I'm Getting Temperamental Over You

Jon Marans's The Temperamentals, one of the very best of the bumper crop of new plays dealing with gay subject matter, opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages last night following a highly successful showcase run last year. It tells the based-in-truth story of two men -- the communist Harry Hay and the Viennese refugee and designer Rudi Gernrech -- as they fall in love while establishing the first gay rights organization in the United States pre-Stonewall. After the show, the company gathered with friends, fans, and photogs for a celebration at The Palm restaurant. Here are my pix from that event.

Thomas Jay Ryan, a.k.a. Harry Hay.

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Michael Urie, a.k.a. Rudi Gernreich, with David Hyde Pierce.

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Arnie Burton (left), who plays several roles in the show -- including Vincente Minnelli! -- with Yuki Lim.

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Friends of the production: Actors Jeffrey Kuhn and David Turner.

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Vince Gatton (right), who understudies several roles in The Temperamentals, with his sister Barbie.

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Playwright John Marans (right) with one of the show's producers, Stacy Shane.

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Stage and TV star Judith Light.

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Film producer Neil Meron with actor/author/director Bob Balaban.

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Daryl Roth (center), another of the show's producers, with David Hyde Pierce and his partner, TV executive Brian Hargrove.

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This handsome portrait of the Temperamentals cast is now displayed on one of the restaurant's walls.

Boyz Will Be Girlz (and Vice-Versa)

The fifth annual edition of Broadway Backwards, the wildly entertaining benefit concert in which men sing songs traditionally performed by women, and vice-versa, exploded onto the stage of Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre last night -- Monday, February 22. And wouldn't the Father of Our Country have been proud! Created, directed, and choreographed by Robert Bartley, the event -- which this year raised funds for both New York City's GLBT Community Center and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS -- was a roaring success. Here are some of my pix from the show.

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The opening number featured appearances by Robert Cuccioli (left) and Valerie Harper, the latter soon to return to Broadway as Tallulah Bankhead in Looped.

Broadway Backwards 5 was hosted by the fabulous Florence Henderson, here seen being arrested by Richard Kind for supporting same-sex romance in "Shipoopi" from The Music Man.

In another number from The Music Man, Becki Newton played a predatory traveling saleswoman (salesperson?), with Barbara Angeline as her prey.

Dan Butler (soon to return to the New York stage in The Irish Curse at Soho Playhouse) took the Nancy Walker role of cab driver Hildy in a number from On the Town, putting the moves on cute young sailor Hunter Ryan Herdlicka (a.k.a. Henrik in the current revival of A Little Night Music).

In the two photos above, Gary Beach and the male ensemble are seen performing "I'm Not at All in Love" from The Pajama Game.

Lee Roy Reams and Len Cariou, who appeared together on Broadway in Applause 40 years ago, sang "I Remember It Well" from Gigi. (You probably won't be surprised to hear that a Lauren Bacall reference creeped into the lyrics.)

In the three photos above, we see Tony Goldwyn (who'll soon return to Broadway in the revival of Promises, Promises) cavorting with the male ensemble in "Conga!" from Wonderful Town.

Three of Broadway's hottest dancers -- Timothy Bish, Adam Perry, and Nick Adams -- performed "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" from Sweet Charity

As seen in the two pix above, Douglas Sills musically declared, "I could have danced all night, and still have begged for more!"

Bruce Vilanch played Bianca (or was it Binaca?) in the "Tom, Dick, or Harry" number from Kiss Me, Kate, with (left to right) Antuan Raimone, Ward Billeisen, and Patrick O'Neill as his/her suitors.

Michele Lee sang "Secret Love" from Calamity Jane and "The Boy Next Door" (rendered here as "The Girl Next Door") from Meet Me in St. Louis.

Raúl Esparza channeled Judy Garland -- complete with frenzied arm motions -- in his searing rendition of "The Man That Got Away" from A Star is Born.

Flo Henderson was reunited with one of The Brady Bunch kids, Eve Plumb, in a women's prison takeoff.

Mario Cantone and the male ensemble stopped the show with "Where You Are" from Kiss of the Spider Woman.

For the show's 11 o'clock number, Florence and the women performed "Luck Be a Lady" from Guys and Dolls, after which Flo was hauled into court and brought before the judge -- played by another beloved TV mom, Marion Ross from Happy Days.

For the grand finale of Broadway Backwards 5, Tituss Burgess and the Youth Pride Chorus sang "Children Will Listen" from Into the Woods.

Prepare for ReEntry

ReEntry, a new play by Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez, is billed as an unflinching look at the lives of Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, based on interviews with privates and colonels, combat vets and clerks, and one particularly memorable family. Directed by Sanchez, the show opens at Urban Stages on February 11 and will play through March 7. Featured in the ensemble cast are Joseph Harrell, Sameerah Luqmann-Harris, Bobby Moreno, PJ Sosko, and Sheila Tapia. Here are my photos of the production, taken during the final run-through.

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You're in the Armory Now!

In what is sure to be the biggest theatrical event of 2011, the Lincoln Center Festival, in association with the Park Avenue Armory and The Ohio State University, will present the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at the Armory for an unprecedented six-week residency in July and August next year. A joint announcement of this extraordinary endeavor was made this morning at Alice Tully Hall by Nigel Redden, director of the Festival; Reynold Levy, president of Lincoln Center; Rebecca Robertson, President and CEO of the Armory; and Michael Boyd, artistic director of the RSC.

For this engagement, a full-scale replica of the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, where the RSC regularly performs, will be constructed in the Armory's 55,000 square foot drill hall (see rendering). The RSC ensemble will consist of 44 actors performing five plays that will be selected from the company's 2009-2010 U.K. repertoire of six plays: Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and The Winter's Tale. There be a total of 45 performances from July 6 through August 14, 2011.

Opening this morning's press conference, Redden said: "When we began conversations with Michael Boyd, he not only challenged us with the idea of bringing a large group of actors to New York, he challenged us with the idea of bringing them to a theater that would reproduce the Courtyard in Stratford-upon-Avon in some way. We looked at various theaters, and could find nothing that would work. So we did the obvious, which was to agree to build a replica of the theater in New York. Of course, the only place that we could do this was at the Park Avenue Armory." Redden noted previous Festival presentations at the Armory, including Les Ephemeres and an extravagant production of the opera Die Soldaten; but he commented, "I don't think that we will do anything on quite so epic a scale as this residency of the RSC."

Robertson said, "It's a huge thrill for the Park Avenue Armory to have the Royal Shakespeare Company in residence in New York. This role of co-presenter is new to us; it represents a recent commitment by our very dedicated board to invest more in artistic work that needs an unconventional space like ours. Completed in 1881 as both a military facility and a social club for the leaders of New York's gilded age, the Park Avenue Armory is one of country's historic treasures. Our soaring drill hall is one of the largest unobstructed spaces in the city, and it was designed to resemble a 19th-century European train shed, so it's a very beautiful structure. We believe that our space allows artists to create their own worlds and have audiences enter into them."

Introduced to energetic applause, Boyd said, "It's a great honor to be given center stage in this city and in this Festival. You're going to have 44 very excited Shakespearean actors singing 'New York, New York' in just over a year's time. By 2011, [these actors] will have have been working together, fighting, hating each other, learning together, playing their roles, understudying for each other. Fifty-five-year-old, slightly grumpy actors will have learned to dance and do rope work, encouraged by their younger colleagues. In an age of rampant individualism, we are working hard to prove the virtues of collective theater-making."

For more information on this and other Lincoln Center events, visit http://new.lincolncenter.org/live/.

Each Day is Valentine's Day

I would describe Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano as "The Lunts of Cabaret," except that they're much younger than my image of Alfred and Lynn. And I hesitate to label them "The Brangelina of Cabaret," given what's lately been happening with that union. So let's just avoid comparisons and say that Eric and Barbara are their own, unique selves.

Over the next several weeks, this enormously talented couple will be offering all standards, all the time in two different venues: They'll be ensconced in the legendary Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, musically exploring the many sides of modern romance in a show titled This Thing Called Love, from February 9 through March 6; and they will do double duty on three manic evenings, performing in a Johnny Burke tribute as part of the 92nd Street Y's celebrated "Lyrics and Lyricists" series, February 20-22. I caught up with them last week at their publicist's office, and here's what they had to say.

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BROADWAYSTARS: Have you guys performed together at the Oak Room before this engagement?

ERIC: Only for a one-night Noël Coward evening. But I've been there several times.

STARS: I'm so glad that place is still open for business.

ERIC: Yes, especially with things being how they are. Isn't that the line from Guys and Dolls? "Things being how they are..."

BARBARA: We were just talking about roles I'd like to play, and I'd love to do Guys and Dolls.

STARS: Which role, Sarah or Adelaide?

ERIC: Sky.

BARBARA: Yes, that would be more my temper!

STARS: I missed the Nightlife Awards this year, but I know you guys won the award for best cabaret duo.

BARBARA: It was a fun night, and we were thrilled to be a part of it. Bruce Vilanch was the host, and oh my God! He had a script, but he just kept going off. Every minute, something would trigger a story. He reminisced a lot about Reno Sweeney's. It was great.

STARS: In your show at the Oak Room, you're going to feature songs by composers ranging from Cole Porter to Stephen Sondheim to Bruce Springsteen. Is it a challenge to perform such stylistically diverse songs and still make the program feel cohesive?

ERIC: I think it's all in how we present it. If we set up each song properly, they will all seem part of the context.

BARBARA: It also depends on the arrangements, if they're all of a piece. It's not like we do the Gershwin songs with a piano and a bass and then we add electric guitar and drums for the Springsteen. The fact that they're all shot through the same musical prism and sensibility makes for a seamless transition. I think it's important to include the music of our generation, but it's really no longer innovative to do that. When I put songs by Cyndi Lauper and Springsteen on one of my albums and mixed them with songs by Sondheim and Dorothy Fields, it was a little bit innovative then, but now every jazz artist is mixing the genres.

STARS: What's the arc of your show? Does it trace the various stages of love?

ERIC: Yes, but in a subtle way. Our opener is all about the search for love, because the last thing we want to look like is a happily married couple lording it over everybody.

BARBARA: Because we're not! Our premise in the show is, basically, that we don't know anything about love.

STARS: Can you name some of the musical theater songs in the show?

ERIC: "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" [from Oklahoma!], "Small World" [from Gypsy], "Tonight" [from West Side Story], and the title song from Guys and Dolls. In that one, we do some of the lyrics that Frank Loesser wrote for the sheet music but aren't in the show. They're from the woman's point of view, and people are always startled to hear them. They ask us, "Where did you find those lyrics? They're great!"

STARS: What would you say are some of the most original love songs in your show?

ERIC: Well, we might do some Yip Harburg songs. He had a great knack for not being literal.

ERIC: I think the classic songs can win a whole new audience, if they're well presented. Because they endure. The songs of Rodgers and Hart and Cole Porter are so smart and so universal.

STARS: A big help in appreciating that kind of music is being exposed to it at an early age, but the chances of that are pretty low nowadays, given the current state of arts education. Maybe it should be done at home -- like sex education.

ERIC: Exactly!

BARBARA: We're really looking forward to this month-long engagement at the Algonquin. To make contact with the audience is always what's foremost in our minds. We're hoping that people come and have an evening of feeling and honest connection. There's so much out there that keeps us from having that kind of heart-to-heart human contact.

STARS: That's the reason why cabaret will probably never die.

BARBARA: Yes, because there's nothing else like it, when you're this close and somebody says, "I am now going to draw and quarter myself for you and your husband."

ERIC: Night after relentless night!