Gossip Girl of the Week: Lynn Nottage

I'D give anything to see Lynn Nottage's office bookcase. Or living room mantle. Or wherever she keeps her awards. Countless theater prizes, an Obie and a Drama Desk Award among them. And a 2007 MacArthur Foundation genius award. Then a Pulitzer Prize for "Ruined," her drama about Congolese women raped and forced into prostitution. And the honors keep coming.

CURRENT GIG On Monday, "Ruined" was given the very first Horton Foote Prize for outstanding new American play. Nottage will be honored on Sept. 20.

WHAT SHE SWEARS SHE'S DOING NEXT A comedy set in 1930s Hollywood.*

AGE 45.

BORN AND RAISED Brooklyn.

ALMA MATER Brown. Yale School of Drama.

AVAILABILITY Married to Tony Gerber, a filmmaker.

BEST KNOWN FOR "Intimate Apparel," her play about a turn-of-the-last-century African-American seamstress whose clients include both society women and prostitutes. Nottage loves its characters, because they're "so pre-Freudian."

HOW SHE SEES BEING A PLAYWRIGHT "The role of the theater artist is to keep her eyes open when everyone else's are shut."*

*"Playing Against Type," Brown Alumni Magazine, July/August 2010.


WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll down to see why Edward Albee is our latest Gossip Guy of the Week at age 82. Search to find items about David Cromer and "Our Town," David Duchovny and God, Liza Minnelli and sparkly clothes, and that Hollywood actress who preceded Bernadette Peters as Desiree in "A Little Night Music."

Gossip Guy of the Week: Edward Albee

BEING in your 80s is beginning to look like an amazing amount of fun. First, we've got Betty White, 88, prancing all over the screen, winning an Emmy Award last night for hosting "Saturday Night Live" and giving Jon Hamm dirty-dancing lessons in the awards show's opening number. She has a new sitcom; she's writing two books; her every guest appearance on television is an event. And now that old iconoclast Edward Albee is having the kind of month that playwright-counterparts 50 years his junior would just about kill for.

CURRENT GIG "Me, Myself and I," his most recent play, began previews last week at Playwrights Horizons. It stars Elizabeth Ashley as a mother whose identical-twin son announces that his brother doesn't exist.

ALMOST SIMULTANEOUS TRIUMPH Absolutely glowing reviews for "A Delicate Balance" (his 1966 award winner) at the Berkshire Theater Festival in Massachusetts, directed by David Auburn.

AGE 82.

BORN AND RAISED Virginia. Adopted as an infant, he grew up in Larchmont, N.Y.

ALMA MATER Trinity College, Hartford.

AVAILABILITY His partner, the sculptor Jonathan Thomas, died in 2005.

BEST KNOWN FOR "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," 1962. Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen starred as George and Martha, the battling academic couple with the imaginary son.

BROADWAY DEBUT "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," 1962.

WHAT, ANOTHER PULITZER? He's won three Pulitzer Prizes for Drama: "A Delicate Balance" (1967), "Seascape" (1975) and "Three Tall Women" (1994).

WHY HE CONSIDERS ALL HIS PLAYS POLITICAL "Because they involve how we lie to ourselves."*

"Me, Myself & I," by Edward Albee, directed by Emily Mann, Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, (212) 279-4200, playwrightshorizons.org. Opening night: Sept. 12, 2010.

*A 2009 interview with DC Theater Scene.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about David Cromer's brilliance and his return to "Our Town." Or search to find items about Katie Finneran (now a newlywed), Al Pacino and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Gossip Guy of the Week: David Cromer

HE'S back in Grover's Corners. The Barrow Street Theater production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" is closing on Sept. 12 after an amazing run that won Off Broadway awards and critical raves galore. But happily the play's brilliant director, David Cromer, has returned, as of Monday night, to play the Stage Manager for the duration. He originated the role when the production opened a year and a half ago.

CURRENT GIG "Our Town," as director and again as the Stage Manager, the normally folksy (but in Cromer's hands, matter-of-fact) narrator of Thornton Wilder's classic of classics.

WHAT THE TIMES THOUGHT Just "highly rewarding." (Charles Isherwood, "21st-Century Grover's Corners, With the Audience as Neighbors")

BUT THE WSJ GUSHED "I don't use the word 'genius' casually, but David Cromer may fill the bill, " Terry Teachout wrote ("The Genius of David Cromer") in The Wall Street Journal. "To have made something so new out of so familiar a play is remarkable enough. To have brought off such a feat without doing violence to the original is a sure sign of something more than mere talent."

AGE 45

BORN AND RAISED Skokie, Ill.

ALMA MATER Columbia College (Illinois). He dropped out.

AVAILABILITY Dating some mystery man, at last report.

OFF BROADWAY DEBUT "Orson's Shadow," 2005. Then a musical version of Elmer Rice's "Adding Machine" (2008).

BROADWAY DEBUT Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs," last October.

BIGGEST PUBLIC FAILURE See Broadway debut (above). Despite generally excellent reviews, the public just didn't buy tickets. "Brighton Beach Memoirs" closed after only a week, and "Broadway Bound," Part 2 of "The Neil Simon Plays" with the same cast, never even opened.

UP NEXT Directing "Yank!," last season's big Off Broadway hit about gay soldiers in love during World War II. It's scheduled to open on Broadway this season.

AND HE HAS A WHOLE OTHER LIFE IN CHICAGO His recent hits there include critically praised-to-high-heavens productions of "Picnic" and "A Streetcar Named Desire."

CUTEST THING HE TOLD ALEX WITCHEL "I live like a college student. I always have. It's a very arrested thing. It's hard to grow out of that." -- On why he doesn't have nice clothes, a nice apartment, cooking skills, etc. ( "David Cromer Isn't Giving Up," The New York Times Magazine)

"Our Town," by Thornton Wilder, directed by David Cromer, Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, (212) 868-4444, smarttix.com. Opening night: Feb. 26, 2009.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about Loretta Ables Sayre, the fabulous Bloody Mary in the just-closed "South Pacific." Or search to find items about the new generation of playwrights' daughters, the prospect of "Glee" being turned into a Broadway show and lots of theater people you love.

Gossip Girl of the Week: Loretta Ables Sayre

"SOUTH PACIFIC" closed last night, after a two-year-plus run at Lincoln Center. Kelli O'Hara, this production's original Nellie Forbush, came back for almost a fortnight of farewell performances. Paulo Szot, her original Emile de Becque, returned. And "Live at Lincoln Center," the PBS series, presented the whole thing on Wednesday night, so theater lovers coast to coast could experience the next best thing to being there. And who was the big surprise, for those of us who somehow hadn't made it to the Vivian Beaumont for this production? Loretta Ables Sayre, the fiftyish actress and singer who played Bloody Mary and proved that she was just as great at subtle emotional close-ups as at projecting to the last row of the balcony.

CURRENT GIG Resting up after her long run as Bloody Mary, savvy trader and fiercely determined mother, in the ecstatically acclaimed Lincoln Center revival of "South Pacific." The role won her a Tony nomination and a Theater World Award.

WHAT THE TIMES THOUGHT "A terrific New York debut." Her songs "Bali Ha'i" and "Happy Talk" actually "feel new because they're rendered as systematic acts of seduction." (Ben Brantley)

AGE 52.

BORN AND RAISED Stockton, Calif. The family (Mom and Loretta's new stepdad) moved to Hawaii when she was 6.

ALMA MATER On-the-job training.

AVAILABILITY Married, to David Sayre.

BROADWAY DEBUT "South Pacific" was it. At age 50.

WHAT SHE DID BEFORE Jazz singer at some of the best hotel lounges on Oahu, with a little acting and voice-over work in between. She played Effie in "Dreamgirls" for a Honolulu theater company in 1989.

WHAT'S NEXT "I mean, what do you do after you've done something like this?" she asked Broadway.com in an interview. "I'll need to make up some brand-new dreams."

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about a new trend: famous New York playwrights' daughters beginning their acting careers. Or search to read items about Katie Finneran, Al Pacino, Liza Minnelli, Sean Hayes and more.

New Talent Source: Playwrights' Daughters

BROADWAY ROYALTY Zosia Mamet, left, with Elisabeth Moss at a 1965 anti-Establishment party in this week's episode of AMC's "Mad Men."

FIRST, a confession: I have been dying for a really good excuse to talk about "Mad Men" on theatergossip.com. And now I have it.

There I was a few days ago, giddily enjoying Episode 4 of the new season of the greatest television series of all time when up popped an intriguing new face. A young, serious-looking brunette in the Time-Life Building elevator with our favorite proto-feminist ad-agency copywriter, Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss). Said brunette is Joyce Ramsay, a photo assistant or something at Life magazine, carrying some nude photos that have just been rejected by the editors. Joyce takes a liking to Peggy, and before you can say Margaret Bourke-White, she has invited Peggy to a dark downtown Warholesque party (the "Mad Men" story has just entered 1965) and makes a bold attempt to kiss her. Followed by an even bolder, and somewhat unlikely, comment about vaginas. (In 1965, Eve Ensler, the "Vagina Monologues" playwright, who made the V word safe for polite conversation, was 12 years old.)

Joyce turns out to be Zosia Mamet, the 22-year-old daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet ("Glengarry Glen Ross," "Speed-the-Plow," "American Buffalo," "Race" and the forthcoming "Life in the Theater"). Her mother is Mamet's first wife, the actress Lindsay Crouse, whose father was Russel Crouse. The elder Crouse, with his partner Howard Lindsay (thus his daughter's name), wrote "The Sound of Music," "Anything Goes" and a few other hits. So Zosia has a far-reaching theater pedigree on both sides of the family.

Zosia Mamet is also in the hit summer movie "The Kids Are All Right," playing Annette Bening and Julianne Moore's teenage daughter's best friend (the one who "sexualizes everything"), and she's had a recurring role in the Showtime series "United States of Tara."

With the brilliant debut of David Rabe and Jill Clayburgh's daughter Lily in "The Merchant of Venice" in Central Park earlier this summer (see "Gossip Girl of the Week: Lily Rabe," July), we see a trend. Please send other news of famous Broadway or Off Broadway playwrights' offspring just coming of age.


WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about plans to turn "Glee" into a Broadway show. Or search to find items on Al Pacino, David Duchovny, Catherine Zeta-Jones, the three huge stars of "Women on the Verge" and the aforementioned Lily Rabe.

'Glee' Coming to Broadway? Is That Good ?

WINNERS IN SO MANY WAYS In a poster for the Fox series "Glee," characters proudly display the universal sign for "loser." Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch are at center.

THE show is a huge hit. No doubt about that. A lovably motley crew of singing and dancing high school kids who dream of Broadway-musical futures. A handsome young glee-club sponsor. A tough gym teacher who loves to make trouble. Big, expensive production numbers with stage stars like Kristin Chenoweth and Neil Patrick Harris.

The weird part is that it's on television.

Weirder still: The announcement a few days ago that this series, "Glee," is going to be turned into a stage show and produced on Broadway.

If you're not a Gleek (the series quickly gained its own fan nickname), an explanation may be in order. Come to think of it, even if you are, you may want to think about this sleight-of-genre plan.


TIMELINE:
DO THEY OWE IT ALL TO SIMON COWELL?

May 19, 2009 The pilot of "Glee" makes its debut on Fox, right after "American Idol."

Sept. 9, 2009 The show returns as a real series.

Sept. 15, 2009 Josh Groban guest-stars as himself.

Sept. 30, 2009 Kristin Chenoweth guest-stars for the first time as April Rhodes, a sort of high school choir consultant.

Jan. 17, 2010 After only half a season, "Glee" wins the Golden Globe award for best television series (comedy or musical).

March 31, 2010 "Glee" wins a Peabody Award.

April 20, 2010 In the Madonna episode (in which Madonna did not appear), Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), the gym teacher, "vogues."

May 18, 2010 Matthew Morrison ("South Pacific") and the guest-starring Neil Patrick Harris ("Assassins") do a killer competitive duet of Aerosmith's "Dream On."

May 18, 2010 In the same episode, Rachel (Lea Michele, who was in "Spring Awakening") learns that Patti LuPone is not, as she had hoped, her real mother. But a character played by Idina Menzel is.

June 8, 2010 Season 1 ends.

July 8, 2010 "Glee" earns 19 Emmy nominations. (The awards will be presented on Aug. 29, NBC, 8 p.m.)

Aug. 12, 2010 The site nydailynews.com reports that Ryan Murphy, the show's co-creator, says a stage version of the series is "definitely" coming to Broadway.

So a show about young people dreaming of the Broadway stage will star young people on the Broadway stage.

We get the idea. Teenagers love this TV show, so they'll come to see a stage version of it. After all, the only other big show based on a television series, "The Addams Family," is a huge hit, and it's terrible.

But guys, young people who love "Glee" and can afford the ticket prices would be going to a Broadway show anyway. And assuming you're not going to pull Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Chris Colfer et al. from the series to do the stage version, wouldn't that audience rather spend all those baby-sitting or car-wash or affluent-parent dollars on a production with one of their real idols instead of some wide-eyed unknowns? These are kids who actually know who Bernadette Peters is.

We hope we're wrong. In a wondrously strange year in which there's a hit prime-time network show about stage-struck show-tune-loving teenagers and HBO is producing "The Miraculous Year," a script reportedly inspired by the life of Stephen Sondheim, maybe anything can happen.


"Glee," Season 2 premiere, Fox, Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2010, 8 p.m.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about the guy in the "Spider-Man" musical who keeps getting roles in which his face doesn't show. Or search to find items on Liza, Patti and strange Tony moments.

Gossip Guy of the Week: Patrick Page

YES, the troubled, long-delayed comic-book musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" is really, finally coming to Broadway. Reeve Carney was cast in the title role awhile ago. Everyone was pretty sure Jennifer Damiano was going to be Peter Parker's girlfriend, and now that's official. And today the casting of the show's villain was announced. The Green Goblin will be played by Patrick Page. And if Page's face doesn't look all that familiar, check out the kinds of Broadway roles he's played before. At least in "Spider-Man," his face will be visible part of the time: when he's seen as the scientist Norman Osborn, the villain's secret identity.

CURRENT GIG Just cast in the musical "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" as the Green Goblin.

AGE 48.

BORN AND RAISED Spokane, Wash. (born). Monmouth, Ore. (raised).

ALMA MATER Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. Also the alma mater of "Batman" Adam West and "Battlestar Galactica" star Dirk Benedict.

AVAILABILITY Married to the former "Trading Spaces" host Paige Davis. (If she used her husband's surname, she'd be Paige Page.)

BROADWAY DEBUT The Pulitzer Prize-winning "Kentucky Cycle," 1993. He played six characters, including Cherokee Warrior and Rebel No. 1.

BROADWAY ROLES THAT HAVE HIDDEN HIS FACE Scar the evil uncle in "The Lion King," Lumiere the dancing candlestick in "Beauty and the Beast," the Grinch in "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

WHERE HIS CONFIDENCE COMES FROM "I must confess I still feel a little out of place sometimes in a musical," he told broadway.com a few years ago. He confessed that he was intimidated because of all the training the singers and dancers had gone through. But then he remembered: "My training is in Shakespeare, and he invented everything."

"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," by Julie Taymor, Glen Berger, Bono and the Edge, directed by Taymor, Foxwoods Theater (formerly the Hilton Theater), 213 West 42nd Street. Opening night: Dec. 21, 2010.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about the actress who is playing an "alpha bitch" in the new Off Broadway hit "Bachelorette." Or search to read items about stars from Hamish Linklater to Al Pacino, from David Duchovny to Liza Minnelli.

Gossip Girl of the Week: Tracee Chimo

SHE isn't exactly a household name (yet?), but Tracee Chimo's moment appears to have come. Sure, the critics loved the whole cast of Annie Baker's "Circle Mirror Transformation" last fall. In fact, both Drama Desk and the Obies people gave them special ensemble awards. But it was Chimo, as the shy teenager -- the girl who seemed to disappear inside her hoodie and the only character in the play's acting class who actually wanted to learn how to act -- who got the biggest share of attention. And now she's in another huge critical hit. As a very different character.

CURRENT GIG "Bachelorette," Leslye Headland's critically praised Off Broadway comedy about some young women who are annoyed that their fat-girl friend is getting married before they are. Chimo is the vicious maid of honor, a character that Time Out New York called "the group's alpha bitch."

AGE 30ish.

BORN AND RAISED Saugus, Mass., a small city 13 miles north of Boston.

ALMA MATER Salem State College. (A mere 12 miles from home.)

AVAILABILITY Single.

WHAT THE TIMES THOUGHT "Equally terrific as this cold, confident but emotionally brittle manipulator." (Equal to her terrific-ness in "Circle Mirror Transformation," that is.)

BROADWAY DEBUT "Irena's Vow," spring 2009. She played a young Jewish seamstress.

STRANGEST ROLE SHE'S PROBABLY EVER HAD A Goth astrophysicist who turns out to be a lesbian vampire. That was in "Vamp," an Equity showcase production in 2007.

SECOND STRANGEST In a college production of "Into the Woods," she was a tree. An animated Spandex tree.

PROOF SHE'S A TEENAGER AT HEART Chimo loves Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and the "Twilight" hunk Robert Pattinson. (So she told Leonard Lopate of WNYC.)


"Bachelorette," by Leslye Headland, directed by Trip Cullman, Second Stage Theater Uptown, 2162 Broadway (at 76th Street), (212) 246-4422, 2st.com. Opening night: July 26.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about the fall show that has three huge, unbeatable Broadway stars. Or search to take a theater quiz and find items about "Circle Mirror Transformation," David Duchovny, Al Pacino, Liza Minnelli and Lily Rabe.

When One Big Broadway Star Isn't Enough

NON-THEATER people wouldn't understand. But when producers announced last month that "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," a musical based on Pedro Almodovar's wacky 1988 film of the same name, would be opening on Broadway this fall, there was major excitement. Not just because of the source, since God knows a fabulous movie (or prize-winning novel or beloved comic book) can be turned into a dreadful stage show without even trying. Even by the best of directors, composers, lyricists and book writers. But look at the cast!

Patti LuPone (above left), Brian Stokes Mitchell and Sherie Rene Scott (top), for starters. Three megastars for the price of one.

Even Cousin Connie from Cleveland knows who Patti LuPone is: the American musical star who became an overnight sensation playing Eva Peron in "Evita" back in 1980. That was LuPone's first Tony Award. Since then she's won another (for embodying the scary Momma Rose in "Gypsy" in 2007-08) and has starred in revivals of "Anything Goes," "Noises Off" and "Sweeney Todd." But even you may not have known that LuPone, the 61-year-old queen of musicals, made her Broadway debut doing Chekhov. She played Irina in "The Three Sisters" in 1973.

The New York Times has called Brian Stokes Mitchell, 52, the last of the great heterosexual Broadway leading men. He became an overnight star and earned a Tony nomination playing Coalhouse Walker in the original 1998 Broadway production of "Ragtime." He kept up the good work as the romantic lead in and won a Tony for "Kiss Me Kate" (the 1999 revival), then went on to play Don Quixote in "Man of La Mancha" three years later. And just as everyone was thinking nothing could top his "Impossible Dream," he did a one-night concert version of "South Pacific" at Carnegie Hall (2005), where his version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "This Nearly Was Mine" blew the audience away. And luckily for those of us who weren't in the audience that night, PBS filmed the show and broadcast it in 2006.

Sherie Rene Scott, 41 (Wikipedia says she's 43), is the relative newcomer, but she had had considerable Broadway success before this year. She'd played the not-so-naive mark in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (2005) and Ursula the sea witch in "The Little Mermaid" (2008), but it was her semi-autobiographical show "Everyday Rapture," that bumped her up to star status. She got great reviews for it Off Broadway, but when a planned Broadway production of "Lips Together, Teeth Apart" dropped off the schedule (see "Top 10 Odd Things That Have Happened [So Far] in the Spring Theater Season," theatergossip.com, April), "Everyday Rapture" dropped right in. The show, about Scott's transition from her strict religious background to a life in New York show business, won her a couple of Tony nominations and the kind of visibility publicists can't buy.

We can't think of a better group of performers to bring us a show about a jilted, suicidal woman (Scott's character) who makes a barbiturate-spiked pitcher of gazpacho, puts it in the fridge and forgets about it, sets her bed on fire and tries to rent her apartment to a man who turns out to be her ex-lover's son. Not to mention the Shiite terrorists, the lover's mentally disturbed wife and the mambo-crazy cabbie.

In a season when one of the worst-reviewed shows of the year, "The Addams Family," has made the most money, presumably because the title cartoon characters had name recognition in parts of the country where theater isn't a big part of everyday life, there may not be much hope for "Women on the Verge" taking in tourist dollars. But try to explain to your less enlightened friends that it's like Meryl Streep, George Clooney and Angelina Jolie teaming up for a project. And for heaven's sakes, don't tell them it's European.


"Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," by Jeffrey Lane and David Yazbek, directed by Bartlett Sher, Belasco Theater, 111 West 44th Street. Tickets go on sale Aug. 30. Previews begin Oct. 2. Opening night is Nov. 4.


WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on or search to: Take our impossibly difficult theater quiz. Learn why Hamish Linklater is such a great comedian. Find out what happened when Al Pacino got caught in a thunderstorm in the middle of "The Merchant of Venice" in the park.