Michael Moore is so passionate about America’s future, he had to make a movie converting Trump Republicans to Hillary. He’s never voted for her, he says to a select audience of about 700 at the Murphy Theater in Wilmington, Ohio, the birthplace of the banana split, and you can continue hating her if you already do, just vote for Hillary.
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In the age of Internet dating sites, Manhattan Theater Club’s staging of Simon Stephens’ play Heisenberg, newly arrived to the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway after a successful off Broadway run, offers a unique point of engagement. Georgie (Mary-Louise Parker), a wacky, damaged young woman impulsively kisses a man on the neck on a London subway station. The man, named Alex (Denis Arndt), older (75!), a butcher by trade, and not a likely match for her at 42, becomes a verbal sparring partner, and bedmate. The title suggests science, a specific and famous theory related to uncertainty, but the real science here is chemistry. As odd as they seem together as a couple, a perfection develops, a negotiation of possibilities that may become a blueprint for alternatives to traditional girl meets boy, well suited to our times. -
Broadway diva is one name for Christine Ebersole, and at her sublime performance in the intimacy of the Café Carlyle, call her “working mom.” Her medley of “Inchworm,” “Autumn Leaves,” “(Have I Stayed) Too Long at the Fair” suggests a big-hearted view of love that could embrace children. She has three, adopted, and now finds herself an empty nester. Five years since her last run at the Carlyle, she’s looking for renewal, including in the mirror in the mash up of “Look at that Face/ What Did You Do to Your Face” which adds extra meaning to the Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern classic, “The Way You Look Tonight.” -
The "10 to Watch" program at the Hamptons International Film Festival, used to be called “Rising Stars,” from which a very talented group of actors including Emily Blunt, Adam Driver, Alicia Vikander, and Dane DeHaan, rose. This year, the 4 of the 10 attending, Riz Ahmed, Mahershala Ali, Aja Naomi King, and Kara Hayward, all have distinguished careers: Ahmed starred in HBO’s The Night Of, Ali in various television roles as a bad guy, King in How to Get Away With Murder, and Hayward, the envy of them all, landed a starring role in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom at age 12. -
Carrie Fisher made a wildly entertaining show about her story of growing up the child of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher: Wishful Drinking also became a popular HBO film. A casualty of her parents’ divorce with a sharply bracing sense of humor, Carrie Fisher now stars with her mother in a new documentary, aptly named Bright Lights. This week, the movie, to air on HBO, premiered at the New York Film Festival. Now 84 and living in Beverly Hills in a house next to Carrie’s, Debbie Reynolds missed this swell night. But she announced on the phone for the Alice Tully Hall audience: “I adore my children, and I’m not going to give up acting.” And then, because she loves to, she sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” -
Alec Baldwin does a spot on, hilarious Donald Trump, grimacing his way through his current vulgarity against women. That’s why SNL called him back to Manhattan this weekend even while he was hosting his baby, the Hamptons International Film Festival. By Sunday he was back east, at the annual chairman’s reception, addressing the crowd including Alex Gibney, Mariska Hargitay, Bob Balaban and many others. This is, after all, his first year as co-chairman. And now he’s announced that he wants to make a documentary about Peggy Siegal! -
Best known for her leading roles in recent Broadway revivals The King and I, South Pacific, and Nice Work If You Can Get It, Kelli O’Hara sang at a dinner to benefit the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) at the Pierre Hotel last week. Of course she sang “I Have Dreamed” and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” but her rendition of “If You Knew Susie,” not part of her repertoire, was bittersweet, as it was a personal tribute to Susan Newhouse, a vibrant philanthropist who succumbed to this disease, a form of dementia. Donald Newhouse presented the Susan Newhouse and SI Newhouse Award of Hope to David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery Communications. -
This year the New York Film Festival opened with a documentary! Capturing a distinct Zeitgeist moment, in The 13th, Ava DuVernay limns a history of racism in America from the time of the 13th Amendment to the present through the filter of prisons and policies of mass incarceration, seen as the equivalent or updated version of slavery. Her narrative is compelling, a clear-eyed history crafted from archival footage and interviews. Many are talking Oscar for Best Picture. -
We are mid-festival season with the venerable New York Film Festival opened this week, and the Hamptons International Film Festival next, but one festival that spoofs them all is shown in an indie comedy, The Last Film Festival, co-written and directed by Linda Yellen. Starring Dennis Hopper, ultra handsome in his very last film, and the delicious Jacqueline Bisset, this film is a laugh-out-loud riot, a mash up in the manner of Robert Altman and Christopher Guest, even though an end note says the influence was 1946 Cannes, when Hitchcock’s Notorious was screened wrong reel first. But that is just one funny moment in The Last Film Festival, which also features raucous sex, a locker room catfight between older and younger actresses, and about everything you can do with a man in a wheelchair. -
With more than a wink, the poised Laura Benanti portrays herself as a child show tune nerd recounting highlights from her stellar career with comedic flair. You could say this Tony Award winner’s show at the Café Carlyle, Tales from Soprano Isle, glimpses her life backwards: songs from her recent hit musical, She Loves Me, to her very first Broadway role as Maria in The Sound of Music. And after introducing her accompanists, music director Todd Almond and bass player, Brian Ellingson, including the “drummer girl” she is carrying—yes, she was big with child under her red sheath (in case you didn’t notice), Benanti pays homage to her music teacher mom, to Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, and Tori Amos, with ample anecdotes, including a wild night of double vodkas with Patti Lupone. -
“What is the weight of a lie?” asks Judith Light in Neil LaBute’s dramatic monologue, All the Ways to Say I Love You, at the Lucille Lortel Theater. The question weighs in like The Merchant of Venice’s pound of flesh in this MCC theater production: it refers to an outsized guilt in this one woman tour de force. In her recent Broadway role in Therese Raquin, Light is the object of guilt, a mother betrayed for her money. Here the guilt is all hers, for a sexual dalliance with a palpable result, a secret that weighs in on her lean frame, that she divulges, but to whom? -
Christine, Antonio Campos’ new movie from a script by Craig Shilowich may be the Room of the current season: an indie film that breaks out onto the main awards stage. A riveting portrait based on the disturbing, true story of Christine Chubbuck, a newsroom reporter in 1974 Sarasota, Florida, the movie stars Rebecca Hall in a career-defining role, with a superb supporting cast including Tracy Letts as newsroom boss, Michael C. Hall as a colleague, J. Smith-Cameron as Christine’s mother, and Hall’s real life partner Morgan Spector as her doctor. Alina Cho, who spent time on television before landing in publishing, hosted a recent screening, admitted that she benefitted from not knowing the movie’s climax, but for those who may remember the shocking headlines, I will cut to the chase: fed up with the newsroom imperative to find more and more shocking stories, and battling some mental illness, Christine took her life on air. -
This weekend, just after Edward Albee’s death at 88, the Montauk Library displayed books of his prodigious work in theater: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Zoo Story, Three Tall Women, Seascape, A Delicate Balance, volumes of the collected plays, to name just a few. A longtime resident of Long Island’s East End, Albee had a house on Montauk’s old highway, and a foundation for artists in residence called the Art Barn. When he was in town, Albee collected the mail at the post office, and delivered it to his artists. A champion of many arts institutions, he attended charity dinners and contributed to local causes. Among the greatest of our American playwrights, a list that includes Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, Edward Albee was a link to a bygone Broadway theater world, beyond the purview of our current mall of Disney characters and tourist trade. -
Attention must be paid: our nuclear arsenal may present a clear and present danger. In a new documentary Command and Control, filmmakers Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser make a compelling case about a potential disaster that few are talking about, illustrated by the story of the Titan II near miss in 1980 in Damascus, Arkansas. But rather than incite fear, their documentary based on Eric Schlosser’s book, entertains like a thriller. I had a chance to talk to them about bombs, filmmaking, and activism last week, before their Film Forum opening. -
On Friday night, Oliver Stone’s new movie, Snowden, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Early reviews were embargoed until then. But I can tell you, from the reaction of a tony crowd at a summer screening in East Hampton, let the award season begin with this movie. Peggy Siegal introduced Oliver Stone, providing a bit of the JFK director’s resume: the 3 time Oscar winner adapted the script for Midnight Express (1978), and won for Best Picture and Best Director for Platoon (1986). His second Best Director award came for Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Stone makes important films, and his new one addresses and challenges our ideas about national security, and whether or not Edward Snowden is a hero. -
You don’t have to see Hamilton to have side-splitting fun at Spamilton. All that is required is that you love Broadway. In fact, a running gag in this 70-minute spoof goes: you are not snagging tickets to Hamilton, even if you are Bernadette Peters or Liza! Yes, when it comes to the democracy of Hamilton, getting in is an equal opportunity leveler. Spamilton, the offspring of Forbidden Broadway conceived by Gerard Alessandrini who also directed, plays with a central conceit: what Camelot was to the Kennedy’s, Hamilton is to the Obamas, fodder for pillow talk. -
Clint Eastwood is a California man but his new movie Sully is a love letter to New York and the best of this city. Based on the true story we all know as the “Miracle on the Hudson,” Sully recounts the heroic actions of pilot Chesley Sullenberger, safely landing a failing United Airlines plane on the icy Hudson River, saving all 155 people on board. Coming upon the heels of the excellent American Sniper in the Eastwood oeuvre, Sully is one of Eastwood’s finest, as it emphasizes some wrinkles in the quick-to-declare-a-hero department when Sullenberger’s life saving action was challenged. What is the takeaway for a story we thought we knew? Forget the logic of simulators and false reenactments. Go for the human. -
For Guild Hall curator Christina Strassfield, a show on minimalism was a no brainer. Currently on view in two large galleries, stark works in sand colors, geometrics, in brown felt material, in bright neon, the exhibition displays art from the collection of Bridgehampton resident Leonard Ruggio, whose passion is minimalism, a midcentury movement that challenges our notions of the types of materials can be used in art, and in fact our traditional notions of beauty. Minimalism contrasts with the extravagant collages of the previous show featuring the photography of Peter Beard, and was historically a contrast to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, begging the question, is less more? -
Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility provides the source for the hilarious, entertainment,Sense and Sensibility, in a sassy theatrical production at the Gym at Judson. The gossipy world of Austen’s 18th century English shires is fraught with shrewd news of who will be engaged to whom, scandal aside, and most important, at what level of financial means with chatter funnier and wiser by far than any Kardashian take on their social scene. -
Refusing to call his many restaurants a vast empire, Danny Meyer in conversation with Florence Fabricant last Sunday at Guild Hall, referred to his Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Untitled at the Whitney, The Modern, Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard, Marta, Maialino, and the popular Shake Shacks, to name a few, as his collection. This talk was part of a series called “Stirring the Pot,” featuring famous chefs, in a program curated by The New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant for Guild Hall. -
Adapting Amos Oz’s best selling book, A Tale of Love and Darkness, Natalie Portman, who also directed and starred in this Hebrew language film, created a deeply moving poetic movie, resonant of the immigrant experience. Told from the point of view of a boy named Amos, the story is Amos Oz’ imagined story of his mother’s suicide at age 38, after a life of dislocation and disappointed dreams. Leaving Eastern Europe after everyone she ever knew was murdered, living in British occupied Palestine, a place of perpetual violence, daily life overcame Fania’s romantic dreams for the new land, even after marrying and having a son. And even after the State of Israel was declared by the UN. Oz thought he was telling a story that would be read by citizens in a tiny corner of Jerusalem, and was astonished that his book became a worldwide hit. The story resonated with Portman who was born in Israel to a family that had a parallel history of leaving the horrors of genocide. -
A fan of the foodie memoir, I was eager to find the book 32 Yolks at this year’s East Hampton Library's Authors Night. Needless to say, a formidable line had already formed in front of le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert, and his stack of books. Before asking for one for me, I decided to take a spin around the long tables to see authors poised to sell and sign; I browsed past presidential historian Douglas Brinkley and his book on FDR, Richard Zoglin, back with Hope in paperback, Vivian Gornick, a hero of mine at The Village Voice back in the day, past the throng around Gwyneth Paltrow, Dr. Ruth, Dick Cavett, and his lovely wife Martha Rogers seated half a tent away alphabetically. -
Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 Pygmalian and Gabriel Pascal’s 1938 film, the Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady gets a smart revival under Michael Arden’s expert direction at Bay Street Theater. You know the story: a lowly flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, morphs from guttersnipe to goddess aided by the elocution lessons of one Henry Higgins and his sideman Pickering, to familiar songbook classics. But even in the best fairy tales, transformations have consequences both good and bad, as we learn from this thoroughly entertaining chestnut. -
“You don’t need chemicals to have a great garden,” Edwina Von Gal, Garden as Art chair, addressed a clutch of visitors to the first stop on this year’s Guild Hall Garden as Art tour. As she did in years past, Von Gal emphasized Guild Hall’s commitment to environmental preservation, with a program focused on bringing key science to the beauty of nature.
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Projectile blood is just one spectacle in Shakespeare’s problem play, Troilus and Cressida, as staged at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, a fine Public Theater production directed by Daniel Sullivan. Written around the same time the bard penned his most famous tragedy Hamlet in 1602, T&C features warriors waging battle in the Trojan War, and as in Hamlet, the play asks the question, what makes a man? In Hamlet, after the hero’s death, Fortinbras, loosely translated as a French “strong in arms,” takes over. Might makes right, right? The more obscure T&C’s message is more muddled: Strong arms do not necessarily make for good men. The high body count is not worth the loss. And love, as in the kind young Troilus has for Cressida, does not elevate. In modern dress, and performed by an exceptional cast, including John Glover, Corey Stoll, John Douglas Thompson, Max Casella for his comic relief, and with a hunky Bill Heck as Hector and Andrew Burnap as his younger brother Troilus, this male ensemble shows men doing what men do.
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