NECESSITY REALLY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION. EVEN NOW. WHO KNEW?
Photo: Pressnights.com
EYES ON THE SCREEN Seth Rudetsky, right, and James Wesley host Stars in the House and its spinoff, Plays in the House. We can’t remember for sure, but they were probably reading viewers’ comments here.
IF YOU WERE SUFFERING from theater withdrawal in April, there was — although I don’t believe Donald J. Trump ever mentioned it during his Rose Garden rallies — a safe, effective treatment was available to anyone who wanted it. And still is.
JUST STARS! Stars in the House, a streaming web series, began in mid-March, featuring stage and screen cast reunions and interviews. Its spinoff, Plays in the House, now offers live-streamed readings of notable dramas and comedies, often with the original New York casts.
THE PHOTO BELOW (A scene — well, a slightly off-kilter screen grab) from the live--streamed reading of “The Heidi Chronicles” on April 1. If the actors look familiar, that’s because they’re two of the stars of the original Tony-winning Broadway production: Joan Allen was the title character and Boyd Gaines, who won a best supporting actor Tony Award for the role, was her gay best friend. (A full review of “Heidi” follows this post.)
HELLO AGAIN Joan Allen and Boyd Gaines reprising their roles in “The Heidi Chronicles,” 30 years later.
IT WAS A WEDNESDAY matinee. So it was 2 o’clock, of course. That’s when Wednesday matinees are, and theatergoers are traumatized enough without curtain times changing. It was part of Stars in the House, an umbrella web series that was born on the Internet universe on March 16, 2020, just days after Broadway theaters were closed as a safety measure during the Covid-19 pandemic.
To be specific, it was a Stars in the House spinoff: Plays in the House.
THE MEN BEHIND the shows are Seth Rudetsky (right, in photo), best known from Playbill and Sirius XM, and James Wesley, his husband and co-producer. They introduce the plays, comment during intermission, read out announcements of recent donations to the Actors Fund and sometimes chat with the cast afterward.
Which is way better than sitting through a curtain call where half the audience is standing because they think they’re supposed to and the other half is storming up the aisle to get to their parking garages or grab the first taxi.
Rudetsky and Wesley also intervene when there’s a technical glitch. This is, after all, a fairly new art form.
Their Wednesday and Saturday matinees — which are not recorded for posterity; they can be seen only when they’re being done live from the actors’ various homes — are already a much-loved tradition. Here are a few recent productions we were lucky enough to catch.
THE TALE OF THE ALLERGIST’S WIFE. Clockwise from top left, Andrea Martin, Richard Kind and Charles Busch.
THE ONLY THING BETTER than seeing Linda Lavin, who played the title role in “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” on Broadway in 2000, would be seeing Charles Busch, who wrote it, in the role, and that’s what Plays in the House gave us.
“Everything today seems so trifling,” says Marjorie (Busch), our title character, and this gives us a sign that despite being the kind of New Yorker who is married to a doctor and lends books to her doorman, she is not a happy human. Well, there was the time she started smashing toys at the Disney Store.
Luckily for Marjorie, her doorbell rings in Act I, and the woman standing there — although she’s looking for a different apartment — is her old childhood friend Lee (Faith Prince). Who, it turns out, has led the most extraordinary life — from showing Andy Warhol how to stack Campbell’s Soup cans to telling a certain superstar Princess of Wales that she ought to do something about land mines.
By the end of Act I, Marjorie’s two nearest and dearest — her husband, Ira (Richard Kind, who replaced Tony Roberts in the original Broadway production) and her mother, Frieda (Andrea Martin) — decide that Lee must be an imaginary friend. Throughout Act II, they wish she were.
Busch was heaven to be with, from beginning to end, but then so was the rest of the cast.
THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED. Clockwise from top left, Neal Huff, Johnny Galecki, Zoe Lister-Jones and Julie White.
WHEN DOUGLAS CARTER BEANE’S hilariously cynical “The Little Dog Laughed” opened Off Broadway (at Second Stage) in early 2006 before its Broadway opening later that year, Julie White got much of the attention. She was a new face, obviously a brilliant comedian, * and The New York Times assigned me to write a feature article about her.**
White played Diane, a tough-as-nails Hollywood agent who wishes her gay male actor client would be a little less out, and she recreated the role in the Plays in the House live reading. She’s joined by other Off Broadway cast members:: Neal Huff as her client, Johnny Galecki as the $200-a-trick rent-boy he falls in love with and Zoe Lister-Jones as the rent-boy’s sort-of girlfriend.
Beane was part of the event too, reading stage directions and looking on with obvious pleasure. Diane gets many of his best lines — among them “It’s like a relationship. Only it’s enjoyable.” — and a heartfelt speech about Mickey Rooney’s having ruined the movie version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” But Galecki, whose character has his own kind of attitude, gets his share. Like “A prostitute with low self-esteem? What will they think of next?” The Plays in the House reading was just as much fun as the onstage productions. And I’d forgotten the lyrical, ludicrous, only-in-Hollywood ending, a scheme devised and pulled off with near-perfection by Diane.
**EDITOR’S NOTE: The interview — at Le Madeleine (a restaurant we’ve mentioned before) — was a delight. I ended up actually writing the article at the desk in my guest room at the Westport Inn in Connecticut, where I had been reviewing a production at the Westport Country Playhouse. A couple of paragraphs in, some chemical in my brain misfired and I began referring to Ms. White as Ms. Wilson, having — for no logical reason — of the cabaret singer Julie Wilson. The copy editor at The Times didn’t catch my error. It made its way into print. A correction was run. Julie White never spoke to me again.
ARMS AND THE MAN
WE ARE IN BULGARIA in 1885. The men are off at war. The ladies at an elegant estate wait for them, proudly, with servants.
Raina (Phillipa Soo), giddy with youth and naīveté, is in her bedroom, daydreaming about her fiancé, Sergius, who was a hero in a recent military battle.
Then a window (or a French door or something — remember, we’re working without set or costume design here) flies open. A young Serbian soldier, starved for sleep and escaping from something hideous, bursts in. It’s clear that Bluntschli, who is really Swiss but fighting for Serbia, is a handsome young dog. He also turns out to be charming, sensitive and amusing. He carries chocolate in his pockets, rather than ammunition. But — as we still say — nothing happens.
Well, Raina and her mother (Alison Fraser) do let him hide out there and become quite fond of him before he has to leave.
If you know George Bernard Shaw’s work, you’ve recognized “Arms and the Man,” his 1894 antiwar comedy, by now. So you may know that in the next scene, three months later, the man of the house, Major Petkoff, comes home from the war, along with Sergius, who is eager to see his lovely fiancée. He’s also a little happier than he should be to see the maid, Louka (Lauren Molina), too.
Never say Shaw couldn’t write a sitcom. The Major and Sergius have met Bluntschli too — out in the male-only military world — and have heard the story of his hiding out with some rich woman and her hot young daughter; they just don’t realize who the women were. Then Bluntschli turns up, dropping by to return an old jacket of the major’s that he had borrowed. And everybody runs into everybody, and secrets are in constant danger of being revealed.
Shaw was a pacifist, and he gets his antiwar message and other social commentary across clearly. (Bathing daily, the major observes, would be ridiculous.) He does it with a humor and conversational language that seem as natural today as it was — presumably — then. Although I do have to admire the words Sergius throws at Louka when she flirtatiously rejects him.
He tells her she is “an abominable little clod of common clay with the soul of a servant.” Bluntschli is the sweetheart here, slightly above and gently amused by everything, from duel challenges to home libraries. And — wouldn’t you know it? — he turns out to be heir to a hotelier’s fortune.
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AND HERE COMES THE COMPETITION …
Plays in the House isn’t the only game in town. The public relations firm Polk & Company announced on May 4 that Spotlight on Plays, a new series from Broadway’s Best Shows, will present weekly Thursday night plays. (Curtain time is 8 p.m. Naturally.) Here’s this month’s star-studded schedule.
May 7 “NOVEMBER,” by David Mamet. With John Malkovich, Patti LuPone and Dylan Baker, directed by Mamet himself.
May 14 “SIGNIFICANT OTHER,” by Josh Harmon, with the original Broadway cast (including Gideon Glick and Barbara Barrie), directed by Trip Cullman.
May 21 “LOVE LETTERS,” by A.R. Gurney, starring Bryan Cranston and Sally Field, directed by Jerry Zaks.
Donations, like those for Plays in the House, go to the Actors Fund.