Paul Benedict

1938-2008

Certainly best known as the British neighbor on the long-running sitcom The Jeffersons, Benedict played a variety of comic characters on stage and screen. He spent time on Sesame Street as the Mad Painter who painted numbers everywhere, and he's fondly remembered as the loony stage director in The Goodbye Girl, insisting that Richard Dreyfus play Richard III fey. His deadpan reactions in the final moments of Waiting for Guffman are priceless.

He had a substantial theatrical career, beginning his onstage work in Boston in a troupe which included DeNiro, Hoffman, and Pacino. He re-teamed with Pacino on Broadway in the two-character O'Neill play Hughie in 1996. He was respected as a director as well, and he helmed two off-broadway productions which became sleeper hits. In 1989, he guided Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney in The Kathy and Mo Show: Parallel Lives.

Two years earlier, he directed the original production of the two-hander Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, bringing the exceptional Kathy Bates to the world's attention.

Here's a shot of the cast and crew of that landmark production:

Benedict's elongated facial structure was a clue that he suffered from acromegaly, a pituitary disorder that was first diagnosed by an endocrinologist who saw Benedict in a theatrical production. He died this week at the age of 70.

s'Newz

...an occasional series mentioning current events which lately held my interest...

Here in DC, the government is bumbling along in its usual fashion. Everyone is excited about the next session of Congress, which, to numerologists' delight, is the 111th. To commemorate the occasion, the House Administration Committee issued a snazzy orientation book for the new members, and to add gravitas to the proceedings, announced the new session with bold, Roman Numerals:

In keeping with a long tradition of congressional incompetence, everybody involved failed to realize that the Roman Numerals for 111 are CXI. The above illustration, printed on hundreds of orientation booklets, announces the third congress.

Local DC politicos are diving into the growing chaos regarding the Obama Inauguration, which is turning out to be the Event of the Millennium, even as the Millennium is barely 9 years old. Nobody can get a hotel room, and those who booked reservations months ago are being informed that the price quoted back then is no longer valid. Instead, visitors are expected to pay five or ten times the going rate. And to make the week in January even more festive, the DC Council has just passed Emergency Legislation allowing bars and restaurants to remain open 24 hours from 1/17-1/20/09. Alcohol can be served an additional three hours each day (until 5 AM), to let revelers get really snockered.

Oh, and the DC Metro System, which runs the subway, has thrown up its hands regarding handling the several million visitors expected on the Big Day. They have already added all the cars and employees they have at their disposal. Their advice to those making their way to the Mall to watch the Inauguration?

Walk.

One more Inaugural item: the city will be jam packed with high-profile parties, but none will be higher profile than Oprah's Bash, though she still has not announced where it will be. She has, however, rented the Opera House at the Kennedy Center, which seats 2350 people, for one day. She will film at least one, and possibly more, programs from the site.

A couple of tidbits lately proved, yet again, that there is currently nobody at the wheel at the White House. Laura Bush put the call out to all the nation's congressional districts to contribute a Christmas ornament to be hung on the Official White House Christmas Tree. The submission from a certain district in Seattle was a bit subversive. The ornament was decorated with red, white, and blue swirls, in the midst of which was embedded text which saluted Rep. Jim McDermott's attempts to impeach George W. Bush. Nobody at the White House took notice, and the ornament would have been hung on the tree if the artist hadn't spilled the beans to a local newspaper. The ball was rejected, and Mrs. Bush's press secretary Sally McDonough sniffed that this was not the time or place for such sentiments.



That press secretary had a busy week. She also had to explain this little faux-pas: the Bushes invited a group of Jewish leaders to a Hanukkah reception next month. The invitation was a picture of a snow-covered White House, with a Clydesdale hauling a giant Christmas tree up to the front door:

Happy Hanukkah, Hebrews!

Here's how we Christians do it!

One non-DC item caught my eye this week. Remember back in the 80s, when dictator Manuel Noriega dodged American troops by seeking sanctuary at the Vatican Embassy in Panama? The military commanders surrounded the compound with huge stereo speakers, and blasted the embassy with rock music. The papal nuncio who was affording Noriega refuge bitterly condemned the Americans for the psychological torture.

I was reminded of that episode when I heard about the judge in Fort Lupton, Colorado, who sentenced teen-agers cited for disturbing the peace in a similar way. Rather than using rock music, the judge ordered offenders to listen to an hour of Barry Manilow.

Viva Vita!

Monday night, friends, family and fans of John MacDonald gathered in tribute.

Bill Largess hosted the evening, called John MacDonald, Vita! The title was a little brainy for my taste, not being a Latiny kind of guy, but it suited the celebratory nature of the event.



There was an unmistakable feeling of history in this gathering, which took place at the Hartke Theatre on the Catholic University campus. It was that very stage upon which John forged many of the relationships which flourished throughout his career. Most of the founding members of the Washington Stage Guild met at Catholic, and many others in the audience for the memorial had CU in their history. There was a palpable feeling of camaraderie among those folks, an inclusive feeling which enveloped the rest of us, making everyone there feel a part of the whole.


















I did not know John very long, so I was unaware of his life's history. The Big Name at the memorial was probably Liane Hansen from NPR, whose dulcet vocal tones are so enticing it makes one consider switching teams. Hansen was a classmate of John's during his undergraduate years, and she entertained the crowd with several stories of those long-ago days.







I am a big fan of Hansen, and she held the stage with her reminiscences. As I said, she was probably the highest profile speaker of the evening. But somehow her stories of John's undergraduate years were not as interesting to me as the others told later. I don't think our beautiful Liane was at fault here. After hearing the night's tributes, I think John didn't really come into his own until he hit Catholic University for his graduate work. It was then that he blossomed into the John MacDonald that we can recognize; there he seemed to develop the deft but light directorial touch which became the cornerstone of his work. And at Catholic, he began the relationships which lasted for the rest of his life.

John's early directorial efforts were illustrated during the festivities when Michael Rothhaar took the stage to recreate a moment from Beyond the Fringe, scenes from which John directed as a student at Catholic. Later, Rick Foucheux read a speech he delivered, under John's direction, decades ago in Hughie, a performance which garnered a Helen Hayes nomination. Laura Giannarelli provided a look at John's lengthy career as a voice artist, and we were treated to a bit of John's reading of Watership Down for Books for the Blind (it's still available).

Warm and often hilarious remembrances came from Alan Wade (who directed me a year ago in Of Mice and Men; this is a small and interconnected community), Vinnie Clark, Bill Pucilowsky, and Bob Butler. Scattered throughout the large audience were current and former members of the Guild (though that's a bit misleading; from my experience with the Guild the last few years, if you work with the group once, they consider you one of their own. I love that.) My favorite moment in the memorial was the Rondo, when a dozen or more actors rose from their seats and recited favorite lines from their performances, and memorable notes given by John as he directed them.

Short and to the point: "Don't suck."

Revealing the obvious: "You don't have to work so hard to be funny. You're dressed like a clown."

Perhaps my favorite line of John's was not part of the Rondo. It was uttered after the first read of Opus, which John listened to from a corner of the homey green room of the theatre. Our director Steve Carpenter offered John, as Artistic Director of the Guild, the opportunity to say a few words. And that's all he offered, a few words.

"It's a comedy."

I can't help it, I have to reveal a few very brief personal memories of John. As I have confessed, I did not get the chance to know him as well as others, and I miss that opportunity keenly. But he welcomed me into the fold with gentility during Opus, and more recently as I've been involved in the Guild's Staged Reading Series. But my very first one-on-one moment with John was not a Stage Guild moment. As I've previously written, about a year before Opus was produced, I was involved in a five-performance staging of 1776, to celebrate the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery. As these were staged readings, the full cast was onstage throughout, with book in hand. Everyone would exit for the intermission, then, at a certain moment during the entr'acte, we all trooped back onstage to our appointed seats. Well, for some reason one night (I think the lights changed unexpectedly onstage), John and I simultaneously thought it was time to enter, and we marched onstage. The audience paid us no heed, as they were still wandering around in Intermission Mode. No one else in the cast made this mistake, just John and myself. We stood center stage for a moment, looking around, then I casually muttered to John, "I think we're early."

"I think you're right," he replied, utterly calm.






After a moment in which we both realized that nobody was coming onstage to save us, I said, "Do you want to go off again?"


"No," John replied, "let's just stay here." And we did. We had a nice little chat between ourselves as the audience returned to their seats, and the musicians in the band arrived and began, finally, to play. At the appointed time, when the rest of the cast made their entrance, John and I calmly shook hands and walked to our places. Of course, John was practicing what we both already knew: the audience never knows you've made a mistake unless you tell them so.

During the run of Opus, I spent a lot of time backstage while the four other members of the ensemble did shmacting onstage. My role was the outcast and only made a few strategic appearances in the play. John was almost always relaxing in the green room during these times. Reading the paper, working a crossword, snagging another piece of cake, he was a calming presence for me. I am not one who does a lot of backstage chitchat during a performance, it tends to foul me up once I get back onstage. John seemed to sense this, and he left me alone, interacting with me only when I initiated a conversation. Far from being awkward, this always increased my confidence. These long backstage interludes taught me that I was working for an artistic director who understood actors (perhaps because he was a fine one himself).

These and other memories were present in my mind at Monday's tribute, and I imagine every single person in the audience was reliving their own private moments with John, even as we enjoyed the public remembrances being offered by the speakers, and hooted at the pictures of John's past ("Officer, we are having a pudding fight.")






John's wife and life partner, Ann Norton, was the final speaker, and I was surprised to learn that she almost never, in her marriage or her career with John, got the last word. (Even, as she pointed out, when she was right.) I suppose if I had known John longer, I would have seen that indeed, John usually did get the last word, but he achieved it in such an unassuming, gentle way, that nobody noticed or cared.


John himself finished off the evening, with a recording of the epilogue to Watership Down. As those clear, resonant tones filled the theatre, all those little memories of my own came back again. I'm sure that was happening to everyone else as well, no matter how long they had known John.

There was a prolonged standing ovation for this man whose life we were celebrating. Not much to give back, really, but it was spontaneous and appropriate. I will never forget the evening, or John, or our brief moments together.

Black Friday

Black Friday is so named by the retail industry because it is hoped that the day after Thanksgiving will put them in the black, profit-wise. So it's a happy moniker, or supposed to be. But for me, this year, Black Friday became a darker day.

First of all, Thanksgiving Day was a delight for me. I accompanied a small gathering of friends to a local restaurant, and had the traditional Halibut On A Bed Of Garlic Potatoes With Sauteed Asparagus, just like the pilgrims. The only mar to the day was when one of my dinner companions, a gal who has known me for several years, asked, quite honestly, "Scott, have you retired?"

This question, innocently asked, pushed all sorts of buttons for me. I have recently allowed my natural hair color (salt and pepper) to bloom, and so anyone who has not seen me in a while is naturally startled by all the silver uptop. But I cannot believe that I look 65 years old.

yikes.

So, the long holiday weekend was off with a big bang.

Just like everybody else this time of year, I am thankful for my family and friends and all the good and loving feelings I receive from them. I admit that I am also thankful for some material things, most especially my home. I feel very lucky to live where I do, and it was luck which put me here. I landed in DC only due to my graduate work, which included an internship here. It was never my intention to settle here, so my first home in The District really wasn't one; it was a hole in the ground which I dubbed "The Pit." It was a tiny basement apt with a door at the back of the closet leading into the furnace room. Once a month, when the oil for the furnace was delivered, I had to evacuate the place because of the fumes. Nice place, eh? I started getting work after I graduated, so I stayed in the city, and because I'm a lazy shlub, I remained in The Pit for over four years. Finally, it became apparent that I wasn't leaving the area any time soon, so I decided to improve my quality of life a bit and come up out of the ground. Rents at the time were running neck and neck with mortgage payments, and I was lucky enough (or frugal enough) to have a down payment, so I ended up on the hunt for a condo to buy. I had only two requirements, that it be centrally located (not a 'burb) and that it have a working fireplace. I looked at a few places, and landed in my current building because all the units had that fireplace. I was close to purchasing a very small unit located at the front of the building on the first floor when an aging hippy approached my broker in the hall and struck up a conversation. We ended up touring his much larger third floor unit (we toured all of it except the closet, which he declined to allow us to peek into. He was growing pot there). A month after our first look, I was moving in. This was nine years ago, and I've been very happy here. I've always been a homebody, and the one-bedroom is the perfect size for me, despite my tendency to clutter. Of course, I had to completely reline the chimney, replace the water heater, dishwasher, and stove, and still, after nine years, have not painted or re-carpeted. But that's my own laziness at work again. I'm lucky to be so centrally located, right on Capitol Hill, with my own parking space, a tremendous roof deck, and other niceties. And I caught a break on the price, too.

I've taken this schlep down memory lane to help remind myself how, all things considered, I still love living where I live.

The Tuscany is a building with about 20 units, and we all have a nodding acquaintance with each other. This is the Big City after all. It's a secure building, with a system which requires visitors to be buzzed in at the front door. Often, UPS or other delivery services gain entry and leave individual packages right inside the door. Recently, in fact on Black Friday, I discovered that a Christmas gift I purchased in anticipation of my trip to North Carolina for the hols, a big can of designer candy, was delivered last week, placed inside the security door, and then stolen. By one of my neighbors.

So this weekend, I'm afraid I've lost, not only 40 bucks, but my faith in the honesty of my neighbors. I know I'll recover, but from now on, as I pass one of my fellow Tuscans in the hall or in the parking lot, I will continue to nod, but will be wondering if this is the lowlife who stole a part of my family's Christmas.

Probably not the feeling one is supposed to have at Thanksgiving. Or perhaps it's spiritual payback for the theft my ancestors perpetrated on the native Americans during the time of the First Thanksgiving.

Yeah, I'll try to think of it that way...

Well, my Black Friday could have been worse, I suppose. I could have been that poor Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death in New York, just because he stood in the way of a mass of crazed bargain hunters. But it might have been fun to be standing in the next aisle of that toy store in Palm Desert, where two shoppers' argument escalated to the point where they both pulled out guns and shot each other.

Be warned. Next time I go to Toys R Us, I'm packing heat.

Remembering Razzleberry Dressing

With the holidays officially upon us (even you Grinches who complain about Christmas Creep can't deny it), I thought the weekly Friday Dance Party might take on a holiday slant, at least in these pages. Scroll down and you will find a goofy clip which has a deeper meaning for me this time of year. You might recognize it as a song from Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol, one of those early 60s TV perennials to which boomers like me are attracted. I remember, as a kid, eagerly awaiting its broadcast each year. Though I was not a fan of Mr Magoo, there was something about this show which attracted me. When I grew older, I realized I loved the thing so much because it's a little Broadway musical, written in fact by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill (the writers of Funny Girl, among many others). The songs have the same bounce and sophistication as actual show tunes. Along with Jim Backus, the voice cast includes Jack Cassidy and Morey Amsterdam.



The program disappeared for a long while. Its lousy animation, and the fact that the Magoo character dropped out of fashion, are probably to blame. It never achieved the stature of other Christmas themed cartoons like Rudolph or The Grinch. But when it was released on video, I snapped it up, and have enjoyed it ever since. My great friends Scott and Drew are also admirers of this little charmer, and we had a standing tradition of gathering every year, usually the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, to sip champagne, nibble munchies, and watch the show together.

That routine is lost to us now, as we live on separate coasts, but I still plug the DVD into the player at some point over Thanksgiving weekend and raise a glass to that tradition. So, in honor of all those wonderful evenings we spent together (and as always, a nod to Larry's Friday Dance Party), enjoy the following clip.

William Gibson

1914-2008

He was a novelist and a poet, but Gibson was primarily known as a playwright and occasional screenwriter. He had two back-to-back Broadway hits in the late 1950s.

Two for the Seesaw, for which he won a Tony nomination, starred Anne Bancroft and Henry Fonda:

A year later, he provided Bancroft and a very young Patty Duke with career-making roles in The Miracle Worker:

Recreating their stage roles, both Duke and Bancroft won Oscars for the screen adaptation. Gibson won a Tony for the play, and an Oscar nomination for his film.

In 1964, he adapted the Clifford Odets 1930s play about boxing into the musical Golden Boy, earning another Tony nomination and providing Sammy Davis, Jr. a star turn. His Two for the Seesaw was adapted into the musical Seesaw in 1973, a production which launched the career of Tommy Tune as a dancer and choreographer (Tune won the first of his nine Tonys for his supporting role. Above are Michelle Lee, a shaggy-haired Tune, and Ken Howard in Seesaw).

In 1968, Gibson provided the Lincoln Center Repertory A Cry of Players, the fictionalized story of a young Will Shakespeare, stuck in an unhappy marriage and miserably employed by his father in Stratford. The play ran in rep with King Lear, and had a starry cast including Frank Langella and Anne Bancroft as the Shakespeares, with Rene Auberjonois, Stephen Elliott, Rosetta LeNoire, and Kristopher Tabori in support (a very young Paul Rudd was in the ensemble). I confess to a fondness for this play, as it provided me with a juicy role in my undergrad days, as Arthur, the young boy in the traveling players who always played the women.

I seem to have wandered into Memoryland here. Back to Gibson's obit:

Gibson continued to write for the stage, providing a flop sequel to The Miracle Worker called Monday After the Miracle, and a solo piece about Golda Meir, Golda's Balcony. The latter was a success for Tovah Feldshuh, who continues to perform the piece, and for Valerie Harper, left, who appeared in the national tour and the screen version.

Gibson continues to be remembered primarily for The Miracle Worker, which is constantly revived in community and educational settings, and has seen several television versions as well. In an interview several years ago, Gibson revealed this fun tidbit: in the original script, there was no mention of Annie Sullivan's Irish brogue, as the woman did not have one. But original star Anne Bancroft was having trouble dropping the very Noo Yawk accent she had been using for a year in Two for the Seesaw. Director Arthur Penn suggested the brogue, and it stuck. The role is now traditionally played with an Irish accent.

Coincidentally, local theatre Rep Stage is currently prepping Gibson's holiday play, The Butterfingers Angels, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut, & The Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree (here is a production shot of star Tim Pabon).

Gibson died this week at the age of 94.

s'Newz

...an occasional series mentioning current events which lately held my interest...

The belief that stock brokers, during the big crash of 1929, were leaping out of windows has been pretty much debunked as myth these days. But this actually happened: the current world-wide financial meltdown caused a Brazilian trader to shoot himself in the chest on the floor of the stock market. Ouch.







I was sorry to hear that one of my favorite comic actresses, Cloris Leachman, sought medical help this week for difficulty breathing. She apparently has pneumonia, and is home recuperating. I really am hoping she is not going to die, as her obituary would be dominated by her recent flamboyant stint on Dancing With the Stars. I have never watched an episode of the program (I avoid reality television), but clips of her antics have been hard to ignore, as they've been everywhere. That's OK, but I have such respect for the woman's talent that I really hope she gains some distance from the show before leaving us forever. She is reportedly the most "awarded" actress ever, with an Oscar, numerous Emmys, and even more Golden Globes and critics' circle awards. She first came to my attention as Phyllis on Mary Tyler Moore's sitcom, for which she won her first two Emmys. Somehow, she was able to make the self-centered character endearing. During her first year or so on the program, she won the Oscar for a highly dramatic role in The Last Picture Show, leaving no doubt of her versatility. With that history, I think it would be a crying shame if she were to be eulogized as that buxom broad who refused to act her age on a reality program.


Here's the most ironic story I caught this week. The late George Carlin, about whom I have already written, posthumously received the Mark Twain Prize for Comedy at the Kennedy Center in a ceremony which was held, and videotaped, this week. The television special covering the event will be broadcast in 2009. Carlin was famous for a lot of things, one of which was his infamous routine regarding the Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on Television. During this week's ceremony, a video clip of that routine was shown to the audience, and was bleeped. Onstage. Live. I'm not talking about the TV tape which will be broadcast, which can certainly be censured during post-production; I mean that the tape of his routine shown to the live, in-person audience in the theatre at the Kennedy Center, was bleeped. I've had a little bit of experience with censorship at KenCen, though in this instance, the administration at the Kennedy Center disavowed putting any pressure on the producers of the show to censure this tape.

Carlin, wherever he is, is probably tearing his few remaining hairs out...

This last item reflects a sensibility which is creative, charitable, provocative, and kind of icky, simultaneously. Daniel Radcliff, the planet's most famous student wizard, will soon be wrapping up his Broadway stint as the sexually confused teen-aged horse-abuser in Equus. This particular production of the play is to be commended for its determination to raise funds for Broadway Cares / Equity Fights Aids (BC/EFA). Recently, they auctioned off various items associated with the play, including a signed script belonging to Kate Mulgrew, who is playing the judge in the piece. Her script brought a pretty penny from some star-crossed Trekkie. But there may be pandemonium in the theatre soon, as three matinee performances have been pegged to host another auction. This time, audience members will have the chance to buy the very pair of jeans worn by Radcliff during the performance. Our hunky Harry Potter will take his curtain call, dash backstage, strip off the jeans he wore throughout the performance (except when he was naked), and carry them back onstage to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. He'll even sign the skanky pants.

...I just have to let that image lay there for a while...