Dramatizing a Dramatic Diagnosis: A Conversation with Sam Simon

 

Dramatizing a dramatic diagnosis

A Conversation with Sam Simon

 

Trained as a lawyer, Samuel A. (Sam) Simon started his career as a member of Ralph Nader’s first legal advocacy group in Washington, D.C. He went on to start his own consulting firm and became a regular commentator on national news programs. In 2018 he was diagnosed with MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment). In 2021 he was diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s disease. He is writing a play, Dementia Man: An Existential Journey, about his experience with the disease.

Your background is in the law and public affairs. How did you come to write your first play, The Actual Dance, about being the spouse of someone living with cancer? You became a playwright and performer.

I was taking improv classes with a theatre group in New York in 2000 when my wife was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. We had been married for 34 years. I had to come to terms with it. She was not supposed to survive. One improv exercise was to stand up and talk for 20 minutes. In that 20 minutes I began talking about something I had not realized was in me. It’s what I call spiritual trauma. I had an experience that I needed to talk about. Theatre enabled me to find an outlet.

Susan did come through her cancer but now you have a different diagnosis to deal with and have again turned to dramatic expression.

Yes, my diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. It never occurred to me that I could write and perform a play with Alzheimer’s. A theatrical friend and colleague, Gail Schickele,  who markets solo artists and who was a fan of my work, encouraged me. She had seen The Actual Dance. I can’t tell you how energizing it is. I have a huge need to change the narrative around and reimagine the use of that dirty word dementia and the stereotypes. This feels like the most important work of my life. My mission is to make it available to everybody who needs it. I believe in the power of the arts.

Theatre discovered me through the role of being a caregiver of the wife I was expected to lose. It’s a privilege to be there for that person. Now the shoes are on the other foot.

The preview portion of Dementia Man that you have finished was showcased in January at the highly selective Association of Performing Arts Professional Conference in New York. What was the reaction?

It had an extraordinary reception. I held the script because I didn’t have it memorized. The playwright Jeffrey Sweet said, “Keep the script. It becomes part of the show. When you got on the stage and talked we heard you. We didn’t notice the script.” It makes sense in the context of the play. I was humbled by the feedback and encouraged to get this out there.

Your character describes your shockingly insensitive treatment by your first neurologist. When you asked, “What’s next?” he replied, “There’s only one future for you, down. Things will get worse.” What do you have to say about that now?

The neurological world is profoundly broken. I experienced Susan going through breast cancer. People were there to help. There were support groups. There was literature. With my diagnosis of dementia  (I prefer neuropsychological disease) it was, “Get your affairs in order.” I wasn’t told about any support groups. It was about as stark a contrast as you can get.

What’s next for you and the play?

I’m delighted to report that Dementia Man, An Existential Journey, was selected for premiere in the Washington, DC. Capitol Fringe Festival in July. I’ve already had one reading at community center, and ANDTheater Company hosted a work-in-progress performance in New York.  We received terrific feedback we will use to keep getting better.

My goal is to show that even with a cognitive disorder it is possible to live with dignity and have a meaningful life. I am so animated. I’m in the early stages and everyday I learn something new. There’s no doubt I’m impaired but only mildly impaired now.

I’m not going to walk away from my disease and feel sorry for myself. I will embrace the life I’m given. Choose life. That’s a bit of my faith. The cardinal rule of Judaism is to choose life. I’ve been made to use my disease to be useful to myself and others.

 

Excerpt from Dementia Man:

I am now at the five-year mark from the initial MCI diagnosis. We have since learned a lot more about Alzheimer’s. And I can sense things getting worse. It raises the stakes on what to do next. What are my choices?

. . .  maybe, I should stick around, and figure out how to live a meaningful life as a deeply forgetful and confused person. Maybe I can cause trouble, and advocate for the world to accommodate me as I will be. I have been a troublemaker most of my life.

I wrote this feature for Alzheimer’s TODAY magazine, published by the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.

Josh Groban slits throats with ease in 'Sweeney Todd'

      For fans of Sweeney Todd, and they are legion, the latest revival at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre will not disappoint, and not just because it stars Josh Groban as “the demon barber of Fleet Street,” although for the more than 1,500, full-house audience members at Saturday’s matinee he was definitely a big draw.

     The attraction of this 1979 Tony-winning Stephen Sondheim musical, with a book by Hugh Wheeler, escapes me.  I saw the original with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury, the Broadway revival in 2005 with Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone and now I’ve sat through this nearly three-hour production.  I still don’t see why a show about a vengeful, depraved murderer in Victorian England who slits people’s throats, drops them from a rigged barber chair into a hole in the floor and the oven below, where their flesh becomes filler for his partner-in-crime’s meat pies is so beloved.  As the chorus sings “raise your razor high, Sweeney,” the audience cheers him on, delighting in each bloody body.  It’s beyond creepy to me.

     Yes, the Tony Award-winning music is mesmerizing, here with a 26-member orchestra, and it has some nice songs, like “Johanna,” beautifully sung by Jordan Fisher, and “Pretty Women” and “Not While I’m Around,” but people see Sweeney as a sort of justified anti-hero avenging the wrong done to him 15 years before when an evil judge had him transported to Australian because he coveted Sweeney’s wife.  It’s operatic, and is often performed by opera companies, but it’s not for me.

     And then there’s Sweeney’s partner, the inhuman Mrs. Lovett whose idea it is to bake the murder victims into meat pies, which then turn her failed bake shop into a booming business.  She’s played in this revival by Annaleigh Ashford with exaggerated physical comedy that the audience loved but I had trouble understanding her cockney accent.

     Under Thomas Kail’s (Hamilton) direction this revival is full scale, a sharp contrast to the paired down version in the 2005 revival from John Doyle.  Mimi Lien’s sets, Emilio Sosa’s costumes and Steven Hoggett’s choreography are top notch, as is Natasha Katz’s lighting that evocatively creates the dark, brooding London underworld.  Theatrically it meets the highest standards but I didn’t leave the theatre uplifted as I should have after seeing quality work.  I can’t separate myself from the grotesque subject matter, and I don’t remember the other production being as bloody as this one.  

     One of the friends who saw the original with me has no memory of it at all.  I can understand forgetting some of the intricacies of the plot but I don’t know how anyone could forget the gore and the horror of the crimes, enthusiastically approved of by audiences that find them funny.  She thinks she must have been too traumatized to remember.  

New York, New York. So nice they had to name it twice

      I was fairly confident that any show called New York, New York would be right up my alley and I was right.  The new Kander and Ebb musical (with additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda) at the St. James Theatre is a buoyant celebration of the place that became my city of destination at 11 and my home since 1985.  I have been called the personification of the old I Love New York poster and I accept that characterization proudly.

     This musical, directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman and inspired by the MGM movie of the same name, doesn’t break any new ground.  Written by David Thompson and Sharon Washington, it is set in 1947 and delightfully retells the story that’s as old as the city —young people, fueled by ambition and dreams, knowing there is nowhere else on earth they want to be.  In this case the seekers are a hot-headed Irish musician, Jimmy Doyle (Colton Ryan), who drinks too much (stereotype?), a Black singer from Philadelphia, Francine Evans (Anna Uzele), a Black trumpet-playing soldier, Jesse Webb (John Clay III), and Mateo Diaz (Angel Sigala), a drummer just arrived from Cuba with his mother (Janet Dacal).  Are they going to achieve their dreams?  Of course.  The fun is watching them get there.  As Jesse says, “Everybody in New York wants to do something you can’t do anywhere else.”

     Which is not to say the show couldn’t be better.  The first act, at 90 minutes, is too long.  It’s patchy and uneven, and doesn’t seem to fit with the second act, in which the plots are developed.  Act One feels repetitive as we hear in numerous ways how nothing is going to stop these young people from making it in New York.  The show runs nearly three hours.  I would cut it to two hours with no intermission.

     Donna Zakowska’s colorful period costumes are delightful and downright gorgeous for the gowns Francine wears once she becomes a hit radio singer.  Scenic designer Beowulf Boritt’s sets and projections, along with Christopher Ash, convey the romance of the city in those hopeful, post-war years, and the energy, with all those neon signs glowing bright.  The scene in Central Park at night with the ground covered in snow and more falling softly is New York at its loveliest. 

     The dance numbers are energetic.  I particularly liked the construction workers tapping on a beam high above the city.  It recalls that famous photo of workers eating their lunch with their feet dangling in the air.  That photo appears as a projection as the first act ends. 

     All of the principals are strong but Uzele stands out.  She uses her voice beautifully rather than to be yet another one of those tedious Broadway belters.  Her bio lists two Broadway credits, Six and Once on This Island.  She will have many more.  She is the star of every scene in which she appears and her story interested me the most — her climb up the ladder of success, intertwined with her romance with and then marriage to Jimmy, her stardom and eventual realization of the price she needs to pay to keep it, which includes her marriage, and how she resolves all for the show’s dazzling final number.  

     Wearing a luscious form-fitting gown for a night club appearance, she starts to sing as the show’s orchestra unexpectedly rises from the unseen pit to extend the stage in front of her.  My spirits soared as I heard those first notes of that title song we all know so well.  As she began to sing the audience also rose and Uzele beckoned us to join in.  She needn’t have bothered.  Nothing could have stopped us.  For that time we were all — natives, transplants and tourists — one big personification of the I Love New York poster, singing our hearts out about the greatest city on the face of the earth.  

     

Why did Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht return to Broadway for this play?

 

 

     It’s always good to see Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht onstage.  I wish, though, that they had chosen an interesting play rather than David Auburn’s Summer, 1976.  I can’t imagine what attracted them to these two boring, self-involved characters who talk, and talk, and talk about themselves but show little emotion, even when they are describing an unexpected pregnancy in college or the infidelity of a husband.  If they can’t be more involved in their lives why should we?

     Another mystery is why veteran Daniel Sullivan would want to direct this play, except that he directed Auburn’s 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Proof (which I also didn’t like), so maybe it was out of loyalty.  Which might have been Linney's motivation, having worked with Sullivan in Time Stands Still in 2010.

     Linney plays the haughty Diana, a failed artist now teaching at Ohio State University, and Hecht is Alice, a slightly flaky stay-at-home mom.  They don’t like each other at first after having been brought together by their young daughters who are friends.  They enter the stage at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre from opposite sides and sit on chairs at either end of a table.  The only other furniture is a bench at the back of the table.  What is it with bare stages this season?  Set designer John Lee Beatty puts Summer in the club with A Doll’s House and Camelot.

     We learn about Diana and Alice initially as they sit and address the audience.  In time they interact but never really breach the distance between them for long.  I’m assuming the play is supposed to be a comedy.  The audience certainly laughed enough.  Here’s an example of what passes for humor throughout the 90-minute show.  Diana tells us Alice thinks of herself as a hippie but she isn’t really, she just has a messy house.  The audience roared.  My theory about shows like this is that people who have watched sitcoms all their lives are programmed to laugh after every line because the studio audiences — and in years past, the laugh track — laugh after every line.  People have been conditioned by stupid TV shows to laugh.  I’d like to be able to push a pause button and turn to a couple of people and ask them why they found that funny.  I bet they couldn’t answer.

     But even if that comment had been funny, the hippie reference is odd for a play set in 1976.  Hippies were so 1960s.  I remember that summer well.  I was between my sophomore and junior year in college.  The country was full of joyful celebrations marking its Bicentennial.  Why set a play in such a specific year and ignore that?  The Tall Ships came to us in Baltimore but surely something must have been going on in Columbus, Ohio, where the play is set. 

     Diana and Alice seem oblivious to something else that was happening at the time that was even more important to me — the women’s movement.  Did these two midwestern women not know what was going on?  I don’t understand setting a play in such a specific year and then ignoring these two events that came to my mind as soon as I heard the play’s title.

     Their clothes (costumes by Linda Cho) don’t reflect the period either, but I suppose we are to associate them with the older characters reflecting on their past.  Diana wears black slacks and a black T-shirt and Alice is in a long, flowy, drab blue and red peasant dress.  Both women would look right at home today in the East Village.  The 70s was the decade of disco.  Fashion reflected the “Saturday Night Fever” look.  

     Auburn was born in November of 1969 so he was probably ready to enter or had just finished first grade in the summer of 1976.  He should have bounced this play off of his mother.  She could have helped him be more year specific.  Maybe she could have even helped him give his two female characters depth.    

Sean Hayes, classical pianist? Yep

 

     Fans of Sean Hayes associate him with comedy.  This is natural considering his 11 years playing Jack McFarland on the TV sitcom “Will and Grace.”  They won’t be surprised to hear his comic timing and delivery now on Broadway in Good Night, Oscar.  

     They might be surprised to see his dramatic chops as he plays pianist and intellectual wit Oscar Levant, a man who suffered from serious mental illness and drug addiction.  When he falls to the floor writhing in a breakdown several times during the 100-minute show Hayes brings us the tortured man behind the humor.

     But what is likely to be the bigger surprise for Hayes fans is that he is a classically trained pianist.  Portraying Levant performing on “The Tonight Show,” he sits down at the piano and plays a seven-minute excerpt from George Gershwin’s challenging “Rhapsody in Blue.”  The audience at the Belasco Theatre went wild.

     I was right with them because I love that piece and because it’s a joy to see these unexpected gifts from an actor I had only seen in “Promises, Promises” and “An Act of God” on Broadway.

     Under the direction of Lisa Peterson, Doug Wright’s play is an encapsulated story of the man whose gifts and demons fought each other for control of his life.  Levant was widely regarded for his interpretation of Gershwin’s music.  He also appeared in the film “An American in Paris” and frequented TV talk shows where he joked about his mental health struggles and drug addiction.

     Set in spring 1958 in an NBC studio in Burbank, CA, the play centers around the first night of host Jack Paar’s (Ben Rappaport) “Tonight Show” in Los Angeles.  He reluctantly agreed to relocate from New York after NBC president Bob Sarnoff (Peter Grosz) offered him wide freedom to select his guests.  

     This sets the scene for some delightful commentary about New York vs. Los Angeles.  When Paar reminds his boss that he’s had to leave behind “those late-night sophisticates back in New York,” Sarnoff tells him Los Angeles audiences “can be very discriminating.” To which Paar replied, “Sure they discriminate.  Against talent.  Against intelligence.”  He calls L.A. “the one city in the world where a good tan beats a college education.” 

     All of this takes place backstage in Paar’s office, with Rachel Hauck’s sets offering the appropriately bland, low-key look of the late 1950s.  Paar and Sarnoff are sparing over the host’s insistence that Levant be his lead guest for this first West Coast show.  Sarnoff worries about Levant’s dependability in terms of showing up and then keeping his sharp commentary in line with censor and sponsor expectations.  He wants to replace him with Xavier Cugat, “the King of the Rhumba,” who is in town appearing at the Coconut Grove.  No way will Paar agree to that switch for his L.A. premiere. 

     What neither man knows until Levant’s wife June (Emily Bergl) shows up is that she has had him committed to a psychiatric unit and had only now learned he had been scheduled for Paar’s big night.  That’s all Sarnoff needs to hear for him to head for the phone to call Cugat.  But Paar, concerned about his ratings and unconcerned about his friend’s mental health, convinces June to get her husband released on a four-hour pass.  

     Levant’s appearance on the live show, high on pills he had gotten with the help of a studio flunky (Alex Wyse), proves both men right.  Prompted by Paar Levant goes full dagger on the three topics he promised to avoid – political, sex and religion.  The religious joke, involving Marilyn Monroe’s conversion to Judaism following her marriage to Arthur Miller, would probably shock some people today but in the Eisenhower era it brings immediate calls of protest from the Legion of Decency, Cardinal Spellman, and the National Office of the Parent/Teacher Association.  The Methodist church members in the audience and others have left plenty of empty seats in the studio by the time the commercial break ends.

     Sarnoff is now ready to send Levant packing but Paar remains determined to have him perform anything, even “Chopsticks,” just to get him at the piano.  Throughout his time at the studio, and even more at the thought of playing, Levant has been having imaginary conversations with Gershwin (John Zdrojeski), his former friend and idol, and the man whose genius he thinks he has failed to achieve.  These lead to his breakdowns on the floor.  

     Paar wins, though, and the drug-addled Levant staggers to the piano only to brilliantly perform “Rhapsody.” 

     Good Night, Oscar is one of the best shows of the season.  The play is strong and Hayes is dynamic.  It gets my highest recommendation. 

'Camelot' has returned to Broadway after 63 years

 

     I had been looking forward to Camelot since I learned it was coming to Lincoln Center this spring.  I’ve loved the original cast recording most of my life but I’ve never seen the show, just the movie version when I was in elementary school.

     Director Bartlett Sher brought lavish revivals of two other Golden Age musicals, South Pacific and The King and I, to Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre and I expected another in the first Broadway revival of this Lerner and Loewe classic retelling of the Arthurian legend, which opened on Broadway 63 years ago.  Unfortunately I was disappointed, largely because of set designer Michael Yeargan’s decision to present the entire almost three-hour musical on a nearly bare stage.  Even though the show has a 27-person cast and 30-piece orchestra I felt I was watching a concert version.  The actors came on to sing those lovely songs but I felt distanced from the story.

     I was also distracted by the humor throughout.  Having never seen the stage show I don’t know if that was a part of the original or if that is particular to Aaron Sorkin’s book adaptation.  I didn’t like it.  I wasn’t prepared for a musical comedy, much as I might like them in other cases.  It had the feel of television, which makes sense because Sorkin is the creator of the hit TV show “The West Wing.”  

     But he is also a man of the theatre, having made his Broadway debut with his play “A Few Good Men.”  More recently he adapted the book for another classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.  His interpretation greatly strengthened that story.  He did improve Camelot’s book in some ways, such as by taking out the supernatural elements.  I wish he had taken away more.  The show is too long.  I was thrilled to hear the final lines, “Each evening from December to December,” movingly delivered by Andrew Burnap as King Arthur.  Thrilled because they are so touching but also because it meant the show was ending.  Cut more Mr. Sorkin.  I heard other audience members complaining about the length as well.

     The songs, however, do not disappoint.  My heart soared right from the first notes of the overture (music director, Kimberly Grigsby).  “Camelot,” “The Lusty Month of May,” “How to Handle a Woman,” “Before I Gaze at You Again” and “If Ever I Would Leave You” are brought to us with perfection by Burnap, Phillipa Soo as Guenevere and Jordan Donica as Lancelot.  

     Soo is one of my favorite musical theatre performers.  I saw her in her first show right out of school, when she starred as Natasha in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 off-off-Broadway.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  She played young and vulnerable beautifully and I loved her expressive face.  I listen now to her exquisite voice on the cast recording of Hamilton, in which she played Eliza.   

     She was the perfect Guenevere, whether frolicking around the Maypole (choreography by Byron Easley) in a pink dress (costumes by Jennifer Moeller) or in my favorite scene, the one when she’s leaving Arthur.  She tells him she loves him and by the way she hugs him deeply it is clear that she does.  It’s heartbreaking because they do love each other, except for her it’s not enough to keep her from running off with Lancelot. 

     I wish I could have been that moved by the rest of the show.  The bare stage technique doesn’t have to be distancing.  It works effectively in the current revival of A Doll’s House.  For me it put all the attention on the play and I was involved throughout.  In Camelot it distanced me from the story.  

The 'Parade' revival is all too timely

 

     On the first night of previews for the Broadway revival of Jason Robert Brown’s musical Parade, members of one of the country’s largest antisemitic groups protested this show about one of the country’s most hideous examples of antisemitism, the trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank.  2023 and 1913.  New York and Atlanta.  Will this hatred ever stop?

     Frank was a Brooklyn-born Jew who moved to the South after marrying an Atlanta woman whose uncle, the owner of the National Pencil Company, gave him a job as superintendent.  On the day the city was holding its Memorial Day parade – Leo in the musical (Ben Platt) finds it astonishing that they celebrate the day they lost the war – the body of 13-year-old factory worker Mary Phagan was found raped and murdered in the basement.  With no evidence of Leo’s guilt but plenty pointing toward the Black handyman, the unscrupulously ambitious district attorney fabricated a case against Frank that assured a guilty verdict.  He had political ambitions and knew how to play to voters who want “to sing Dixie once again,” as the memorable opening song, “The Old Red Hills of Home,” says.  They would rather blame a northern Jew than a Black southerner. 

     The modern-day protestors outside the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre told ticket holders they were seeing a show about a pedophile.  Even now they won’t acknowledge the injustice done to Frank. 

     Although it seems an unlikely plot for a Broadway musical, this 1998 show has what good drama needs, the power to shock and move its audience.  I saw the original and was blown away.  I had known the story since I was in my 20s.  Brown’s songs (music and lyrics, for which he won a Tony in 1999) and Alfred Uhry’s Tony Award-winning book bring it to life in a way I couldn’t have imagined.

     Micaela Diamond, who made her Broadway debut as Babe, the youngest Cher in The Cher Show, movingly portrays Lucille, Leo’s wife, in this revival directed by Michael Arden.  They have strong voices and play well together but they didn’t engage me the way the original players, Brent Carver and Carolee Carmello, did, but maybe that’s because nothing can replace seeing this powerful show for the first time.

     Dane Laffrey’s set was a bit off-putting, a giant dais on which most of the scenes take place.  It made the action seem distant to me.  I liked Susan Hilferty’s period costumes and Heather Gilbert’s brooding lighting. 

     Erin Rose Doyle is a sweet Mary and Paul Alexander Nolan embodies the ruthless district attorney, Hugh Dorsey, who uses his guilty verdict to propel him into the governorship.  The election is two years after Leo’s conviction.  Leo has remained in jail, filing appeal after appeal, which were all unsuccessful.  During that time pressure has been put on Governor Slaton (Sean Allan Krill) by elected officials around the country, as well as influential individuals like Henry Ford, to reconsider the case.  Lucille is the strongest fighter for this cause, working with Slaton to reveal Dorsey’s manipulation of the case, which included coaching Mary’s young co-workers to say Frank had sexually harassed them.  

     Slaton assures his opponent’s victory when he becomes the one honorable player in the Frank tragedy.  With Leo’s execution five weeks away, Slaton commutes his sentence to life in prison, delivering what to me are the play’s most memorable lines: “Two thousand years ago another governor washed his hands and turned a Jew over to a mob.  Ever since then that governor’s name has been a curse.  If today another Jew went to his grave because I failed to do my duty, I would all my life find his blood on my hands.”

     This gives Leo and Lucille hope and they share the beautiful duet “This Is Not Over Yet.”  I don’t think, since this is such a historic case, that it’s a spoiler alert to say their joy is short-lived.  A mob invaded the prison, took Leo to a remote location and hung him.

     Cast members all appear to be giving 100 percent to tell this story, which, sadly, is far too timely.  As for poor Leo Frank, a projection on the dais says his case was reopened by the Fulton County district attorney’s office in 2019.  It is still ongoing.  And so is the tragedy.