Burt of Burt’s Bees, honey-bee pollen and beeswax skin care products sold in supermarkets and pharmacies all across American, really exists, and he even looks just like the illustration on the yellow packaging: a bearded Walt Whitman type with shades and hat. Amazing! As the documentary about him, Burt’s Buzz, reveals about the originator of this brand, an unambitious hippie who resides in Maine, Burt has little use for money, gadgets, internet, the trappings of modernity or contemporary life. He does, however, like land, the more forested, the better. Somehow, beguiled by a woman with designs named Roxanne Quimby, he founded a multi-billion dollar business, and now gets a small fraction of the proceeds. Oh well. Burt Shavitz attended this week’s Crosby Street Hotel premiere of Burt’s Buzz, directed by Jody Shapiro, with Isabella Rossellini as executive producer. After the screening, his golden retriever appeared on Skype and Burt got him to bark hello. I guess he does like some technology. The delighted crowd was treated to giftbags of Burt’s Bees summer sun products, not a moment too soon.
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- 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
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One line gets a big laugh at Guild Hall’s production of Red, the play screenwriter John Logan wrote about the painter Mark Rothko: in his studio, superbly created on the John Drew Theater stage, Rothko (Victor Slezak) pontificates to his new assistant (Christian Scheider) about the empty soul of commercial art. In a hundred years, he says, no one will think the work of Andy Warhol of any importance. If the play is to be believed, Rothko was indeed a small-minded man, competitive with Jackson Pollock in abstract expressionism, deriding Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol, and others in the pop genre. The play’s occasion is a commission that will make him a lot of money, to create art for The Four Seasons, a new restaurant in Philip Johnson’s Seagram’s building. In fact, in its rotation of art, East Hampton’s Roy Nicholson’s work has graced the Four Seasons walls, to be replaced this past year by Robert Indiana’s. As directed by Stephen Hamilton, in Red, Rothko’s conflict about this commercial endeavor vs. his artistic integrity is high stakes, as is his generosity as a human being. -
Even before I got to Schubert Alley, a tad late of course, the sounds were rocking Broadway. Audiences were treated to a free sampling of numbers from the best of the best accompanied by a terrific orchestra, before the performers, dressed in street clothes departed for their respective shows, just in time to gear up for the matinees. Bryce Pinkham from A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder was the first voice I heard, just the welcome I needed. Nominated for Best Actor in a Musical, he’s up against his co-star Jefferson Mays; it’ll be a tough choice for voters. The show is frontrunner for Best Musical. The superb Les Miz revival features Nikki M. James as Eponine; her solo had the crowd in thrall, even those who were chowing down inside Junior’s. -
The subway may be an edgy experience on a good day, but the 1964 encounter between a black man and a swivel hipped white woman, at the center of LeRoi Jones’ allegory, Dutchman, may terrify today’s rush hour straphanger. As mounted by the consistently wonderful Classical Theater of Harlem in tandem with National Black Theater, this 50th anniversary production of Dutchman, is the most gripping 45 minutes in town. -
The skinny is this: See the documentary Fed Up for consciousness awareness regarding food. Katie Couric and Laurie David have joined forces with director Stephanie Soechtig to shine a light on the realities of the food industry’s sabotage of our health and safety. The simple idea that in our weight crazed country, people can be obese and undernourished at the same time, that labeling food is skewed so that representations of sugar content are hidden, that eating less and exercising more are not the key to weight reduction success, or to health, unless we pay very close attention to what we put in our mouths. Fed up yet? -
Introducing Gloria Steinem at this year’s New York Women’s Foundation breakfast to the 2,200 guests at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, Abigail Disney recounted the story of Steinem addressing the future “Masters of the Universe” at the all-boys Collegiate School. If you treat women with respect and kindness, and not as objects, you will get the best sex in your life, Disney repeated. And, think of your father. Think of the kind of father you would like to be, and how you can get there. In many ways the anecdote illustrates why Gloria Steinem matters. Yes, Steinem still has “IT,” an ageless beauty, but that is the least of her accomplishments, compared to the values she imparts and exemplifies. When asked to whom she will pass the torch, Steinem says, I’m keeping the torch, and using it to light
other torches. And in that packed room, she touched everyone. -
Now in his tenth year performing at the Café Carlyle,
Steve Tyrell started his set this week wondering why audiences rarely ask for songs by the songwriters’ names, only by the crooners who made them famous. And so began a show organized around a history of the American songwriter: “Taking a Chance on Love,” Vernon Duke’s tune with John LaTouche and Ted Fetter’s lyrics, Harry Woods’ “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Try a Little Tenderness” and “What a Little Moonlight Can Do.” He sang Isham Jones-Gus Kahn’s “It Had to be You,” and Sammy Cahn’s “It’s Magic,” spontaneously pointing his mike at a woman in the first row who gamely completed the refrain. -
The name of this utterly charming movie conjures images of
the Disney cartoon feature with a brunette cartoon star singing in the
library. Dido Belle, however, was a real life mixed race woman, smart
enough to have had a career in the law, but for 18th century England,
she went far. The talented Amma Asante’s movie is an Austenesque
comedy of manners, keenly involved with who shall marry whom, and
whose fortune is more plump than so and so’s social standing, but
here’s the delicious twist: Belle is desirably financially endowed,
but as a mulatto, and illegitimate, she is of dubious position.
Thoughtful and daring, she influences an important decision, changing
the course of British history. -
Early on in this exuberant immersive dance extravaganza,
the young Imelda Marcos in a tattered frock sings of a time when she
had no shoes. Of course, when she rose from local beauty queen to be
The Philippines’ first lady, shoes became her trademark of excess,
only enhancing her epic myth. Now back at The Public Theater after a
several month hiatus, ever so slightly tweaked, the play about her,
David Byrne’s Here Lies Love retains the energy, superb acting,
singing and dancing of last year’s staging, and is the season’s
must-dance event. -
Needless to say, certain tropes follow actor/ director/successful-son-of-a-famous father Rob Reiner around: one is the epithet “Meathead” from his role on the great television sitcom “All in the Family,” and the other is “I’ll have what she’s having,” the signature Katz’s deli line uttered by Reiner’s mother Estelle upon seeing Meg Ryan’s character Sally fake an orgasm in the hit movie “When Harry Met Sally.” These bits were lovingly deployed last night at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Tribute to Rob Reiner. In one of the evening’s special moments, Ryan and her “Harry,” Billy Crystal walked hand in hand across the Avery Fisher Hall’s flower festooned stage, with Crystal quipping, “We are finally under the chupah. For anyone waiting for the sequel, this is it.” -
Is there a vicar in the room, asked the British artist Ralph Steadman at the premiere of Charlie and Lucy Paul’s documentary about him, For No Good Reason. His work instantly recognizable from his collaborations with Hunter S. Thompson, most notably for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and articles for Rolling Stone Magazine, Steadman is a mix of perversion and honesty, the very qualities he admired in Thompson and another one of his literary heroes, William S. Burroughs. A vicar might have rained on all of their parades. -
In the hilarious old-school tradition, Bullets Over Broadway at the St. James Theater, based on Woody Allen’s 1994 film of the same name, features a writer who makes a Faustian bargain with a mob boss, Nick Valenti (Vincent Pastore) who makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Of course, Woody wrote the book for this musical, so it may not be so surprising: That David Shayne in the person of Zach Braff, frenetic, neurotic, a shpilke-ridden nerd, evokes the Woody Allen persona we have come to know and love in his films. -
Patti Lomax never heard of Colin Firth when he came to visit her husband Eric Lomax in Berwick Upon Tweed, their home in the northernmost part of England, just a 45-minute train ride to Edinburgh. Firth was researching his role in The Railway Man, based on Lomax’ life story. When other women were swooning over Firth’s Mr. Darby in Pride and Prejudice, she told a reporter at the film’s premiere party at Rouge Tomate this week, she was not attending movies because her husband had a neurological disorder, perhaps connected to the time he was a British prisoner of war, in forced labor in Singapore, and tortured by his Japanese tormentors. “They captured a great deal about Eric,” she noted in praise of Colin Firth’s performance, that of the actor Jeremy Irvine who plays him as a younger man, and the production under Jonathan Teplitzky’s direction. -
Sprinkling his talk with the “F” word, Kevin Spacey recounted the wellworn story of how his idol Jack Lemmon encouraged him when Spacey was a 13 year old. “That was a touch of terrific,” Lemmon said to the aspiring actor, after seeing him perform at an acting seminar in Los Angeles, and 13 years later Lemmon auditioned him for the Broadway production of Long Day’s Journey into Night, to play his son. He became his mentor, friend, and father figure. Yes, as we know Spacey is a major movie star: clips from The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, Margin Call, Glengarry Glen Ross, and many other films at the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual fete this week on Park Avenue attested to that fact. But for this viewer, his Richard III at BAM was Spacey at his very most stellar, followed by a modern version of that Shakespearean malevolence on Netflix’s House of Cards. You could say, mean and vicious are his calling. However, when MMI chairman Herbert S. Schlosser fainted at cocktails, Spacey was the first by his side. -
It might have been your typically rousing Sam Moore concert at City Winery this week, featuring the Soul Man’s classic repertoire, starting with “Let the Good Times Roll,” “Knock on Wood,” “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” “Hold On [I’m Coming],” and with two young women he met at a concert, “Something is Wrong with My Baby.” But just as this great night was escalating in excitement, Sam wanted to remember Martin Luther King whose death day is April 4. And so he added a new song, “They Killed a King.” It may have added a sentimental touch to a performance that is smooth and soulful, but, as Moore’s wife Joyce explained, Sam knew him. He finished a generous session exclaiming, “Now, let’s get crazy,” for “I Thank You” his signature “Soul Man,” “Dance to the Music,” segueing to the music from Shaft. The octogenarian has never seemed younger. -
To some, red velvet refers to the latest craze in cupcakes. To others, like those who attended the New York opening of a British import at St. Ann’s Warehouse in downtown Brooklyn, Red Velvet is the play to see.About an American actor from a bygone era, black and brilliant, named Ira Aldridge, with outsized ego and hubris to match, Red Velvet limns familiar racial themes, and then freshens them beyond a story of victimization: a black actor in the early 1833 gets a chance against all bias to perform Othello with an all white cast at London’s Covent Garden. But, he has his own ideas about how to play the moor. Aldridge experiences a classic demise that you may argue is color blind. The actor Adrian Lester brings vitality to this role, and the play within. As a black actor dismissed for refusing to restrain his all too ferocious performance as the crazed Othello, Lester is all rage, and vulnerability.
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The revival of Les Miserables comes weighted with history, and not just the French Revolution as Victor Hugo imagined it: a long running Broadway original, a more recent revival, an Oscar nominated movie just last year. Certainly producers are counting on a familiarity with the material, the show’s rich music covered by many pop vocalists. But with its superb casting and recent trim, this Les Miserables revival at the Imperial Theater is simply stunning. -
Donald Rumsfeld, for no apparent reason, agreed to allow Fog of War documentarian Errol Morris to interview him. Was it to assure his legacy? We may never know. When the filmmaker asks him that very question after a long evasive interview in the new film Unknown Known opening this week, he evades even that, replying, “That’s a vicious question. Damned if I know.” -
Jim Jarmusch, the celebrated indie filmmaker gives the vampire genre a clever tweak in his new movie, Only Lovers Left Alive. If you’ve been around sucking blood for centuries, you’ve probably met history’s most famous characters, Byron, Schubert, to mention a few. The movie pushes this conceit, name dropping with aplomb, or just cracking wise in vampire tropes. Roaming the Tangier medina, Eve (Tilda Swinton) follows the well-worn path of the midcentury dissolute and hip, looking for a fix in the manner of beat legendary figures. Arriving at the “1001 Nights” café, she finds none other than Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) who has a special “Type O,” just what she needs. The café is named after one once owned by Brion Gysin, in the days when William Burroughs resided in the then seedy port hotel, the Muneria. Known as “El Hombre Invisible,” he was a figure of unidentifiable age, seeming to exist on junk alone. -
“Are you ready for your history lesson,” asked the usher at a recent performance of All the Way at the Neil Simon Theater. Please! All the Way is way more than a history lesson, although it does dramatize a significant part of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s presidency from his taking office after Kennedy’s assassination through the march on Selma, the murders of voting recruiters Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, and his signature achievement, passing The Civil Rights Act. Yes, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Brandon J. Dirden), Sen. Hubert Humphrey (Robert Petkoff), J. Edgar Hoover (Michael Keaton), Governor George Wallace (Rob Campbell) and Lady Bird Johnson (Betsy Aidem) are significant players in the political tableau, which also reveals the requisite wheeling, dealing, and compromise under his leadership. Most of all, this fast-paced and entertaining three hours covering November, 1963-November, 1964, is the occasion to see the extraordinary Bryan Cranston, in his Broadway debut, morph into the role of LBJ, even down to his boxer shorts. Bryan Cranston can take his Tony now. -
Strident, a woman with whom to reckon, Tyne Daly’s Katharine Gerard is a force of nature. Encased in fur, she’s the refrigerator-sized iceberg in Terrence McNally’s Mothers and Sons, a new play that opened at the Golden Theater on Monday. Well, never has a joke carried such heft: if it isn’t one thing, it’s your mother!Arriving unannounced at the Upper West Side apartment of her dead son’s lover, Cal (a terrific Frederick Weller) now newly married and with a son, she represents every parent who could not understand or accept a gay child. Her only son, Andre died of AIDS in the early scourge of that plague; it’s not an event that can heal, even after decades. And here’s the switch: she is the one alone, ostracized, loveless, and finally embraced. The play, an extension of material McNally first wrote back in the late ‘80’s, is an important social and political history that culminates in being the first Broadway play to feature a gay marriage.
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As a desperate widow in MTC’s new play, Tales from Red Vienna, Nina Arianda’s Helena Altman is demure in period weeds, even as the gentlemen she services rip her black lace. In her new movie, Rob the Mob, opening this week, Arianda’s Rosie is wily and saucy and naïve as befits a character in a modern “Bonnie & Clyde” story, about a real-life Queens couple deigning to hold up members of the “family” in their social clubs. Her boyfriend, Tommy, in the charming if rough person of Michael Pitt, has this brainstorm sitting in on the trial of John Gotti, that the Mafia, bosses and soldiers, wield no weapons as they play cards, and in the name of his father, he simply and nervously shows up, asks them for their watches and wallets, while she waits in the getaway car. Needless to say, this daring prank comes to no good end for the young lovers. -
The illuminating documentary Big Men tells a variation of the oil story in Africa. Nigeria was an example of fifty years of oil discovery, with busted pipelines, and rampant pollution, a result of the business of oil. Ghana was next in line for oil extraction. Attracted to this story, filmmaker Rachel Boynton asks the tough questions of the “big men,” African government officials and American companies like Kosmos, that wish to profit. These characters appear so willing to explain their greed on camera. I asked Boynton the obvious: what’s a nice girl like you doing with a subject like this?
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Introducing a new documentary at HBO, “Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert,” Executive Director Sheila Nevins paused at the podium to ask Trent Gilbert whether or not he was feeling safe. The dimpled 4 year old who nearly steals the show from his mom, was seated in the back of the screening room, about to see the movie about the challenges facing his family, mom as well as his two older sisters, as they struggle to live on the $9.49/ per hour mom makes working at an elder care facility. The kids are well mannered and cooperative with the filmmakers, Shari Cookson and Nick Doob, as they follow the family around for a year, part of The Shriver Report, from home in a trailer, to child care, and in and out of various cars including the one driven by their dad who does not live with them while Katrina has to help pay for his gas. This life in Chattanooga, Tennessee is not the worst, not utter poverty, it is just the way it is for this ambitious mother who is seen as emblematic of 42 million American mothers out there, trying. -
Filmmaker provocateur Lars von Trier’s latest movie exceeds even his own perversions. The title, Nymphomaniac, tells you much. A troubled woman named Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is rescued and helped to convalescing by a professorial type (Stellan Skarsgard). She explains her despair, recounting the history of her sexuality. Another man might pounce, but the scene remains cerebral, she in bed, he by her side. The voice of von Trier, he listens to each anecdote, responding with correlatives in science, in nature, in the world of ideas, while the viewer is treated to visual flashbacks starring Stacy Martin; in her first movie, as young Joe, she engages in a game with a classmate whereby she has sex with as many men on a moving train as possible, the prize, a bag of candies. Dressed in demure dresses and knee socks, Joe becomes the traditional object of the male gaze, allowing von Trier to muse about the human organism as an anthropologist might.
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