Eclectic Company: Stargazing

Winter in New York. Five plays, three museums, a dinner party, a tea party, a brunch, and lots of music al fresco, serendipitously, all in five days. Every play had stars on and offstage, and there were people-who-look-famous everywhere we went. The orgy of art and food closed with an imperfect but lovely revival of Arcadia, Tom Stoppard’s amazing work about theoretical mathematics, English country house gardens, and scholarship versus ambition in academia.

Arcadia is cleverly set in the same house in alternating eras — the early 1800s, in which a grand lady (played by Gossip Girl’s Margaret Colin) has her formal gardens reconstructed in the “natural” style while her brilliant young daughter’s tutor bed hops disastrously, and the late 20th Century in which a gardening historian of Cambridge University lineage crosses wits with an over-reaching academic from lesser academia as the pair detect their way toward the truth of the events of that ambiguously documented 1809 house party. Billy Crudup (Almost Famous) with credible Brit accent was smashing as the minor university faculty member and Meryl Streep’s daughter Grace Gummer was luminous and tone-perfect in the small role of modern-day daughter of the mansion. Lia Williams isn’t so much of a household name, but the play was actually hers — as the garden expert of scrupulous academic integrity, she provided the metronome that kept the piece ticking.

That last day of museum-walking, tea-drinking and play-going was punctuated by small musical pleasures. Besides the usual complement of mic-ed and unmic-ed lone sax players with open instrument cases lined up along Times Square, traveling to the city from the outlying borough we heard happy steel drum versions of TV theme songs (!!??!!) that definitely made the commute a pleasure, while traveling back to Queens from Manhattan that night, we stopped in Times Square to catch a few Beatles and Sixties tunes courtesy of The Meetles. Yep, The Meetles. They’re an old-hands tribute band, much loved in NYC, whose youtube and myspace videos shot at their regular busking gigs near Central Park’s Strawberry Fields and in the subway at one of the MTA’s Music Under New York stages will give you almost the same experience we had. More info from www.meetles.com.

Speaking of subway music reminds me that you used to be able to run into the Ebony Hillbillies there. They’re one of the last remaining black string bands, fusing numerous musical styles including oldtimey and jazz, and they count at least one GRAMMY-winning musician among their number. I’ve mentioned them before in this space, but they deserve a retweet. Check them out on youtube and www.ebonyhillbillies.com.

The trip began auspiciously enough on the early flight out of Lake Charles. On time, no bags missing at the New York end, and landed 45 minutes early! Presto change-o we’re into Manhattan for early dinner with friends at Gandhi on East 6th Street between First and Second Avenues, Manhattan’s neighborhood of cheap and cheerful Indian restaurants. Meal relaxed and charming, conversation ditto, and then we were off to see Chekhov’s endless Three Sisters in which, maddeningly, NOTHING ever happens, for three hours, except for emotions seething all over the place (they are Russians, after all) in the hands of a fantastic ensemble. Actor and director Austin Pendleton (My Cousin Vinny, Finding Nemo, and chillingly, a Stephen Hawking-type genius paraplegic on Law & Order) directed this revival at the Classic Stage Company with Maggie Gyllenhaal and her husband Peter Sarsgaard in the roles of adulterous lovers Masha and Vershinin. The audience was equally star-studded that night, with Chelsea Clinton and a guy who looked suspiciously like her allegedly estranged husband Marc Mezvinsky in a ballcap seated near us (they sure looked like they were together to me).

The second night in town, we went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater to see Oscar-nominated Geoffrey Rush (who should have won Best Supporting Actor, but he wuz robbed) play The Diary of a Madman, a two-handed work adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s short story, scripted by David Holman with Neil Armfield and Rush, and mounted by Australia’s Belvoir theater company. Rush and his co-star Yael Stone playing several contrapuntal roles tore up the stage, literally, in a speedy production underscored by Mussorgsky-like musical works composed by Alan John. Even though we were seated high up in the gallery, from which distorting angle Rush’s beatifically ugly mug was almost unfamiliar, we didn’t miss a heartbeat of his descent into delusion.

This was a mostly delightful star-studded week, including Richard Thomas’s (The Waltons) convincing portrayal in the title role of the rarely performed Timon of Athens, a play about greed and fair-weather friendships, by Shakespeare, at The Public Theater. Thomas is said to be much beloved among his peers, and judging by the kindness and genuine modesty he exhibited during after-show courtesies to fans, he deserves to be. On the other hand, it was the stars of That Championship Season that were the week’s greatest letdown. Kiefer Sutherland (24) was wooden and even more nondescript than called for in the role of the junior high school principal, while Chris Noth (Law & Order) played a seedy twist on “Big,” his Sex and the City character, in his role as the millionaire about to drop support of the mayor’s reelection campaign while sleeping with the mayor’s wife. Brian Cox (The Bourne Supremacy) and Jason Patric (The Lost Boys and son of That Champion Season playwright Jason Miller) were superb, respectively, as the dying, bigoted and ineffective coach and the alcoholic writer/truth teller brother of the school principal. They carried the show, so we stayed. I hate to fault excellent comedian Jim Gaffigan for high school-quality acting as the beef-witted mayor, but what the hey, go for broke. Unfortunately, you can’t go broke underestimating the general public’s taste for glimpses of stars. This play received the loudest undeserved standing ovation I’ve ever been privy to. Edie Falco’s play Good People would have been a better bet.