Vince Gatton at Barrington Stage

A couple of years back, when I saw I Am My Own Wife on Broadway, I came out of the theatre thinking "Vince needs to play that role". Vince being Vince Gatton, the hugely talented if tinily packaged acting dynamo who brought brilliant life to two of David Johnston's creations. In Busted Jesus Comix he was a jittery, shell-shocked Marco. In a star-making turn as an air-headed Candy Darling in Candy and Dorothy, he wiped up the stage and earned a Drama Desk nomination.

Upshot, according to Playbill.com, he is going to do I Am My Own Wife for the Barrington Stage in Massachusettes, performances running mid-May to early June. If you have the chance, don't miss it. He will be amazing.

Good Bill and true...

The charming Bill Finnegan hosted me last night as we dined and theatered. Great company, great food, great show.

After declining a 35 minute wait at John's Pizza (damn!) we opted for burgers and fries at Playwright Tavern. Much yumminess. Mr. Finnegan indulged in the cheesecake as well. I, knowing shirtless Summer is just around the bend and I remain single, passed on a sweet.

The show is great. Good Boys and True by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa at Second Stage. It was just a second preview and the rough spots were apparent, but mostly this unsettling story rings sad and honest with lives forever damaged by one stupid, unnecessary afternoon. Directed by Scott Ellis and starring a nicely restrained cast led by J. Smith-Cameron, the plot revolves around the emergence of a video tape showing a violent sexual encounter between a high school girl and a prep school boy who might just be his school's star student and athlete. This is one of those shows where everybody is harboring a secret and they are all coming to a head. One of the turns, a betrayed lover betraying in kind out of unmanageable hurt, broke my heart.

I love getting to know Bill. He's a great guy and we talked a lot about the joys and responsibilities of turning fifty. The importance of the celebration of self. The need to plan. Bill also instructed me in the benefits and drawbacks of having air in all your astrological houses, which is my case. Ah well.

So, on to the weekend!

I think I gained five pounds...

No one cooks like Peter Proctor. The grits were slathered in butter and molasses. The eggs baked in butter with cheese melted all over them and smothered with butter-sauteed mushrooms and onions. Gorgeous sausages and bacon. And the biscuits were, well, biscuits.

So why does Peter have 3% bodyfat? Is there some painting of him somewhere that looks like Dom Deluise? It ain't right!

Dinner (brinner?) was sooooooo good it softened the blow of Carly going home. That ain't right either.

Peter knows The Bodyguard so well that I caught him mouthing the dialogue at one point. Of course, I do that with An Affair to Remember.

In short, we had a blast. Now, tonight I actually do go to pizza and the theatre.

Carly, Whitney, and GRITS!!!

I am soooooo looking forward to tonight.

After work I'll be heading up to the Peter Proctor's house. PP is performing

"When You Loved Me" from Sylvia So Far at a party Saturday and we need to rehearse. And rehearse we shall, but we will take time out to watch the Idol results (we're both pulling for Carly but expecting one or other of the Davids to ultimately win) and then we shall put in the DVD of one of Peter's favorite movies --- The Bodyguard. PP is insane for Whitney. Or, I should say, the old Whitney, before she became a raving mess. Anyway, my prediction is that he starts humming somewhere around "Run To You", singing in earnest at "If I Don't Have You", and belting like Merman by "I Will Always Love You".

Best of all, Peter is making one of my favorite things: breakfast for dinner. Momma used to do that when Poppa was away on a business trip. There shall be eggs and sausages and biscuits and... GRITS! I have become fanatical in my mid-life adoration of grits. Go figure.

Anyway, that's tonight.

I screwed up the nights!

We're doing pizza and the play tomorrow. Ah well. Thank God I'm pretty.

Better still...

...before the show we're going to John's Pizzaria!!! Hooray! There shall be sausage and pepperoni with onions and green peppers!!!

God is good.

Tonight I shall see...

Good Boys and True at Second Stage. Don't know much about it. I think it involves a sex scandal and that's always fun. It's a Steppenwolf production from Chicago and their work is always great (and in the case of August: Osage County on Broadway now, brilliant).

Funny, funny Wayne...

My buddy Wayne is one funny guy. In a brief exchange of emails today he mentioned that he had no trouble imagining me in a fistfight on the street. Where could he not, for the life of him, imagine me???

At a Mets game!

Helping Marie's Dad and others...

Hey all, my friend Marie is about to do the 2008 Walk to find a cure for Multiple Sclerosis. Her Dad has been afflicted with it for years and she and her two brothers are dead-on serious about finding a cure.

If any of you are so inclined, as was I, you can go to this link:

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Walk/VTNWalkEvents?px=4126022&pg=personal&fr_id=8717&et=cOSaH17tDJoSbqj1GdQgAA..&s_tafId=86747

Thanks!

Crime Victims' Candlelight Vigil

I attended the 23rd Annual Crime Victims' Candlelight Vigil, Remembrance and Renewal, a few days ago and have had it on my mind ever since.

It was a powerful combination of performance, prayer, testimony, confession, heartbreak, joy. Sponsored by the Office of the State Attorney General and the Downtown Coalition for Crime Victims, the keynote speaker was Andy Ostroy, the husband of actress/filmaker Adrienne Shelley whose murder in her Greenwich Village office was initially mistaken as a suicide. He emphasized using the power of the press, having forced the city to pursue her death as a murder through the media. And, of course, the killer was caught, tried, and recently convicted. Ostroy was terse and moving. But he was a prime example of the progressive identity of those who experience personal crime. First you are a victim, then you are a survivor, then you are a thriver.

On the performance side, Donovan Christian Singletary of the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artists Program sang "Ol' Man River" and the Frank Sinatra School singers did a sweet "Here Comes The Sun" and a really affecting "In My Life". The NiteStar Program from St. Lukes did a movement and voice piece that was hard to hear but packed a punch anyway.

Many of the personal testimonies were deeply disturbing and I've had trouble shaking them through the week. I guess, having just been through physical violence in my own life, a lot of it resonated on a personalized level. You know, the guy three weeks ago could have had a knife or a gun. I am very fortunate. I've also, since the vigil, been reflecting on a much worse episode of violence in my life. It happened in April of 1982 and still lingers in the shadows of my mind, occasionally showing its ugly face in the light. It was a horror and I will blog about it another time. Perhaps.

Anyway, I'm so glad I went and, if it has made me feel things, I have never been a person who resented feeling.

I'm goin' to the game!

In the spirit of my newfound, streetbrawling butchness, tonight I shall skip out to Astoria and catch the Mets game. The lovely Shari Proctor (I've blogged about her before - she's the one obsessed with fine footwear) scored tickets. We're gonna have hot dogs and popcorn.

Mets vs. Washington Nationals. GO METS!!!

Lives of Commitment 2008

Happily the seminary's annual Lives of Commitment breakfast Monday morning at the Waldorf went off seamlessly. It was a grand event and one of the honorees, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, was delicious. She is funny, spontaneous, charming and deep. I particularly loved her digs at Catholics and Catholicism. She poked great fun at her mother, who just last week uttered a prayer of thanks to Saint Anthony after procuring an excellent parking space just in front of Neiman Marcus. It was almost surreal to hear her speak of "Uncle Jack" and her father and Jackie. She came off as the sort of person I woud love to have at an informal dinner party. Chili and margaritas. She has written a book, "Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches are Mixing God with Politics and Losing their Way". I'm going to pick up a copy.

It was an early morning, up at 4am, pick up boss at 5:15am, walk in the Waldorf 5:30am, etc. but such a worthy event and I am proud to be a part.

A new "View"

(Above: Elaine Cassidy and Rafe Spall the PBS "Masterpiece" production of A Room With a View.)

Caught the new PBS A Room with a View last night. Very nice, minus Merchant Ivory's porcelain tea cup prettiness and Helena Bonham-Carter's Botticelliesque voluptuousness. I found a framing device with Lucy returning solo to the Pensione Bertolini cast a long shadow of impending dread over the procedings, but some of the storytelling is actually clearer than in the earlier film or, for that matter, Forster.

If I'd seen this film first I'd probably not be musicalizing it, but I found it an interesting, intelligent reading of a story I am simply telling differently.

"A (Tooth) Fairy Tale"

Before the Saturday recording sessions I caught Abigail in the kids' show she's currently in: A (Tooth) Fairy Tale. Turns out the piece was written by an old bud from my TheaterMania days, Ben Winters. Funny, funny, funny and an unexpected gay underscoring (as in lines like "It's okay Steve, I know this fairy".) It also boasts a really talented score by Rick Hip-Flores (I love that name!), and tells the story of Samuel, a "do-it-my-own-way" type of kid who trades places, at least for a time, with a discontented, unfulfilled Tooth Fairy. It's absolutely charming and I've been humming a piece called "The Scoop" for three days now.

Interestingly, I saw a short piece just a few weeks ago included in Blue Coyote's soft-core porn eve Happy Endings that was also about the discontents of the Tooth Fairy, going to hilarious lengths to explain how she makes all that dough. She's a dirty girl!!!

Anyway, in the much cleaner-cut version from the weekend, above is Jarusha Ariel as the title fairy.

The Saturday Sessions...

It's something I initially dreaded, eventually tolerated, have grown to really groove to. Okay, adore. I mean, of course, going into the recording studio and doin' mah stuff! Saturday Abigail and PP and I settled into Jim Papoulis' comfy basement studio and showed off. Peter mostly provided support this time since the day was largely about Abigail. She aced "Waterloo" and "When I Imagined Me" (with Peter "I-don't-do-backup" Proctor grudgingly in the background). I was pleased with my own performance of "The Golden Boy of Ames".

But I suppose the most rewarding element of the day was in meeting a request made by Mr. Taylor, Abigail's father. He has a friend whose mother is quite old, quite ill, and will be gone quite soon. In the 1930s (!) she was a songwriter with a radio show in DesMoines but, after marrying, left her writing behind and became a happy housewife. Her two children (in their 60s themselves) have never heard any of her songs. So, Mr. Taylor sent some music, Abigail and I worked it up, then took it into the studio.

It's a very lovely pop ballad that is charmingly of its day. "You're My One and Only". Very sweet and the chording was yummy. Anyway, Mr. Taylor will make a present of it to his friend's mother. It's really an honor to have been involved.

So, that was the Saturday session. There are many coming up and I am so thilled.

My Darlin' Marie...

There is exciting good news from my friend Marie. Remember her? She's the gal who graciously agreed to take on a role in Sylvia So Far called "All the Street Trash". Not all young actresses would do that. Not to mention, the first lyric out of her pretty little mouth is "Hey baby/How's it hangin'?/Howdja like a little treat?". She didn't shy away for a second from doing a boppy show tune about trickin'! Not my Marie. Cool chick.

Anyway, she has been accepted to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England!!!

They only take 28 people a year. Yeah, Marie's that good. Come August she'll pack up and move for a nine month stint to one of my favorite cities. I am so delighted for her. I hope her groovy boyfriend David gets to make a few trips across the pond while she's there.

The only downside is that Sylvia So Far is generating a lot of interest and will probably take off between now and Marie's return in May of 2009, so I'm losing my "Trash". But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and she has to take it. I am fully supportive of her decision. In fact, I think it is the right decision. Convincing PP (you know, the Peter Proctor?) is another thing altogether. Can't help you out on that one, Marie. But I am so proud of you and so pleased for you!!!

And now I have another good reason to make it to London!

Gorgeous drawings at the Morgan

I've been meaning for weeks to mention this and time gets away. The exhibition of drawings from the Uffizi showing now at the Morgan Library is glorious. I am always thrilled and in wonder at what a talented person can do with a bit of pencil or crayon or chalk. The subtleties of these Renaissance figures boggles. And where did they get those models? Were people really built like that then? Yow!

I suppose I've seen all these pieces before at the Uffizi, but Florence is such an irresistable assault to the senses that these forty or so drawings benefit tremendously from their New York holiday. The renovated galleries at the Morgan (one of my favorite places in NewYork) show them off in a way that let me focus on their content and weight and beauty. God yes, their beauty.

So hightail it on down to 36th Street, take a deep breath on the way in, then let these gorgeous pieces wash over you and into you. It's around through April 20th, so hurry.

Saturday Recording Session

As you all know, I have grown to love going into the recording studio and laying down my songs. In the past year some dozen of my pieces have been recorded (in the case of “My First Mistake”, multiple times). As part of the ongoing three-disc recording project, Abigail, the Peter Proctor and I skip into the studio again this Saturday. It’s mostly an Abigail day. She’s doing “Waterloo” from IOWA 08, a number I didn’t write requested by her father called “You’re My One and Only”, and The Conjuring’s “When I Imagined Me” with PP wailing in the background. Then I will do “The Golden Boy of Ames”, the IOWA 08 number about the crippled football player.

So exciting! In the coming months we are doing all of The Conjuring and 24 other pieces, including a slightly abbreviated Sammy and Delia (yes!). Abigail and Michael Santora could not be more adorable warbling away on “Your Hands on his Hair”. It’s been especially fun to revisit that.

So, I’ll keep you updated!

They're Coming!

Even before I worked in the building, I would visit the beautiful quadrangle garden enclosed by the cloister at Union Seminary every Spring. In the center stand four enormous, graceful, interlocked magnolia trees and for a few weeks each April the branches explode in shades of pink and cream that are delicious

The buds are out! They are on the way! Hallelujah!

Facial Update

Yes, I've been away from the blog awhile.

Apologies. There have been doctors and dentists checking over my mug. I am mostly healed, here is the bottom line:

I have a small fracture on the bridge of my nose. When all the swelling subsides we'll know if there is suptum damage. I don't even know what that means.

I still (13 days later) have the remnants of a black eye, though every day it diminishes.

The smaller cuts and abrasions on my face are healed.

The serious cut on my upper lip (where my tooth went through!!!) remains, though it is significantly better every day. The dentist says I will have a scar that will approximate Joaquin Phoenix's. COOL.

There you are. Thanks to all for your concern and care.