Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Congratulations to Lynn Nottage for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her powerful play Ruined.

Meditation/Love and Joy

I’ve been meditating twice a day for years, so I really appreciate these comments by Fr. Laurence Freeman about the effects of meditation, not only the increase of spiritual fruits like love and joy, but also the actual changes in our brains. With regular practice, the transformation “builds up like a suntan if you sit in the sun long enough,” he says, and it energizes us. Listen to Fr. Freeman’s free pod cast.

The Mayor of Mississauga, Ontario

This woman is a pistol! Check out this video.

Amazing Grace cast changes and free concert

Several cast members from the fabulous new musical Amazing Grace: The True Story will offer a free benefit concert May 1 and 2 in Bensalem, PA. The show tells the story of John Newton, a slave trader who went on to pen one of the world’s most famous songs, Amazing Grace.

I’m thrilled that J. Mark McVey (in photo), award-winning Broadway star of Les Miserables, will now be playing the role of John Newton’s father, a beefy part since the father and son had a troubled relationship that was never resolved. Mark, who replaces Dave Felty, not only has a gorgeous voice, but he’s one of my favorite people in show business.

A new member of the cast whom I haven’t met yet but looking forward to getting to know is Julie Hanson, a Broadway star of The Phantom of The Opera, who replaces Ali Ewoldt as Mary Catlett, the woman John Newton loves. Ali, who was great in the part when I saw a concert version of the show, has been cast as Maria in the international production of West Side Story.

The Bensalem concert will also feature Eric Briarley, from the national tour of Les Miz, who will cover all the John Newton parts because Adam Jacobs, who has been playing the role and is powerful in it, is touring in Mamma Mia!. (Eric was Adam's understudy, in the role of Marius, on the Les Miz tour.)
 
I wish I could be at this concert, but as a Drama Desk voter I’m really swamped this time of year with all the New York openings. Hope you can get there. It will be 8 p.m. at the Christian Life Center, 3100 Galloway Rd, Bensalem, PA; phone (215) 322-LIFE. Doors open at 7:15 p.m. No tickets, but an offering will be accepted. Suggested donation: $10

Amazing Grace: The True Story was written by Bucks County's own Christopher Smith. World Magazine says the show features "a soaring score, moving lyrics, and a powerful plot... A coming-of-age drama backed by a setting of storms, battles and high seas adventure."

Chasing Manet

What a joy it is to have a new play by Tina Howe, my favorite contemporary playwright. Chasing Manet is pure Howe -- quirky, delightful characters and laugh-out-loud humor, combined with revealing glimpses into the valiant struggle of the human spirit. It’s her first new play in New York since Pride’s Crossing in 1997, and it’s a gift to be back in Tina Howe world! 

Howe’s plays are great windows into the various stages of life. Young adulthood and its need for recognition shape Painting Churches, her 1983 breakout play about a 20-something artist and her desire for parental approval; Birth and After Birth looks at the strains of motherhood and Approaching Zanzibar deals with the challenges of mid-life, such as menopause and the approaching death of a family member.

In Chasing Manet, directed by Michael Wilson, Howe takes on the final stage, old age. Catherine Sargent (Jane Alexander, in photo right), a noted painter from a prominent Boston WASP family, and Rennie Waltzer, (Lynn Cohen, left), a bubbly Jewish woman with an adoring, involved family, end up sharing a room at the Mount Airy Nursing Home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Watching this unlikely pair evolve into a sisterhood of conspiracy is a treat. 

Rennie’s able to keep her cheery spirit because her confused mind allows her to have conversations with her dead husband as if he were in the room, and she doesn’t see herself in a nursing home -- she thinks she’s in the Mt. Airy Four Star Hotel. Upon arrival, when she hears the bing-bong bells that summon a nurse, she smiles happily and says, “Room service.” Catherine’s mind, on the other hand, is sharp and she resents her son, Royal (Jack Gilpin), for placing her in a nursing home, even though being legally blind she is unable to live alone. Unlike Rennie’s loving relationship with her family, Catherine’s with Royal, an English professor, is bitter. When, on one of his rare visits, Royal tells Rennie’s guests that he is writing a book about Yeats, Catherine says sarcastically, “Still?” 

In her all-powering desire to escape from the confines of the home, but with little vision to guide her, Catherine elicits Rennie’s help, even though Rennie needs a wheelchair. Catherine will push and Rennie will guide, a perfect plan only to the desperate, which Catherine is. She books them passage on the QE II and they plot their escape to Paris, “the blind leading the lame,” Catherine's spirit lightened with the thought of seeing Manet’s painting Dejeuner sur l’Herbe once again at the Louvre. (She has a copy hanging over her bed.) 

One of the funniest scenes has the two going through their considerable combined stock of medicines deciding what to take. Catherine can’t read the labels and Rennie, with her perpetual confusion, isn’t sure what anything is. Their deciding factor is how “serious” the pills sound when they shake the bottles. Then Rennie’s mind becomes momentarily crystal clear as she thinks about the one pill she must have. “Stool softener,” she says and both ladies rush for their night stands to grab their bottles. Together they shake them while gleefully singing a little song about there being no softener like stool softener to the tune of “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” It’s hysterical, and a classic Howe moment. 

Alexander plays Catherine just right, capturing her haughtiness and anger, but allowing her free-spirited side to emerge naturally in time, and Cohen is the perfect foil. Julie Halston is hilarious as a senile patient with a salty tongue, a role she quickly, and frequently, exchanges for that of Rennie’s daughter. Rounding out the cast are Vanessa Aspillaga, David Margulies and Rob Riley. Tony Straiges’s sets, David C. Wollard’s costumes and Howell Binkley’s lighting work beautifully together to bring this world to life.

The delicious ending, which I won’t spoil for you, is pure Howe. She knows how to send her audiences out with their hearts high, which you know if you’ve seen The Art of Dining, Painting Churches and Approaching Zanzibar. When I interviewed Howe in 1990 for my second masters thesis, which was on her work, I asked her about her mastery of dynamic closings. They are a major focus of her work and, she said, usually surprise her as much as her audience. “The ending is everything to me,” she said. “To me the whole point of writing a play is to sculpt that shock, that visual shock. I think that’s my strongest suit in a way. Often the ending is what comes last, but I just know it has to be an epiphany. I do struggle long and hard to try to come up with something strong.” 

Well, Tina, you did it again. Thank you for another wonderful evening of theatre, and please don’t make us wait so long the next time. 

Chasing Manet, a Primary Stages production, runs through May 2 at 59E59 Theaters (located at 59 E. 59th St., between Park and Madison Avenues). Tickets are available at the box office, by calling (212) 279-4200 and online at www.ticketcentral.com. For more information visit primarystages.com.

Blithe Spirit

This revival of Noel Coward’s classic comedy definitely lives up to its name -- it’s joyful and full of life. Every member of the cast, headed by four-time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury, sparkles with wit and impeccable timing, the set is spectacular and not one second of the show is wasted. It’s a shimmering treat from start to finish.

Lansbury is a hoot as eccentric psychic Madame Arcati, cavorting around the stage in her colorful garb (fabulous costumes by Martin Pakledinaz) and conjuring up the spirit of Elvira (Christine Ebersole), the lovely and a bit naughty late wife of novelist Charles Condomine (Rupert Everett) in whose elegant English country house the “séance” takes place.

The play, perfectly directed by Michael Blakemore, begins as Charles and his older second wife, Ruth (Jayne Atkinson), and their friends Dr. and Mrs. Bradman (Simon Jones and Deborah Rush) sip cocktails, chat and joke about the upcoming séance, which Charles has initiated to observe Madame Arcati as research for a character for one of his mystery novels. He gets more than expected after the aged medium bursts on the scene and begins her conjuring.

Ebersole is a delightfully mischievous ghost who appears after the guests have left. She flitters around the stage tormenting Ruth, who can’t see her, and flirting with Charles, who very much can.

Susan Louise O’Connor is also a treasure as a frighten mouse of a character, the servant Edith, who clatters the dishes loudly and scatters about in a near run.

Peter J. Davison’s set is divine and Brian MacDevitt lighting is effectively cheery or shadowy, as needed.

Blithe Spirit, which premiered in 1941, was one of Coward's biggest successes. The original Broadway production starred Clifton Webb as Charles, Peggy Wood as Ruth and Leonora Corbett as Elvira, with Mildred Natwick as Madame Arcati. The play originated in London, with Coward starring as Charles.

See this magnificent new production now at the Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St. Tickets are available at the box office, by calling (212) 239-6200 or by visiting www.telecharge.com.

A Little Bit Wicked

Kristin Chenoweth is one of my favorite Broadway stars, so I looked forward to reading her memoir, A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages. Sadly, after making my way through the 221-page volume, I know little more about this talented performer than I did before.

Part of the problem is to be expected given Ms. Chenoweth’s age -- 40. In writing about human psychological growth, Carl Jung likened the first half of life to morning, a time when we develop our ego as we relate to the world. In the afternoon of our journey, beginning in mid-life, we connect inwardly to become our true and full selves. Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father proves that someone under 45 can write a deep, insightful memoir, but generally it would be better, like Jane Fonda in her compelling and introspective My Life So Far, to wait until after a 60th birthday to begin critically examining one’s life.

Adopted at five days old by June and Jerry Chenoweth of Broken Arrow, OK, Ms. Chenoweth was called Kristi Dawn and grew up happy and loved by her extended family. She was told her birth parents were an unmarried fight attendant and a pilot who was married and had other children. She’s had no desire to meet them and is just grateful her mother didn’t use her employee benefits to fly to where abortion was legal in 1968. “She chose to have me instead, and thank you does not begin to cover how I feel. But that’s all I’ve ever really wanted to say to her.”

Ms. Chenoweth’s greatest hero is the mother who raised her and supported her performance pursuits, first ballet, then beauty pageants and finally singing and acting. “She knew nothing about showbiz and cared even less,” Ms. Chenoweth writes. “Instead of pushing me to perform, she taught me to pray, and that made her the perfect mother for me.”

The second most influential woman in Ms. Chenoweth’s life was her voice teacher at Oklahoma City University, Florence Birdwell, who heard in her student “the voice of the decade, the voice of her generation.” She encouraged Ms. Chenoweth to switch her major from musical theatre to opera performance and to stay on for a masters degree. Along the way she transformed her student from “a precocious belter” into “a classically trained coloratura soprano.”

Then she went one step further, persuading Ms. Chenoweth to change her name to Kristin. “You already look like a Kristi Dawn. You already have that to fight against. . . Insist on being taken seriously when you open your mouth to sing.”

Since graduation Ms. Chenoweth has performed in several Broadway shows, winning a Tony in 1999 for her efforts in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. She’s an opera singer, has had her own TV series, “Kristin,” been a regular on others and appeared in a half dozen feature films. She shares anecdotes about these accomplishments, far too much about her beauty pageant days and some really funny tales of her early days in New York migrating from one subletted apartment to another.

She has nothing but praise for most of her former lovers, who include Broadway star Marc Kudisch and “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin, but no reflection on why her relationships don’t last, other than to say no man has been able to “handle the complicated logistics of my life.”

What’s lacking is perspective on all of this, an examination of patterns and some insight into who she really is beneath the pretty and talented performer. Ms. Fonda was brutally honest about scrutinizing the choices she had made and considering how they shaped the woman she is today -- and about her relationships and why she was in them. Hers is an extremely vulnerable book, but that’s what makes it so inspiring. Ms. Chenoweth writes that “some things are sacred, other things private and others just none of anyone’s beeswax,” but getting personal is what effective memoir writing is all about. The closest she gets is at the end when she talks about her religion and the heat she drew from conservative Christians over her more liberal view of homosexuality. “I’d never watered down my message of faith for Hollywood, and I wasn’t going to water down my message of acceptance for these folks now,” she writes.

One significant chance for her to go deeper would have been in relating her months caring for her mother following a double mastectomy. I wish co-writer Joni Rodgers had insisted on the basic element of good writing -- show don’t tell. Take us into the room, please. This mother and daughter had always been close. How was this time together different? She says they talked about things they had never talked about before. What? And how did this change their relationship? Ms. Chenoweth devotes a mere five paragraphs to this experience, while her hair problems and adventures with extensions get nearly 40.

A Little Bit Wicked can be entertaining in the way reading People Magazine at the nail salon during a pedicure can be, but it’s more like an extended interview on late night television than an analysis of a life lived large. Ms. Chenoweth has a reputation for being one of the nicest and most professional people in the business, and I've certainly liked her the times I interviewed her. Her life deserves a better accounting. “When I’m a grand old dame of the stage, I might get around to writing a proper ‘tell-all’ autobiography,” she writes. “Right now, I’m offering this completely biased ‘tell-a-little’ slice of life.” This one is Kristi Dawn’s story. I hope she does write that second volume someday because I’d really like to get to know Kristin.