What Theater People Have Been Up To During the Pandemic ...

‘WHEN I SING, I THINK IT HEALS ME’

MARIAN THE LIBRARIAN IS seriously ill. So are Maria Von Trapp, Magnolia Ravenal, Lily the lovely ghost from “The Secret Garden” and the nice British lady who employs Mary Poppins. 

When Rebecca Luker, the three-time Tony Award nominee,uber-gifted soprano and general Broadway sweetheart, announced earlier this year that she had ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, all those beautiful characters popped into Broadway fans’ minds. And they all had Luker’s face.

Luker, who turned 59 in April, is in a wheelchair now, spending her time at the Morningside Heights (Upper Manhattan) apartment she and her husband, Danny Burstein, share. After Burstein (who had starred most recently in “Moulin Rouge” on Broadway) was hospitalized with Covid-19 in April, Luker came down with symptoms too. But she can still sing.

 

SHE PROVED THAT BEYOND a doubt in an evening concert and interview on June 17, streamed on Zoom. 

“Well, physically, it helps my lungs,” she said in a New York Times article that appeared the day before. ”But more than that, when I sing I think it heals me. It helps me feel like I’m still a part of something.”

From her home and her wheelchair, Luker gave tender, touching performances of Jerome Kern’s “Not You,” Joseph Thalken and Marshall Barer’s “Billions of Beautiful Boys” and Sam Davis and Randy Buck’s “Greenwich Time.”

The last one begins “The village on a Sunday morning,” and as a New York Times alumna, I’d like to thank Davis and Buck for the references to the Arts & Leisure and Book Review sections.

Yes, we would have loved to hear “Till There Was You,” “Can’t Help Loving Dat Man” or even “Edelweiss,” but we’re enormously grateful for what we got.

THE SPECIAL, WHICH RAN about 40 minutes, also included interview segments with Katie Couric (right, in photo). 

“I’d never had a health problem in my life,” Luker told Couric. But “my legs pretty much ran out of steam in March” and “my diaphragm is kind of gone.” Yes, she added, “it was scary then and it’s scary now.”

But she stressed, in the Times article, that friends were still free to talk to her about their problems. She just wants them always to “be aware if you can walk down the street and you’re healthy, you have everything.” 

Roughly a million-zillion Broadway and Off Broadway greats dropped by, via video, to wish her well. Among them: Julie Andrews, Alan Cumming, Brandon Victor Dixon, Santino Fontana (hosting from his kitchen), Joel Grey, John Kander, Andrea Martin, Leslie Odom Jr., Laura Osnes, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Susan Stroman, Mary Testa and Karen Ziemba. Not to mention Michael Greif and his dog, Simon. 

The event was a benefit for Project ALS and research into a new medication for the disease. Luker hopes to be part of the drug’s first trials in August.

‘HALFWAY [BLEEP] GO STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN’

MAYBE THE TONY AWARDS cancelled their annual statuette presentation and telecast, but the Drama Desk Awards people were determined to go through with theirs. And after a couple of false starts, it finally happened on June 13, 2020.

The big winners were “The Inheritance,” a grand two-part, six-hour reflection on recent generations of gay men, as best play, and “A Strange Loop” (photo) as best musical — a one-act Playwrights Horizons (Off Broadway) romp about a gay black man (Larry Owens) writing a musical about a gay black man writing a musical.

The show aired on NY1, a Spectrum cable news channel, and on dramadesk.com.

It was all prerecorded, so there were no surprised winners in the audience, gasping or hugging their spouses and bursting into happy tears. The celebrity presenters — from Kristin Chenoweth to Alan Cumming to Patti LuPone — read the nominations and announced the winners from their homes. And the winners, whose surprised moments had long passed, spoke from their city or country locations. Adrienne Warren (in photo), who was named best actress in a musical for the title role in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” appears to be quarantining at an elegant horse farm.

There’s a link to the list of all the winners — dramadeskawards.org — but here are some Press Nights favorites:

FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL: Christian Borle for “Little Shop of Horrors,” for the kind of multi-role (three characters) that usually goes to unknown performers, This performance was a great argument for going for big names.

SOLO PERFORMANCE: Laura Linney (in photo) for “My Name Is Lucy Barton” (a one-woman show that takes place in a hospital room), And she turned up at the awards show — virtually — aas a brunette.

ADAPTATION: Jack Thorne’s “A Christmas Carol.” Loved the New Age speech Ebenezer Scrooge (Campbell Scott) got from his old girlfriend.

FEATURED ACTOR AND ACTRESS IN A PLAY. Paul Hilton, who was the author E.M. Forster, traveling through time to help out some gay New Yorkers, in “The Inheritance” (because what they’re going through seems a lot like his novel “Howards End). Lois Smith, in the same play. She was the mysterious mom figure who made the country house work.

ACTRESS IN A PLAY Liza Colón-Zayas, as a bipolar Iraq War veteran falling in love and losing her wa at a halfway house in “Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven.” Strangely, NY1, which covers rough-and-tumble New York City news, violence and language every day, chose to bleep out the word “bitches” whenever the title was mentioned.

FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL. Lauren Patten, who sang “You Oughta Know” in “Jagged Little Pill.”

THE HAL PRINCE AWARD. The very first one went, logically enough, to Hal Prince (in photo), who died in July 2019.

‘TO BEAT THE UNBEATABLE FOE’

IF YOU’RE A THEATER person (and why else would you be here?), you know who Brian Stokes Mitchell is. Dashing Broadway leading man — Tony Award winner for “Kiss Me, Kate” — Tony nominee for “Ragtime,” “King Hedley II” and “Man of La Mancha” — and, as it turns out, Coronavirus survivor and Upper West Sider.

When Mitchell, 62, was all better after he came down with Covid-19 in April, he decided to celebrate with — well, not “with,” but for — his neighbors, Mitchell (his friends call him Stokes), began appearing at a window of his apartment facing Broadway and serenading with his greatest hits — most notably “The Impossible Dream” from “The Man of La Mancha.”

Maybe he was inspired by the many Italian opera pros who sang from their apartment balconies in , when Covid was doing its worst in Rome and elsewhere. But New Yorkers will be New Yorkers, and they weren’t satisfied with hanging out their living room windows and listening. Noooooo. They went down to the street and congregated. After a couple of weeks, the NYPD had to ask Mitchell to stop. He was creating a dangerous situation by drawing those crowds.

Happy discovery! Because of this local news story, I learned that Mitchell lives three blocks from me.