A war has been raging in the chat room of the Talkin Broadway Web site over the musical “(title of show)” that has been previewing at the Lyceum Theatre since July 5 in preparation for Thursday night’s official opening.
The piece has been a cult favorite for the past four years — ever since it debuted at the 2004 New York Musical Theater Festival.
Written by and starring Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell, it’s a show about two struggling actor/writers and their two actress/singer friends who desperately want to be in a musical worthy of being accepted by the NYMTF.
Drawing together elements of “Seinfeld” and reality television, the musical is totally self-referential and this is driving some members of the Broadway theater community nuts. The critics believe this tiny show doesn’t deserve to be on Broadway and that it will close as soon as the Manhattan cult audience — and the friends and family of the four creator/stars — have seen it.
“(title of show)” has no large production numbers, no special effects, no blaring orchestra, no chorus line — just four performers and a guy named Larry Pressgrove who sits at the back of the barren apartment set playing a keyboard. Larry’s stylings are the only accompaniment to the singing of Hunter and Jeff and their pals/co-stars Heidi Blickenstaff and Susan Blackwell.
I was charmed by the show when it ran at the Vineyard Theatre during the summer of 2006. The yearning of the four cast members to make it in the theatre powered a very small but funny show about New York City actors and writers.
The fact that Bell and Bowen were able to make a show out of their wanting to make a show was enough for an amusing 90 minutes in the small space. The intimacy of the Vineyard and the energy of the acting quartet made “(title of show)” a winning experience.
Seeing it for the second time at a Sunday night Broadway press preview — with one of the most jacked-up audiences in recent memory — “(title of show)” seemed forced and out of its natural element.
Like so many other behind-the-scenes show biz tales, the musical assumes we are vitally interested in the struggles and career prospects of the performers we are watching. Rather than find “roles” that could showcase their talent, Jeff and Hunter and Heidi and Susan present a stage version of themselves that we are supposed to embrace in some sort of theatrical group hug.
The story of the making of the show IS the show. Our role as the audience at the Broadway production is to pretend we are friends and family of the cast and to scream our heads off frequently simply because the spunky quartet has indeed made it to the Great White Way.
It’s a “what is theatre?” conceit in the spirit of Eugene Ionesco or Samuel Beckett, but the mult-million dollar question of the moment is whether or not there is an audience for a Broadway musical featuring four very talented people who, on some level, still think of themselves as needy cases.
(For “(title of show)” performance and ticket information call 212-239-6200 or visit Telecharge.com)
Joe's View
The little show that could
Thrills and laughs at the Grand Hyatt
It was so much fun to hang out at ThrillerFest in Manhattan on Saturday, listening to some of the most popular writers in the country talking about their work.
The four day event was sponsored by the International Thriller Writers and featured many of the biggest guns in the genre, from Lee Child to James Patterson, and Douglas Preston to Brad Thor (all four of those writers have books on The New York Times list at the moment).
Having attended many gatherings of crime, mystery and thriller authors over the years, I am always imprssed by the sheer niceness of most of the people who spend so much time writing about the darker sides of life.
The first two days of ThrillerFest were devoted to a series of workshops for aspiring writers where folks like Lee Child and Joseph Finder shared the secrets of their success. The ITW also invited more than two dozen agents who were available to listen to pitches from unpublished writers.
The event’s guest of honor — what the ITW called the “2008 ThrillerMaster” — was Sandra Brown (right), who is one of the funniest and most down to earth writers you would ever want to meet (she doesn’t act like a lady who has sold 70 million books in 33 languages).
Unlike many of her peers, Brown has avoided falling into the trap of focusing on one character in a series of novels. Each new Brown novel has introduced new people and explored new territory (the only common trait in her books, Brown says, is her fascination with people who abuse whatever power they might have). The next book, “Smoke Screen,” will be in stores Aug. 12.
Brown started in the romance field — where she would write five or six books a year — and then shifted to suspense in the early 1990s. At her panel on Saturday, one attendee told the energetic and attractive author that “I just can’t do the math. You have a book a year. How have you written 70 novels?”
“I’m 112!,” the writer said, laughing, before explaining her incredible pace when she was a romance writer in her earlier years.
What’s so great about the Texas native is that it’s clear she is ready to answer any question she is asked.
When a rather meek looking lady in the front row seemed to challenge Brown’s “faith” because of some of the spicier bedroom interludes in her novels, the writer smiled and said, “Well, you know, God did create sex.”
Next year’s ThrillerFest will be at the Grand Hyatt from July 8 to 11 and information will be posted at www.thrillerfest.com as planning for the event commences.
New plays for ten bucks
People like to complain about the high cost of theater tickets in Manhattan, but the truth is that there are bargains to be had all over town.
Only suckers — or the very rich — will shell out more than $100 to see a play or musical on Broadway.
If you check Web sites like broadwaybox.com or playbill.com there are dozens of great shows to be seen for $50 or under.
Right now, the fifth annual Summer Play Festival is underway at the Public Theater with $10 tickets — less than what you would pay for the latest Hollywood bomb at your local multiplex.
As exciting as the pricing at SPF is, what really powers the festival is the chance to see fresh new work by some of the best talent in the city.
Earlier in the week, I talked with the singer-songwriter John Bucchino whose “It’s Only Life” (left) was presented at the first SPF four years ago and has been wending its way to a possible off-Broadway staging next season. The show just opened to strong press and audience response at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, California.
Bucchino is well known within the New York cabaret community for writing some of the best songs of the past two decades.
One tune in particular, “Grateful,” has been recorded by everyone from Michael Feinstein to Art Garfunkel. Other songs by Bucchino have been performed and recorded by Judy Collins, Barbara Cook, Patti Lupone and many other top contemporary singers.
The songwriter made his Broadway debut with “A Catered Affair” which is running through July 27 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.
The show divided critics but has been embraced warmly by many audiences. A cast recording has preserved the score and should lead to productions at regional theaters and colleges all over the country in years to come. It’s a small, intimate piece that doesn’t deliver the spectacle and chorus lines that many theatergoers associate with “Broadway.”
The composer said it was a real challenge to channel his songwriting into the specifics of a book musical.
“That was very different for me…I’m used to letting the spirit move me when it does and documenting that in a song. It’s very challenging to have to write songs for an individual character…to shoehorn a song into a story,” he said of working on “A Catered Affair” for the past two years.
Bucchino said he remains very grateful to SPF for choosing “It’s Only Life” for its inaugural season.
The show brings together a wide array of songs Bucchino has written over the years and turns them into an evening of theater.
“Revues are really hard to do,” the songwriter said of shows that try to give an overview of a composer’s work. “You want the songs to be elevated by the (new) context. Several people tried to do that in the past but I’ve never been happy with the results.”
For “It’s Only Life,” Bucchino joined forces with an old friend — director Daisy Prince — who told him she would “like to take a crack it it.”
“She knew my songs very well and I thought she could do it,” he recalled.
A reading Prince put together with Bucchino got a thumbs up from the SPF folks for their first season.
“Because of that (production) we were asked to be part of the American Songbook series at Lincoln Center and we got a great review in The Times and PS Classics recorded it,” Bucchino said of the growing interest in the piece since SPF put it on four years ago.
Now that “A Catered Affair” is behind him, Bucchino is ready to get back to the “freer” feeling of writing individual tunes when the spirit moves him. He will soon be flying out to California to see “It’s Only Life” in what he hopes is a pre-New York engagement.
Meanwhile, theatergoers can check out the eight new shows on the Summer Play Festival slate between now and July 27.
For ticket information, visit the group’s Web site at www.spfnyc.com.
Manhattan before Disney
The 1970s might have been a terrible time for New York City’s municipal finances and crime rate, but it was a Golden Age for the moviemakers who worked in the city then.
It was the period when Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet and Paul Mazursky did much of their best work. The pictures shot in New York in the 1970s have a raw quality — you couldn’t hide the fact that the city was in the middle of a social and cultural breakdown — and the reality of the backdrop pushed actors to be as authentic as the setting.
Method specialists Al Pacino and Robert De Niro emerged from the New York films of the 1970s, but so did Diane Keaton and Jill Clayburgh.
One of my favorite 1970s New York pictures — “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” — is the attraction at next Tuesday night’s “Martini and a Movie” screening at the Fairfield Theatre Company.
Although the picture was endorsed by critics and audiences in 1974, it wasn’t a “prestige” hit like “The French Connection” (1971) or “Serpico” (1973).
It was only with the passage of time that film buffs and young moviemakers such as Quentin Tarantino began to appreciate the incredible filmmaking craft that went into this thriller about a subway hijacking. The criminal gang — led by mercenary Robert Shaw — all dress identically and call each other by color-coded names (Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, etc.), a device that Tarantino tipped his hat to in “Reservoir Dogs.”
What separates “Pelham One Two Three” from most of the other 1970s New York crime pictures is the black comedy that director Joseph Sargent and screenwriter Peter Stone found in such an explosive premise.
The transit cop who negotiates with the hijackers is played by Walter Matthau in one of his best and most droll performances. The actor captures the essence of the seen-it-all New Yorker who is ready to cope with whatever bizarre situation he faces next.
Stone also uses the financial catastrophe of the city for some wry joking. When the hijackers demand $1 million, the mayor and his minions aren’t sure if they can raise the cash in a few hours.
“Pelham One Two Three” must have been a logistical nightmare —with much of the film shot on subway platforms and in the tunnels connecting them — but it has a documentary feel that you just don’t find in contemporary Hollywood movies.
Join me next Tuesday at 7 p.m. for this free screening of a New York classic.
(The Fairfield Theatre Company is at 70 Sanford St. in Fairfield Center. For more information visit the non-profit organization’s Web site at www.fairfieldtheatre.org.)
Share house hell
When most of us think about “the Hamptons” we have visions of the super-rich escaping Manhattan on summer weekends for plush estates and expensive restaurants where might you rub shoulders with Steven Spielberg, Billy Joel and Jerry Seinfeld.
Jasmin Rosemberg takes us to the other side of the plush beach resort’s tracks in her amusing new novel, “How the Other Half Hamptons” (5 Spot), set in a Long Island share house/pig pen where a few dozen twentysomething guys and gals look for summer fun on the cheap.
Rosemberg knows what she is writing about, having spent a recent summer living in a Hamptons share house and writing about it in a weekly New York Post column.
In the novel, Rosemberg follows three Manhattan girlfriends who decide to spend much of their summer in a share house. The characters are far from fresh — a party girl, a “nice” girl who has just broken up with her boyfriend, and a smart girl tired of living in the shadow of her older sister — but the journalistic aspect of the narrative will keep many readers turning pages.
Rosemberg would have been well-advised to stick to one protagonist in her first novel, but she does a good job of immersing us in a crowded and funky beach house that doesn’t seem like much of an escape from the jammed city where the characters work.
When I was young and foolish, I visited friends in a similar set-up in Dewey Beach, Delaware, and came away thinking it was like returning to college dorm life in your mid-20s (not a good thing). The non-stop drinking, drugging and…how shall I say this?…mating was quite awesome, however.
Reading “How the Other Half Hamptons” is a good guilty pleasure in the tradition of the MTV train-wreck reality series “The Real World” and “My Super Sweet 16.”
Movies & art at MOMA
It was worth fighting the opening weekend crowds at the Museum of Modern Art’s new exhibition, “Dali: Painting and Film” on Sunday.
The huge sixth floor space at MOMA showcases the work that Salvador Dali (1904-1989) did during his regular forays into the world of movies, from the experimental short films he did with Luis Bunuel in the 1920s through his work with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney.
Each gallery is devoted to an individual film, with one large wall displaying a continuous screening of the movie and the other walls filled with related drawings and paintings.
The 1928 collaboration with Bunuel, “Un Chien Andalou” (right), has lost none of its shock value in 80 years, particularly during the notorious sequence in which it appears a man is going to use his razor on a lover’s eye. Modern-day horror films such as “Hostel” and “Saw” have nothing on Dali and Bunuel when it comes to disturbing an audience.
At the time of the film’s first screenings, Bunuel and Dali provoked near-riots in theaters; college film classes and art-house audiences have been squirming their way through this odd-ball classic ever since.
Dali went on to do another film with Bunuel in 1930 — “L’Age d’or” — but it was his brief and tempestuous work with Alfred Hitchcock on the 1945 “Spellbound” that brought the Spanish artist his biggest movie audience.
Sadly, after Dali prepared many minutes’ worth of bizarre dream sequences (for the psychiatric patient played by Gregory Peck), the studio got cold feet and pressured Hitchcock to cut the material down to only a few minutes. The gallery space devoted to “Spellbound” is dominated by a huge painted backdrop that was used during the filming.
In conjunction with the exhibit, a series of screenings in the MOMA theaters will allow museumgoers to see “Un Chien Andalou” and the other Dali films without the gallery distractions, as well as examples of films that were inspired by Dali.
The exhibit runs through Sept. 15.
For more information, visit the museum’s Web site at www.moma.org.
Jackie vs. Lauren: No contest
On vacation last week I picked up two quintessential summer beach books — Lauren Weisberger’s third novel “Chasing Harry Winston” (Simon & Schuster) and Jackie Collins’s 26th novel “Married Lovers” (St. Martin’s Press).
Both books were published within the last month. The Weisberger tome seems to have surpassed “Married Lovers” in the best-seller sweepstakes, riding comfortably in the number six slot of The New York Times best-seller list for the past several weeks while the Collins book has dropped out of the top ten.
Weisberger’s fashion magazine world debut novel, “The Devil Wears Prada,” was one of the key chick-lit titles of the past decade and her follow-up book, “Everyone Worth Knowing,” was an entertaining look at the public relations industry in Manhattan.
“Chasing Harry Winston” is a lame time-waster that reads like a contractual obligation book written under duress.
Weisberger catches up with three college pals after a decade of living in the New York fast lane — Emmy, Leigh and Adriana — but the novel stalls out after only a few chapters when it becomes clear the author doesn’t care about these women and hasn’t thought of a plausible narrative for them. The women are pushing 30 and make an inane bet to change their aimless dating habits within the next year.
Where her earlier books were grounded in Weisberger’s actual experiences working in New York media, “Chasing Harry Winston” is a desperate recycling of material from “Sex and the City” and the other chick lit/chick flick milestones of the past decade. The writer never tries to make the ridiculous Brazilian Adriana credible as the best friend of Emmy and Leigh — the hot-blooded swinger is a stale amalgam of Samantha from “SATC” and a Eurotrash party girl in an early episode of “SATC” who was revealed to be a high-class hooker.
I kept reading “Chasing Harry Winston” assuming that some sort of plot would kick in eventually, but I was wrong.
Jackie Collins has been writing beach books for as long as Lauren Weisberger has been on the planet.
While Jackie might not have quite the “heat” of her “Hollywood Wives” era of the 1980s, she still knows how to tell a good story and how to keep a reader hooked for hundreds of incredibly fast-paced pages (Jackie keeps her chapters short and punchy and makes sure her cast of characters are such distinct individuals that we never get that feeling, so prevalent in “Chasing Harry Winston,” of not being able to tell one person from another.)
Jackie has kept her finger on the pulse of the international jet set for four decades and the new book serves up the same irresistible mix of gossip, pop sociology and sheer fun that has been the hallmark of every book since “The World is Full of Married Men” in 1968.
In “Married Lovers,” Collins serves up more juicy characters and situations than you would find in the average half-dozen beach books. Over-heated dust jacket copy is, for once, an accurate reflection of what’s inside: “Three high-powered Hollywood couples, two hot affairs, one underage Russian ex-hooker, a passionate murder – and the players’ lives are changed forever.”
Reading Lauren Weisberger’s latest you get the feeling she had to slog her way through the manuscript to fulfill an unpleasant obligation to Simon & Schuster. Racing through “Married Lovers” you can tell that Jackie Collins loved writing every dirty, sexy and funny page.
A shockingly bad movie
The new Will Smith movie “Hancock” is the only major studio release to open during the July 4 weekend, so the box-office figures on Sunday should be strong.
Word of mouth has got to be deadly, however; this is one of the worst summer movie star vehicles since Arnold Schwazenegger’s “Last Action Hero” in 1993. That turkey had a decent opening weekend, too, but the star’s reputation took a big hit — Schwarzenegger was no longer the sure thing he represented during the previous decade.
The pressure on big box-office stars to deliver is intense. The bigger they get, the bigger the budgets become, and record-breaking grosses are expected for every movie.
Years ago, Meryl Streep gave a speech where she complained about the huge discrepancy between the star salaries paid to men and women. She had already won two Oscars by that point, but was earning a pittance compared to male counterparts such as Kevin Costner and Harrison Ford.
Streep had a point, but perhaps her lower salaries and her continuing willingness to take chances on low-budget movies (such as “A Prairie Home Companion”) are responsible for the actress still being a prestigious in-demand performer, while many of her 1980s and 1990s male peers have faded out. The terrific performer has the starring role in “Mamma Mia!” opening July 18 and will be seen in the film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Doubt” late this year or early in 2009.
Will Smith has been a money-in-the-bank star for more than a decade now — can you believe “Independence Day” opened 12 years ago this weekend? — but he appears to be losing his edge and his knack for finding good material.
“Hancock” is a messy, nasty piece of work that is poorly made to boot — it’s distressing to see a major talent misuse his gifts this way. And I don’t think audiences will keep Will Smith at the top of the movie star heap if he keeps making duds like this one.
