"Canceled! It's canceled!"
According to the writer Marie Brenner, this is the most welcome opening in the English language.
Every busy person can understand this idea. But I like even better, this one: "Would you like to go to the theater to see a big hit from London and I already have the tickets and will pick you up!"
Now, that's irresistible. And this happened over last weekend when I managed to see the smash "One Man, Two Guvnors" and had about the best time of my life at the Music Box Theater.
When the Tonys are announced any minute, this English import by the genius of farce, director
Nicholas Hytner, will be noodging and not-so-gently pushing and shoving other shows aside. (Thank god it's not a musical. No, Broadway is suddenly awash in excellent, thoughtful plays and revivals of dramas.)
- THE TITLE, "One Man, etc..." seems unfortunate, but it could be called "Twerky" and I'd still have to totally recommend it. This work by Richard Bean is based on the old "Servant of Two Masters," a hoary comedy of greed and gut-busting humor right out ofCommedia dell'Arte. But don't let that put you off; this is comedy for the ages and for everybody.
And I found a new guy to love, one James Corden, who is an award-winning actor and what he and his friends do onstage each performance is simply mind-bendingly funny, aided by a "physical comedy director" Cal McCrystal. (One of the actors, Tom Edden, who plays a waiter suffering from some kind of stroke, struggles up and down stairs with a big bowl of soup. One cannot do justice in mere words.)
Interaction with the audience seems to be a James Corden specialty. Probably partly staged, there are plenty of gifted amateurs at each performance and at the matinee I saw, these souls kept actor Corden struggling not to "break up" and go out of character in a most delightful manner.
Corden is a funny man in the manner of the late Red Skelton or Danny Kaye and would have put those genii Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel to shame. He has a ball onstage, yearning for fish'n'chips, fighting with himself, longing and leering after sex and double-dealing. The play is modernized in that it occurs just before the invention of the dreadful Internet. So that's amusing.
I keep reading rave after rave for "The Book of Mormon" and I liked that musical very much.
But "Mormon" has a real point - that any religion consists of mysteries that are unrealistic and one may be just as good as another. (Gold tablets found by a man named Smith...resurrection from the dead...an onus on eating certain animals...turning water and wine into blood and body...believing in a vengeful God, etc.)
- THE OTHER day I talked with a handsome young actor from LA (he is Fran Kranz of "Death of a Salesman") -- well, I had to explain to Fran what a supper club was. He hadn't heard of this '50s-era type place where artists used to go to sing and do comedy, with an after dinner audience that was dressed-up New York.
He knew that Mike Nichols, his director in "Salesman," had become famous playing satirical
comedy with Elaine May. But he hadn't realized how -- when they arrived in NYC from Chicago -- they had made their names at the old Blue Angel, Reuben Bleu, Upstairs at the Downstairs, Bon Soir, etc.
People back then liked dressing up at night, wearing neckties and cufflinks, chic gowns, then
paying a fee to sit in a supper club for watered down drinks and entertainment after dinner.
I think Yanna Avis is reviving this amusement because the sultry, beautiful chanteuse will come back with pizzazz when she opens at The Metropolitan Room, 34 W. 22 Street, on May 2, May 16th and May 30. Call 212 - 206 0440 for reservations.
- TO ADD to old-fashioned values - Feinstein's at the Loews Regency will for one-night-only, on June 17 offer the musical comedy and TV star, Kaye Ballard.
Miss Ballard made "Lazy Afternoon" a hit in "The Golden Apple," way back when. She starred in TV's "The Mothers-in-Law" with Eve Arden and scored in "Carnival" and "Top Banana." Marlon Brando called hers the loveliest voice ever recorded, on a par with Judy Garland, when she sang with the London Symphony.