It is a truth widely held, that ladies who lunch are wont to shop. And so a fashion show to benefit the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation has become an annual luncheon event. The options for lavish spending were displayed at Andrea Stark’s penthouse apartment last Wednesday, featuring models wearing Carolina Herrera’s dresses currently available in her Madison Avenue boutique. While the designer was not present, her right hand man Rudy was, with Emily Rubenfeld, president of Carolina Herrera. For guilt free spending, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation benefits from a portion of the sales. The doctor’s wife Marion was particularly pleased with this effort in helping the foundation grow in its efforts to fund researchers worldwide. And William T. Sullivan, the newly appointed Executive Director, assured everyone, the doctor, a consummate practitioner, was where he’s needed most, working. -
The Bedlam Theater’s production of Vanity Fair at the Pearl Theater is a romp celebrating life’s vagaries, the ups and downs of fortune’s wheel. Kate Hamill is its mastermind, manipulating William Makepeace Thackeray’s words as playwright, and everyone else as Vanity Fair’s star Becky Sharp, down on her luck child who makes it big in marriage and money, only to lose it all again. As she did so brilliantly last year with her adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Hamill injects the right amount of wink-wink at the audience through pauses when the cast breaks into contemporary dance. And then these able performers return to their intertwining plots of who weds whom and to what degree of betrayal and misery. Class and money make the man. It’s all too funny! -
A young woman greeted me on the first day of class, looking at me hard to see if I could place her. Indeed, I had seen her before, in another class two years prior, as a young man. Not only do I remember you, but I remember your writing, I said, happy to have this student return to take my course in creative nonfiction. And through several months, writings that revealed her journey, the physical and emotional aspects of her transition, emerged, not only creating a body of fresh work for her, but that made it okay for others to express what may not have come out otherwise—i.e. a woman who loved women balancing who she is with her Catholicism and strict Spanish family. In each of these cases, and others, I felt proud that The School of Visual Arts where I have taught for four decades was safe and nurturing, with supportive faculty. This is New York City, after all. And I wondered how others in America fared, where in every state, no one can stop same sex couples from marrying, and where basic LBGTQ rights are now rolled back under the present regime. I attended the GLSEN Awards, held at Cipriani 42 Street, and found out. -
Gypsy Rose Blanchard is now serving a ten-year sentence in prison for conspiring to kill her mother Dee Dee, knifed to death in June 2015 in Springfield, Mo. by Nicholas Godejohn, a boyfriend Gypsy met on the Internet. He will be tried this week, while Gypsy seems twice imprisoned. As Erin Lee Carr’s documentary, Mommy Dead and Dearest, to air tonight on HBO tells Gypsy’s story: from the time she was an infant her mother claimed she was sick. The list of illnesses seems impossible to fathom for one person alone, including cancer, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and mental retardation. Wheel chair bound, her head shaven, Gypsy depended on Dee Dee for everything, and they were inseparable, traveling on a donated trip to Disneyland, living in a free house, a single mom taking advantage of the misfortunes of a child with extreme medical issues. Interviews with doctors, lawyers, sheriffs, and family help to unravel the truth of this tawdry tale, with the added twist of some kinky texts between the young lovers prior to the murder. Even the sight of Dee Dee in bed, in a blood-smeared gown, does not arouse a whit of sympathy. -
Honoring Robert De Niro at this year’s Chaplin Award Celebration at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Monday, actor after actor acknowledged that he could do anything, referring to drama, comedy, and other film genres. Could Robert De Niro top an already amazing career? By Thursday, another brilliant performance premiered at MoMA: As Bernie Madoff in the HBO movie, The Wizard of Lies, he is the consummate con artist. -
As she accomplished in her stunning debut film Fill the Void, Rama Burshtein’s The Wedding Plan takes the viewer into the marriage practices of a hermetic society, offering an intimate, if fictional view, of how matches are made in Israel’s Haredi community. Yes there are matchmakers at work in The Wedding Plan, but its comedic conceit is that the optimistic, intuitive, and outrageous protagonist, Michal (Noa Koler) attempts to make the match herself, giving herself three weeks till the last day of Chanukah to find her groom.Who should marry whom is an appealing subject for any culture—witness the popularity of all things Jane Austen. The American born writer/director turned deeply religious presents this world without irony, or any filter by which to judge it. I caught up with Rama Burshtein at Locande Verde in the tumult of an Israeli delegation of filmmakers celebrating Israel’s vibrant film industry, part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
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Broadway musical legend Chita Rivera takes the narrow strip of stage at the Café Carlyle, maneuvering her sequined body strategically so she won’t end up in your vodka tonic. Nobody moves like Chita Rivera. The consummate showwoman, she gives a great, not to be missed night, starting with “A Lot of Living to Do.” For her West Side Story medley, in honor of its 60th anniversary, she tells of Leonard Bernstein teaching her the role of Anita, and sings “A Boy Like That,” and “America.” With stories galore, and memories of performers who inspired her, such as Rosemary Clooney from whom she learned she could just stand there and sing, and then of course defying that she shimmies through “Sweet Happy Life,” advising, “It’s great when your spirit and body get together.” When she sings “Where Am I Going?” from Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ Sweet Charity, you feel grateful to have her right here, coquettish as three hookers, “Camille, Collette, Fifi” and wistful singing the ups and downs of Jacques Brel’s “Carousel.” -
Robert DeNiro’s career is so prolific on any given day you can find one of his iconic films on television. Random today: Casino, in which he stars with Sharon Stone. On Monday night, many friends came to speak about his work at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual tribute, each noting a personal favorite. For Sean Penn, it was The Deer Hunter, and he went on to call Raging Bull a work of art at the level of DaVinci. Meryl Streep recounted a story of her waiting tables while at Yale Drama School and taking a break to see her friend Michael Moriarty in a baseball movie called Bang the Drum Slowly. She liked Moriarty’s work just fine, but everyone fell in love with another actor in the film, one who everyone assumed to be intellectually challenged, his performance was so authentic. That was DeNiro. Then Taxi Driver came out, and everyone realized who Robert DeNiro was, and he was in fact acting. -
Anyone who has heard Sheila Nevins introduce her hand picked documentarians at an HBO preview, knows: she is much of the show. Formidable and funny, even when she intros heart-wrenching work like Cries from Syria with a plea to stop the killing of children in that country, her lively personality blazes forth. Now she’s written a book, You Don’t Look Your Age . . . and Other Fairy Tales, a memoir in short pieces of how she got to where she is, head of documentaries at HBO for decades, all while keeping it real. A tell-all, her book is not shy to un-P.C. revelations, like her views on sleeping with the boss, and plastic surgery, her dicey relation with her mom who had a rare disease, Raynaud’s phenomenon (a lack of circulation in your extremities), and balancing a demanding job with the challenges of raising a son with Tourette’s. Add to that, for a celebrity packed audio book, she just called a few of her nearest and dearest. -
Some years back the filmmaker Oren Moverman was taking meetings with Cate Blanchett, one of the Bob Dylan incarnations in I’m Not There, the 2007 movie he scripted with director Todd Haynes. The actress wanted to direct a film and chose Herman Koch’s 2009 novel, The Dinner, asking Moverman to adapt it for the screen. As these things happen, the directing job fell to Moverman. He had been working with Richard Gere on Time Out of Mind, which he directed, and the movie Norman, which he produced. In The Dinner, Richard Gere plays Stan Lohman, a politician, who has his brother Paul (Steve Coogan) and their wives, Rebecca Hall and Laura Linney to dinner at a restaurant so fancy, the waiters parade the food to the table, each precious plate explained by provenance and preparation. -
While FBI Director James Comey refers to WikiLeaks as “intelligence porn,” and attempts to field questions about his role, and the Russians’ role, in swaying the American election, Laura Poitras’ film about Julian Assange, Risk, opens. It is rare to see a film about a subject who is less revealed and still find the experience deeply satisfying, however unsettling. Assange, a slippery figure, is self-incriminating as he allows Poitras to interview him on matters of women and the sexual abuse charges brought against him. Poitras, the Oscar winner for CitizenFour was already working on a film about Assange and WikiLeaks when the Edward Snowden story became news, and so Poitras followed that thread to Hong Kong. Snowden makes a brief appearance in Risk, as does Bradley/Chelsea Manning. This film dares to ask, how much of your own life are you willing to risk? They are all risk takers and at risk, especially the documentary filmmaker. -
Exhibitions featuring the life and art of women abound in New York at this time, a happy coincidence. Especially fine is the Brooklyn Museum’s “Living Modern,” devoted to the oeuvre and style of Georgia O’Keeffe. The artist had her first solo exhibition at the museum in 1927, organized by Alfred Stieglitz and featuring 15 paintings. The current show, consisting of paintings, sculpture, and photographs of O’Keeffe by some of the most well known photographers of the twentieth century, Stieglitz, Richard Avedon, Bruce Weber, Ansel Adams, Cecil Beaton to name a few, also displays her clothing. An excellent seamstress, as the accompanying catalogue makes clear, she made her own dresses, blouses, shirtwaists, and coats, and also collected simple, architecturally structured designs from the Japanese. Her Lee overalls and plaid shirts are fashionable today. Maria Chabot’s photo of the artist has her posed on a dusty road at Ghost Ranch, hair pulled back, in a woven checked shirt and loose jeans. In Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of O’Keeffe from 1980, she looks stern, her face naturally wrinkled as would befit a woman of unselfconscious, ageless beauty, at 92. -
The great achievement of the Oslo Peace Accords, on which the entertaining drama Oslo is based, was bringing to the table Israelis and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Anyone who has ever been to the Middle East, knows the hostility in the air, with Jews worried about security and the future of the Jewish state, and Arabs enraged at occupation and the loss of autonomy. The eyes and ears of the world have been glued to this unbridgeable divide. For theater, Oslo, now with 7 Tony nominations, defies the expectation that peace talk alone can be highly engrossing rather than morbidly serious and stressful. In fact, J. T. Rogers’ Oslo, directed by Bartlett Sher, is provocative and humorous, because it teases out the personalities of those figures plucked from the news, and finds their humanity and common ground even when the politics don’t match up. -
The new musical Bandstand at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater opens with the sounds of war and a pivotal scene that recurs in the story of Donny Novitzki, a returning soldier who forms a band. Longing to return to life as it was, he is tasked to look in on the wife of a friend who did not make it back. Beset by nightmares and dreams alike, Donny (Corey Cott) looks for work in the Cleveland clubs he used to play. No surprises here. If you know the musical genre to which this play belongs, you know instantly that Donny will make it, especially with Julia (Laura Osnes), the Gold Star widow who happens to sing and write poetry, perfect for lyrics that can swing. But this play does have surprises galore: the talented band Donny forms: they sing, dance, act, joke, and man, they can play. -
Don’t you want to paint a giant picture now? Laurie Anderson asked the audience at a post Tribeca Film Festival screening Q&A following the premiere of the documentary, Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait about the artist well known for his work on outsized canvases and plate paintings. An art star for decades, Schnabel is also well known for his films, especially Basquiat, Before Night Falls, Berlin, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Each one is about the creative process, illuminating fellow artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cuban poet Reinaldo Areinas, rocker and close friend Lou Reed, and writer/editor Jean-Dominique Bauby. Despite the subtitle, A Private Portrait, director Pappi Corsicato never gets beneath the artist’s skin, but in showing his work and the man working, the film shows the breadth of a big career in progress. -
Lucas Hnath’s sequel to Ibsen’s classic of world literature, A Doll’s House, titled A Doll’s House, Part 2, suggests that every work in the canon should have a follow-up. Unless they die at the end, like Anna Karenina, it would be great to catch up, after all the sturm und drang. At the Golden Theater, we have that opportunity with Nora Helmer, the husband she left, Torvald, her faithful femme d’affaires, Anne Marie, and one of the three children she left behind, Emmy. Fifteen years have passed, and Nora (Laurie Metcalf, outstanding) returns to the house. Delivering a diatribe against marriage to Anne Marie (the incomparable Jayne Houdyshell), she needs to ensure that she is indeed divorced, and is dismayed to find her daughter, Emmy (an excellent Condola Rashad), while a new and updated version of her self, is engaged to, what else, a banker just like her dad. Torvald (Chris Cooper, a man any sane woman would be loath to leave) arrives home unexpectedly, and my how he has evolved since the day Nora left! -
It feels perfectly natural to see Bobbi Jene Smith perform naked, grinding on a sandbag in front of an audience in the documentary Bobbi Jene, directed by Elvira Lind, now screening at Tribeca. That’s because there’s nothing risqué about Bobbi Jene’s dance exploration of female sexuality. Naked, in the film is fresh, honest, unselfconscious, and raw, and we can extend that definition to her aesthetic, neither full of artifice nor commercially motivated. We meet her as she explains to Ohad Naharin, director of the prestigious Batsheva Dance Company based in Tel Aviv, why after ten years of success, she is leaving the company. Bobbi Jene was filmed dancing in Mr. Gaga, Tomer Heymann’s documentary about Batsheva, but now in Bobbi Jene, this dancer and choreographer is star of a portrait on her own.On a recent afternoon, I had a chance to speak to Bobbi Jene and film editor Adam Nielsen at the Smyth. I caught up with filmmaker Elvira Lind on the phone. Nine days past her due date for the baby she was having with actor Oscar Isaac, she decided wisely not to venture out. Oscar, for his part, left his own premiere of The Promise, a powerful love story set in the historic moment of the Armenian genocide, at Shun Lee a few days earlier, to be by her side. Several days later, as Bobbi Jene premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, everyone was still waiting.
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In Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, the lives of Southern women don’t look too shabby, but they most certainly have their limits. Regina Giddens (Cynthia Nixon in a recent matinee) and her sister-in-law Birdie Hubbard (Laura Linney—the stars alternate) define the parameters in the superb MTC production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, the first being all grins and fangs, the latter, tipsy and gently nuts. Neither one is quite who she seems, however. I am still not over the effect of Laura Linney’s dimpled smile as she instructs Regina’s daughter Alexandra (Francesca Carpanini) in the family’s history, cautioning her to stay clear of her own son Leo (Michael Benz). Cynthia Nixon broadcasts bad faith with the smallest twitch of her mouth, her eyes fixed on a far horizon. -
By the time Variety’s Power of Women M. C. Vanessa Bayer hit the podium, joking about eh, what a great year for women this has been, I had been treated to one Bellini and a hand massage by Jose in a pop up spa for SheaMoisture in a corner of the spacious Cipriani 42 Street. Feeling no pain, I found out SheaMoisture, a premiere sponsor of this yearly luncheon presented by Lifetime, not only smoothed out every gnarl on my hands, this is a company that sends 10% of its profits to African women.Yes, there were big names featured at this luncheon from Blake Lively to Tina Knowles Lawson, that’s Beyonce’s mom, who was awarded the Commerce Impact Award by SheaMoisture. With its high octane focus on promoting good health, the safety, nourishment, and education of children, women’s right to physical autonomy, this was no ordinary event. Speakers from Cory Booker, who flew in from California just to introduce Gayle King, and then flew back again just after, to Lena Dunham introducing Jessica Chastain, to 16-year-old Hayley Thomas presenting Chelsea Clinton, each one was an inspiration for empowering others.
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