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.
recent posts
- Marisa Tomei and Matthew Broderick at Guild Hall: The Plight of an Upper West Side Arts Space Gives A-List Actors The Big Chill
- Raul Esparza and Lily Rabe in The Winter’s Tale: Wet in Central Park
- Authors Night in East Hampton: If it’s Not One Thing It’s Your Mother
- Documentaries: Jocelyn Wildenstein The Lion Queen/ Tovah: How Jewish is It?
- Hamptons Journal: John Waters at Guild Hall: “Gay is not Enough” / “Cagney” at Bay Street/ “Signs” at the Bridgehampton Museum Tractor Barn
-
“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.
-
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. -
The name Carolines is synonymous with comedy. All year, Caroline Hirsch produces shows at her club Carolines on Broadway, several comedy festivals and some one-off shows such as her upcoming evening Carolines @ The Beach at Guild Hall on August 5. On a recent Friday, I caught up with Caroline by phone, en route to her home in Watermill. She stops at Exit 70 for phone meetings, at a parking lot where this doyenne of laughs knows there’s a good signal. -
Against a wall proclaiming “Make America Great Again” in blood red, an electric chair did not seem out of place. Not for nothing was the Watermill Center’s annual gala called “Fada: House of Madness.” Created by Pussy Riot, the work augured the ironies of installations throughout Robert Wilson’s foundation’s ample grounds. Even though rain threatened the evening’s anarchy, bronze angels spouted eerie wisdom and monitors flickered in the woods. -
Comparisons to the original long-running 1982 musical, Cats, will be inevitable, but even if you have never seen Cats before, as I have not, the revival of Cats at the Neil Simon Theater is simply splendid. I remember when it opened back in the day and so many viewers pondered, what’s the story? Just cats in radiant display, all kinds, cavorting on John Napier’s brilliant set, back alley debris in relief, and ensemble showstoppers and ballads, now part of the canonical Broadway songbook. But Andrew Lloyd Webber, who incidentally has three plays on Broadway—(Phantom of the Opera and School of Rock) as I write, with Trevor Nunn, who directed, managed to fashion a completely moving show from songs based on T. S. Eliot’s 1939 Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, creating a poet’s layered vision of mortality, transcendent and glorious. -
As you contemplate US leadership in this election process, it is essential to check in with the bard: in play after play he asks, what makes for a solid, dependable ruler? Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a towering character, shows more flaws and foibles than any tyrant in the public eye; fear and paranoia abound in his psyche. As performed by Ty Jones in the current Classical Theater of Harlem production at Marcus Garvey Park, under Carl Cofield’s superb direction, he is also physical, sexually charged, an adept swordsman. And as his Lady Macbeth, Roslyn Ruff, gives as good as she gets, as this iconic political schemer. This is a great night of choreographed magic, betrayal and violence under the night sky. -
Bespectacled and bowtied, James Schamus introduced his movie, Indignation, his directorial debut from Philip Roth’s novel, at MoMA, with the observation that a premiere at MoMA makes up for not having had a bar mitzvah. Hold that Jewish joke. In fact, the film starts with a brief image of war, and a Jewish funeral, a shiva—you can tell by the smoked fish at the buffet—for a fallen soldier. The grieving family is related to the Messners, the Newark butchers at the story’s heart, and their only son Marcus who goes off to college in Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson’s fictional domain) where he falls hopelessly in love with a blond shiksa, Olivia Hutton, from a divorced family with a penchant for oral sex and self destruction. -
Jack Lenor Larsen’s LongHouse Reserve, home to a spectacular sculpture garden including Yoko Ono’s “Wishing Tree,” became the site of great music, food, and art, in “serious moonlight,” its 25th year celebration. As maidens in midnight flowy frocks danced around a reflecting pool, partiers slurped oysters and sipped peach bellinis, gathering for a piano recital by Nico Muhly, last year’s honoree. Robert Wilson, Ralph Gibson, Mary Jane Marcasiano, Jack Youngerman, Eric Fishl, April Gornik, some of whom had paintings on display for a silent auction to benefit the Longhouse program for young artists, sought a breeze on this steamy night. -
In Woody Allen’s new movie, Café Society, Kristen Stewart plays a girl from Nebraska who tries her luck in 1930’s Hollywood, an era of big stars like Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford. Jesse Eisenberg plays a boychick from New York who tries his luck in L.A. too, working with his uncle Phil, a big time agent played by Steve Carell. Jesse’s Bobby falls for Kristen’s Vonnie at first sight, and why not? Close ups of her–Vittorio Storaro’s wonderful cinematography makes this film special in Woody Allen’s already outstanding oeuvre–show Kristen Stewart’s transcendent appeal, a look that’s old glamor, and new. This movie, one of Allen’s most poignant on the subject of youthful dreams, love, marriage, and missed chances, should establish Stewart as the actress of her generation. -
One of the many revelations in Jeff Feuerzeig’s riveting documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story, was that Laura Albert, the mastermind behind her fictive persona JT LeRoy, an author of some renown, also worked with director Gus Van Sant on his 2003 Elephant, a movie of a Columbine-like mass shooting at a school. She was commissioned to write the script, which was then discarded, the movie retaining only the image of a fat girl in the library, the shooter’s first victim. In the post-screening Q&A at Guild Hall for the Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDoc series, Alec Baldwin enthused about Elephant, a coincidence for him to realize the connection to Laura Albert. -
Funny woman Sandra Bernhard joins this week’s list of funny women performing at Guild Hall. There was Kathy Griffin, and if you count the many personae of Charles Busch, this Friday night makes the third for her show titled, “Feel the Bernhard.” A few days before, Sandy interrupted her viewing of Venus Williams’ tennis match at Wimbleton—“She’s winning!” –to talk about what she’s bringing to the stage at the beach.
gossipcentral.com 