Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

A.G.’s journalistic triumphs over 25 years at The New York Times include drinking with Bea Arthur (at a Trump hotel), Wendy Wasserstein (at an Italian restaurant) and Peter O’Toole (in his trailer on a mini-series set near Dublin). It is sheer coincidence that these people are now dead.

At The New York Times, she has been Arts & Leisure television editor and co-film editor, a theater reviewer on WQXR Radio, a film columnist for the Times TV Book and an editor in the Culture, Book Review, Travel, National, Foreign and Metro sections. Her first theater review for The Times appeared in 1997, assessing “Mrs. Cage,” a one-act about a housewife suspected of shooting her favorite supermarket box boy. The review was mixed.

Outside The Times, A.G. has been the author of four nonfiction books; a longtime writer for travel magazines, women's magazines and travel guidebooks; a lecturer at universities and for women’s groups; and a moderator for theater, book, film and television panels at the 92nd Street Y and the Paley Center for Media.

If she were a character on “Mad Men,” she’d be Peggy.

In Love With the Set: 'The Parisian Woman'

Anita Gates
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MÉNAGE  Uma Thurman with Josh Lucas (husband), center, and Marton Csokas (lover) in "The Parisian Woman" at the Hudson Theater.

 

AS IF UMA THURMAN didn't look glamorous enough in "The Parisian Woman" at the Hudson Theater, Derek McLane created a gorgeous series of sets to surround her and Beau Willimon's satire about sex and politics in contemporary Washington.

"Designer Derek McLane's swanky townhouse is a classic comedy-of-manners set," David Rooney wrote in his review in The Hollywood Reporter,  "suggesting impeccable taste and financial comfort but not the kind of extravagant wealth that sates the hunger for more."

The New York Times review brought up the scenic design right away.  "Let’s begin with Derek McLane’s sumptuous set," Jesse Green wrote. "The sitting room of a Capitol Hill townhouse with a sofa as long as a limo and breathtakingly tasteful Air Force blue walls. It’s the kind of place you’d move into instantly, if you wanted to live in a play."

Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune expressed a minority opinion, referring to the set as "jittery" and a "mishmash of tradition and technology." Well, these are jittery people, so that makes sense.

McLane is a master. He's a Brit, born in London in 1958, but with longtime American ties. He did most of his growing up in Illinois and  has degrees from both Harvard and Yale. He's been working in American theater for decades, doing his first Broadway show, the short-lived "What's Wrong With This Picture?," in 1994.

Over the years (so far),  he's earned four Tony Award nominations (for "The Pajama Game" and "Ragtime," among others), winning for "33 Variations." And he's racked up more than a dozen Drama Desk Award nominations, winning for "Anything Goes." He also won an Emmy for designing the Oscars. 

Here's another McLane "Parisian Woman" creation.

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BALCONY   Thurman, Blair Brown (center) and Phillipa Soo in a party scene. Brown's powerful D.C.-veteran character is the host. Soo's character, her daughter, is the center of a major plot twist.

Coming up next year for McLane: "Children of a Lesser God" and "Gettin' the Band Back Together."  According to various news reports, he refused to put books in the bookcases in his Greenwich Village townhouse (he displayed vintage lamps on the shelves instsead) and is partial to J. Crew jeans and John Varvatos shoes.

The "incomplete history" on his personal website says a lot.

 

 

 

 

 

But Other Than the Leech Soup ...

Elderly British Miser and Multiple Ghosts Found in Rip Torn's House