So my whirlwind week to New York ends today, with me leaving for the airport at 6.15am local time for the day flight home…. and an even faster New York trip also coincidentally ends for Connie Fisher today, who arrived on her first-ever New York trip on Monday, and I met at last night’s first night party at Tavern on the Green for the opening of South Pacific, which she had just been to see. The Rodgers and Hammerstein office had laid out the red carpet treatment for her time here - the day before they had arranged for her to have lunch with the original film Maria, Julie Andrews - all of which she told me was a dream come true.
Last night I also dropped in on Rupert Goold’s production of Macbeth, which is now previewing at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre after playing at BAM, but none of the creative team had been in attendance until now since they were prepping last night’s opening of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot at the Almeida. But Howard Harrison, the show’s Olivier award winning lighting designer, had finally flown in yesterday afternoon - and despite someone from the American creative team wondering if I was him on the sidewalk outside the theatre, it was a pleasure to see him when he arrived!
And after the show, as I headed west along West 45th Street to try grab a cab uptown to get to Tavern on the Green - always a feat on a rainy evening as the shows are just getting out - I noticed one terrific sight after another in quick succession.
First, there are the side-by-side front-of-houses for August: Osage County, now playing at the Imperial but soon moving to the Music Box next door. In what must surely be an unprecedented step, the same play (and show logo) is therefore currently boasting a marquee on two adjoining theatres simultaneously! Then on the next corner, David Hyde Pierce was just coming out of the stage door of the Hirschfeld Theatre where he is starring in Kander and Ebb’s Curtains, and the small crowd who had gathered serenaded him with a Happy Birthday! David, whom I interviewed about the show last year soon after it opened for the Sunday Express, is a genuinely warm and gracious man, even to journalists; but he’s even lovelier to the public. Not just tonight but on other nights, too, I have walked past and seen him patiently signing autographs and posing for photographs with everyone who gathers. They form an orderly line, and he takes each one in turn.
Then, finally getting to the South Pacific party - which was truly a celebration in the wake of today’s rave reviews that people were already reading on their blackberries - I ran into the show’s press agent, Philip Rinaldi, who happens to get inadvertently name-checked by Patti LuPone, who is also his client (he handles her personal PR), in Gypsy; her character Rose actually has a line about Phil being a lousy press agent! Which Phil(ip), of course, isn’t; but it’s a good, if very “in”, joke for those in the know!
Wednesday’s New York Times also had one of the most intriguing insider ads I’ve seen for a Broadway show - it was one that actually closed last weekend! No, it wasn’t a reprint error, but rather it was producer Bill Haber thanking his cast, and read: “Dear Jim, Sean, Ciaran, Conleth, David, Conor, the National Theatre and 101 Productions, from the top of the mornin’ to the setting sun, it’s been amazing. Thank you. - Bill Haber.”
That’s a classy gesture. But if that ad wasn’t to sell a current show, I was sad to notice walking through the Times Square subway station entrance on West 42nd and Broadway that the “Broadway wall” that usually comprises ads for shows is currently replaced by a series of ads for Wachovia bank instead. It’s a pity that Broadway seems to have lost this key site for now, since it so brilliantly establishes the Broadway brand at this pivotal gateway to it.
Of course, a lot of advertising has simply gone online - and one of the most fun promotions I’ve come across for a while is one for Sunday in the Park with George that invites visitors to claim a pixel on a reproduction of the painting that the show revolves around! I’ve already claimed mine - you can claim yours on sundaydots.com. And no, it isn’t the name of Jenna Russell’s fan club; though as regular readers of this blog know, I am already a fully signed-up member!
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