Wicked Little Town

One From Mare's Heart

I didn't catch much of David E. Kelley's new "Brotherhood of Poland, N.H." (I love the tagline I read somewhere, about the three hefty leads: "They're large and in charge"), but let's just say it was on in our house, and I was wrenched from whatever I was doing by the sound of a familiar song at about the 40-minute mark. I walked in to the TV room see the incomparable Mare Winningham accompanying herself at the piano in a heartfelt rendition of "Take Me Home," playing it for her on-screen husband, played by Randy Quaid. This was a first-class TV moment on many levels: It's a neglected gem of a song from Tom Waits' score for Coppola's misbegotten "One From the Heart," and Winningham -- whose singing talent was also on display in "Georgia" -- appeared to be performing it live on camera, without playback, as she acted the yearning, gently chiding words of the song: "Take me home, you silly boy / 'Cause I'm still in love with you." I have a strong hunch the song was Winningham's choice. Either way, that moment of primetime was all hers.

The Riff Regan Awards

You remember Riff Regan, right? The original Willow Rosenberg on the unaired pilot of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer"? We can forgive your faulty memory, since she was recast before the series pickup with reed-thin redhead Alyson Hannigan, and the rest is band-camp history.

Each pilot season, actors compete desparately for a shot at a role on a pilot, then pray the pilot is picked up for the fall. The careful actor, however, should add a prayer that they stick with the show when it's picked up. Pity the actor who was fired from rehersals of the "NewsRadio" pilot and was eventually replaced by Joe Rogan, or the actress originally hired to play Roz on "Frasier," who also was fired, replaced in that case by Peri Gilpin. But don't pity them too much: The first was Ray Romano, the second Lisa Kudrow.

The new fall season brings us some new nominees for the "Riff Regan Award", our self-styled trivia consolation prize. Like Brian Haley, who didn't make the cut for "Brotherhood of Poland, N.H." but was replaced by Chris Penn [sub. required]. Or the unlucky threesome Melissa George, Breckin Meyer, and Emily Rutherford, replaced on the new "Coupling" by Rena Sofer, Christopher Moynihan, and Sonya Walger, respectively, for reasons of "chemistry," according to casting director Brett Goldstein. Some critics have noted an improvement from summer's pilot presentation, but others remain unimpressed [sub. required] by the rapport among the new cast. Maybe those three also-rans are the lucky ones.

We'll keep you posted with nominees for the Riff Regan Award throughout the fall and winter. No doubt some midseason shows will surface minus a few passengers.

Camryn Manheim as Laura Bush?

Would Camryn Manheim consider it a compliment that she makes a very convincing Laura Bush? At least, the First Lady as filtered through Tony Kushner's fertile polemical imagination. Manheim cum Mrs. Bush appeared this week opposite Stephen Spinella as an Angel in a reading of the opening scene of Kushner's next play, "Only Those Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy."

The title comes from a line in "Brothers Karamazov," don'tcha know? And the springboard for the play, Kushner explained in a Q&A following--he was at UCLA's Royce Hall to talk about his work, including his "Homebody/Kabul," soon to open at Mark Taper Forum--was his finding out that the First Lady's favorite novelist is none other than Dostoyevsky.

The scene read by Manheim and Spinella imagines Mrs. Bush on a school visit to read to children, only in this case to youngsters who happen to be dead and Iraqi. With perfect aplomb, she says, "I'm sorry that you're dead--but all children love books!" As bald-faced as that premise sounds (and problematic, since one thing Mrs. Bush's husband might be credited with is in effect ending the sanctions that led to so many children's deaths), the nascent tidbit exhibits Kushner's characteristic wicked wit, outrage and empathy. Now who's in line to produce that?

Two other Tony bits: Mike Nichols' version of "Angels in America" will air in two parts on HBO on Dec. 7 and 14. And Kushner is writing a screenplay about Eugene O'Neill's attempted suicide at 23. Perhaps he's in L.A. for more than just a theatre opening?

Bernard White, Reloaded

Just one mysterious slo-mo shot of his face in "The Matrix Reloaded" -- he exchanges a meaningful stare in a hallway with Keanu Reeve's blank Neo -- has fans buzzing about his significance, but it seems only natural that folks would be buzzing about tall, handsome Indian-American actor Bernard White. He told us he'll have a bigger part in this winter's "Matrix Revolutions" and all will be explained. He also mentioned that he's just been cast in Wim Wenders' new film, apparently Wenders' first digital project in a deal with InDigEnt Films.

And theatre? White is co-founder of Plymouth Theatre and frequent collaborator with Cornerstone Theater Company. He said he's working on a one-man project, but can't afford to take theatre jobs for the standard pay in L.A.: zero (or $7-15 a performance). Like many with the chops and the dues paid, White expects to make a living at his craft. He quoted David Mamet, who was quoting someone else (either Shaw or Wilde -- I can't locate the provenance) when we wrote, "Amateurs talk about art; artists talk about money." A little cynical, White admitted -- but then this isn't a business for the faint of heart.

Ageless Pixie Dust

I was trying to remember the first time I saw actress Pamela Gordon onstage in L.A., and I couldn't do it. Was it at the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival? At Theatre of NOTE? At the Evidence Room? At the Lost Studio? I realized I coudn't recall the first time I saw her onstage because, from whatever that first time was, she immediately looked like she'd always been there onstage. She was a link to an imagined past--a past we could imagine by looking at her, for, though she was obviously a little older than many of her theatre colleagues, she was also somehow ageless--a little girl and a little old lady. And all woman: Of her riveting performance in Dennis Miles' peculiar, Albee-ish "Destronelli" at NOTE, I believe I even referred to her in print as "sexy." She was a little coy around me after that.

These are the thoughts that went through my head, among many others, at Pamela's funeral service today at Mt. Sinai in Burbank. It was a relatively sudden death from complications of emphysema. Her son Marcus and husband Mark memorably spoke, as did Evidence Room artistic director Bart DeLorenzo; a fellow actor read an amusing tribute from playwright Robert Fieldsteel.

Near graveside, while waiting to ritually shovel dirt on the coffin, Pamela's former teacher Martin Landau observed a spider constructing a large web--a peculiar detail which, strange as it sounds, is exactly the sort of thing Pamela would have loved.

Egan's 'Cabaret' return illustrates the NY/LA dilemma

Susan Egan returns to the lead in "Cabaret" in New York this week, which will wrap its up 5-year-plus run in November. She wasn't the show's original Sally Bowles, of course--that was Natasha Richardson, followed by a reportedly middleweight Jennifer Jason Leigh and an OK Molly Ringwald, among others. I happened to catch Egan in the show in 1999, and she was tremendous--a pixilated-pixie Sally, small and tragic, like Julie Harris in the movie of "I Am a Camera." You could see how far this angel had fallen.

Her return to Broadway comes after several years back on the West Coast, where she cut her teeth. A Seal Beach native who worked from CLOs to the Sacramento Music Circus before landing a part in Tommy Tune's "Bye Bye Birdie," she made her break as Belle in Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" and came West with the show.

And while she's done a little bit of theatre here--the local premiere of "Hello Again," a big Taper production of "Putting It Together"--and recently taught at her alma mater, the Orange County Performing Arts High School, Egan's real aim out here, natch, has been to land on-camera work. She did have a regular role as a Vegas showgirl on the series "Nikki," but she was aiming higher. Indeed, what she told me last year about her career strategy gave me pause: She wanted to make a name for herself on series TV so that she could open a show on Broadway. She was right, I guess: Stars aren't minted on Broadway anymore, or folks like Douglas Sills or Sherie Renee Scott or Michael Cerveris or Carolee Carmello would be stars. Broadway producers want marquee names, and increasingly that mean film and TV stars: Matthew Broderick, Melanie Griffith, Kathleen Turner. If they also happen to be great theatre actors, like Nathan Lane or or Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hugh Jackman, all the better.

But this kind of thing cuts both ways. I know countless young actors who hit a ceiling with parts in L.A. and retreat to New York to be taken seriously as actors by doing theatre there--after which they're hailed as the next hot commodity. Mark Ruffalo, for instance, did theatre for years in small L.A. dives (including some Justin Tanner plays), but it took the Off-Broadway run of "This Is Our Youth" to get him noticed. He had casting directors from L.A. approach him after that show in New York and say, in effect, "Where have you been hiding?" And he told them, in effect, "In L.A. busting my ass to get you to notice me!"

This kind of circular industry logic--find hot actors in New York to cast in film and TV so one day they can really open a New York stage play--is like some kind of bicoastal attention deficit disorder. Which is why the only real answer to the actor's dilemma, "Should I go to New York or L.A.?" is "Yes."

'Pot' pilot for HBO

It's high time, you might say: Local playwright Justin Tanner's play "Pot Mom" was a long-running hit at L.A.'s Cast Theatre in 1994, but he only recently turned in a "Pot" pilot to HBO. The key may be actress Laurie Metcalf's involvement. A longtime Tanner fan and patron, Metcalf appeared in a benefit revival of "Pot Mom" and several other Tanner plays. She even took "Pot Mom" to her Steppenwolf home base in Chicago, where it was savaged as a "sitcom play" from L.A., even though its multigenerational tale of down-at-heels tokers is set in Tanner's hometown of Salinas, CA. Metcalf is a natural to play the series' title lead, and in fact it was to Metcalf's ranch in Idaho that Tanner repaired to pen his script.

Word is that HBO asked him to to "vary" the characters' activities a bit -- i.e., don't have them hitting the bong in every scene. His portrayal of the weed and its users could hardly be called glamorous -- think a white trash "Ab Fab."

Tanner has parlayed his facility for dialogue and his knack for writing strong, often high-strung female characters into some TV and film writing gigs before, most recently a season on "Gilmore Girls." That Sturges-on-speed-paced show, with its quirky quick-sketch supporting players, seemed like a perfect fit for him (it's already a haven for many theatre actors, from Michael Winters to Emily Bergl). So it was puzzling when his contract wasn't renewed--I heard something about him not "getting" the show's tone. Perhaps the fictional town of Stars Hollow (a rather catty name taken out of context) is a little too scrubbed-clean and East Coast for this neurotic Californian. Here's wishing him a better trip with HBO.