Ellis Nassour

Lincoln Center's American Songbook series 12th season finale closes next week with two gifted interpreters of song: Tony nom Rebecca Luker, currently starring in Mary Poppins, on March 2 at 8:30 P.M.; and Tony/Drama Desk winner, Presidential Medal of Honor and Kennedy Center honoree Chita Rivera on March 6 with two shows, 8:30 and 10:30.

Tony and DD-nom'd composer Jeanine Tesori [Shrek, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Caroline, or Change], performs March 4 with guests Tony winner Chuck Cooper [Finian's Rainbow, Caroline..., The Life], Tony and DD nom Daniel Breaker [Shrek, Passing Strange], and the Broadway Inspirational Voices.

Also, appearing next week are baritone/composer Gabriel Kahane, who writes/performs music bridging classical/pop/theater and theatrical worlds, on March 3; and Todd Snider will bring his folk melodies and dry humor to A.S. on March 4.

American Songbook is sponsored by Pfizer and presented in the intimate Allen Room, with its spectacular vista of Central Park and Manhattan skylines. of the Time-Warner Building's Rose Hall. Tickets range from $35 - $95 and are available online at www.AmericanSongbook.org; through CenterCharge, (212) 721-6500, and at the Avery Fisher and Rose Hall box offices.

Additional support for the series is provided by Fisher Brothers, Amy and Joseph Perella, Sara and Maury Rosenberg, Jill and Irwin Cohen, Bank of America/ Merrill-Lynch, and, among others, the NY State Council on the Arts.

Those Pipes Were a Calling

Last Saturday, in the American Songbook series, Tony and Emmy winner, Golden Globe nom, and hometown gal Leslie Uggams gave her first New York concert in 18 years. It was flawless and, as far as the timbre of her voice, as if time had stopped. Where had that voice been? Well, here and there.

She's been doing concerts - just not in NY, and plays. Most recently, she was Off Bway in Signature Theatre Company's revival of Leslie Lee's The First Breeze of Summer; and, prior to that, on Bway, as Ethel Thayer in the revival of On Golden Pond co-starred with James Earl Jones.

The good news is that it appears she's headed back to Bway in Stormy Weather, the musical about Lena Horne.

For Uptown/Downtown, conceived and directed by Michael Bush [who's the director of the upcoming musical Stormy Weather], who Miss Uggams looked back on over a half century in the business. She began with new spin on "There's a Boat That's Leavin' Soon for New York" [from Porgy and Bess], interpolating a section of "New York, New York" to personalize it. She used an autobiographical adaptation of "Born in a Trunk," the Garland showstopper from A Star Is Born, to introduce the audience to her years as a child star and singer in Harlem clubs.

She sang songs made famous by Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington - artists she appeared with at the Apollo [get this, from age 9-16; but, in fact, she'd been recording since age 8, and appearing on radio and in a network sit-com]. She did some high-steppin' jive and had the audience ROTF with stories of what transpired backstage.

As she segued into a mellow mood, Miss Uggams stunned the audience who seemingly had forgotten what she's capable of. Her renditions of "Summertime" and "I Got Plenty o' Nothin' [P&B] brought the house down. As she perched on the piano in a solo spot and rendered "If He Walked into My Life" [Mame], the response was more thunderous. She later reprised songs from her award-winning role in Hallelujah, Baby, "My Own Morning" and "Being Good." Skipping over her Sing Along with Mitch TV days, which made her a household word, Miss Uggams closed with a torch classic, done to perfection, "Stormy Weather."

Miss Uggams was ably abbetted by musical director Don Rebic on piano; Steve Bargonetgti, guitar; Ray Kilday, bass; Walt Weiskopf, woodwinds/brass; and Buddy Williams, drums.

Heading to Broadway and the Carlyle

Stormy Weather, the loosely biographical musical based on the life of Lena Horne, legendary singer, beauty, and star of MGM movie musicals, starring Leslie Uggams as the "older" Miss Horne, in engagements in Phily at the Prince Music Theatre and on the West Coast at the Pasadena Playhouse broke b. o. records.

The musical takes Lena Horne from the chorus of the Cotton Club in the 30s through the swing era to the soundstages of MGM, her blacklisting for being tagged a Communist sympathizer to her ultimate "comeback" in her brilliant and often searing 1981 one-woman show on Broadway, The Lady and Her Music.

Conceived and written by Sharleen Cooper Cohen, S.W. is filled with musical gems from the Porter, Arlen and Mercer, Rodgers and Hart and Strayhorn songbooks. Michael Bush, former associate A.D. of Manhattan Theatre Club, is onboard as director, with Randy Skinner as choreographer.

"It takes audiences on the full journey," says Miss Uggams, "the stormy times and the extraordinary ones. Both the younger and older Lena are out there and very much a part of everything."

Among the featured roles are the younger Lena Horne; Miss Horne's first husband, composer, MGM music director, arranger, and pianist Lenny Hayton; and author, actress, and MGM vocal coach Kay Thompson, who's enjoying a huge revival of interest thanks to her goddaughter Liza Minnelli,

Uggams was the ultimate Horne fan. "Anytime she was in a musical, I went to the theater. When she was in a movie, I was there. I think my parents got tired of me always talking about Lena!, Lena!, Lena!"

She has Miss Horne partially to thank for her Tony Award. "Hallelujah, Baby" was written for Lena," she explains, "and when she passed on it, I got the role."

Hallelujah, Baby![1967] was a cavalcade of African-American history from the turn of the 20th Century to the late 60s with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Adolph Green and Betty Comden and book by Arthur Laurents. "I was 23 and on Broadway in a show written by legends. I couldn't believe it."

Miss Uggams' manager/husband Grahame Pratt and producer Stewart Lane are looking to open for the 2010-2011 season, says Mr. Pratt, "in a theatre West of Broadway."

Asked how she keeps those "pipes" so pristine, Miss Uggams replied, "I just respect them and take care of them."

Miss Uggams will make her Cafe Carlyle debut on March 30. The engagement runs through April 17. For reservations, call (212) 744-1600.

Oscar-winning Tunes

Sunday at 6 P.M. at Birdland, in the countdown to next Sunday's 82nd annual Academy Awards, multi-cabaret award-winner and Bway producer Jamie deRoy's Jamie deRoy & Friends will present a line-up of great voices for her third tribute to Oscar-winning and nominated tunes. The show is a spinoff of her MAC Award-winning variety series.

"We're going to take an entire year," promises deRoy, "and sing all the songs, winners and nominated. And the audience gets to vote for Best Song." One lucky audience member will win a pair of tkts to the Dame Edna/Michael Feinstein revue, All About Me at the Henry Miller.

Headlining will be DD-nom Christina Bianco [Forbidden Broadway Goes to Rehab, Newsical], DD winner and four-time Tony nom Gregg Edelman [1776, Into the Woods]; London triple-threat, Bonnie Langford [Chicago, Bway and W.E. companies]; two-time Emmy winning music director/composer John McDaniel; critically acclaimed cellist Peter Sachon; and show-stopping singer Terri White [Finian's Rainbow].

Special guest will be Grammy-winning hitmaker singer/songwriter, Larry Gatlin, who'll perform "I'm Easy," Keith Carradine's Oscar-winning song from Nashville.

Not to be missed is deRoy's send-up of the Oscars, June Reisner's "At the Academy Awards," which goes, in part:

"The designer of the costumes and the technicolor team.
The editor of dialogue, the editor of edits.
The author of the novel and the screenplay and the credits . . .
The musical director, the arranger of the score,
The boy who went for coffee and the man who mopped the floor . . .
The talent of my leading man and each supporting actor.
My doctor, my psychiatrist, my nurse, my chiropractor . . .
My manicurist, manager, the cinemascopic screens.
The twenty thousand extras and the movie magazines.
But more than all the others and I say this with a tear,
One beautiful human being is behind my being here.
For the courage to do picture the way they ought to be,
I thank the talent and the brilliance and the fortitude of me.
Me! Me! Little ole Me! . . ."

Staging the concert is Barry Kleinbort, with Lanny Meyers as musical director.

Jamie deRoy & Friends has eight multi-artist CDs on the Harbinger and PS Classics labels. The cover at Birdland is $25, $35 for premium seating, plus $10 food/beverage minimum. For reservations, call (212) 581-3080 or visit www.birdlandjazz.com.

Marilyn Maye's in Love

Grammy nom, legendary RCA recording artist, and the artist dubbed "Super Singer" by Johnny Carson [in her 75 + appearances on the Tonight Show] Marilyn Maye continues her conquering of the New York music scene at Feinstein's at Loews Regency, where she opens on March 2 with a new show, In Love Again, through March 13.

Among her numerous RCA hits were "Cabaret," released in advance of the Broadway musical; How Now, Dow Jones's "Step to the Rear," by Carolyn Leigh and Elmer Bernstein which she performed four years on Lincoln Mercury commercials; Lerner and Lane's "Too Late Now," chosen by the Smithsonian for inclusion in its 20th Century permanent collection;and, "probably my most requested songs," Grand and Boyd's torch "Guess Who I Saw Today" from the revue New Faces of 1952.

Ella Fitzgerald called her "the greatest white female singer in the world." New York cabaret aficionados have come to regard Miss Maybe as a national treasure. Now in her 80s, she has the stamina and the crystal vocal pipes of someone half her age. Onstage, she manages to run the gamut of super elegant to super fun.

"This will mark my 14th engagement in New York since 2006," points out Miss Maye, "not including the five appearances for the Mabel Mercer Foundation and cabaret award programs. It's going to be most exciting to spend two weeks singing in that lovely room on Park Avenue."

She brags that New York audiences are the best. "They understand the work. They get it. They know that what I do isn't easy, that it's carefully planned and then honed through the years. The approval, respect, and recognition I've received at the Metropolitan Room has been an overwhelming joy. The awards are so lovely, especially at this time in my life, were so totally unexpected and are so very appreciated."

She explains she feels blessed with her eight Metropolitan Room engagements. "I received enormous recognition for my work. The friendships I made there have enriched my life."

Last April, Miss Maye appeared as guest artist with Michael Feinstein at Zandel Hall "we had such a thrilling experience that he suggested I play Feinstein's. "The opportunity to play Feinstein's was irresistible."

Working New York, she states, has always been not only special but also important to a career. "Years ago there were so many prestigious clubs. I performed at the Copacabana, El Morocco, the Living Room, Michael's Pub. Now, the number has dwindled."

Tedd Firth [Birdland's Cast Party] will be music directing and on keyboards, with Tom Hubbard on base; and Jim Eklof, working with Miss Maye for 48 years, on drums.

"I simply adore Tedd," gushes Miss Maye. "He's totally sensitive to the singer - the lyrics, the singers' phrasing. There's no ego with this young man. He only cares about accompanying and playing what will make the music and the performance the best possible. He's so musically intelligent and knowledgeable."

The right pianist is a necessity, she says strongly. "I'm in a lot of musical bags - Broadway, show tunes, novelty material, and jazz always underlies the feel of every tune. My musicians play in all these styles. The 'rubato' balance is so essential."

The arrangements are a cooperative effort between Firth and Miss Maye. "We coordinate the material, chords, variations on structure, and the unusual rhymic ideas. What most impresses me about Tedd is the depth of his understanding whether the tunes are old or brand new."

Miss Maye is always secretive about the songs she'll be singing, "because I feel it ruins the element of surprise, which is part of the audience's enjoyment. Always with me, the audience is the star." There will be "more than the usual number of positive songs about love than I usually do." She broke tradition by noting that she'll do several songs from the vast songbook of her mentor Steve Allen, who was first to "discover" her and have her as a regular on the Tonight Show. "One of my favorite songs by Steve is this wonderful ballad called 'I Love You Today.'"

"I love uptempo, jazz, songs where I can belt, and ballads," she states. "I can get my teeth and voice into ballads. I find whimsical tunes are fun for me and the audience. With me, it's always a party."

In the 1970s, Miss Maye made the transition from cabaret to theater, starring in
productions of Can Can, Follies, Mame, and Hello, Dolly!

Another transition was to appearances with symphony orchestras, then supper clubs in the mid-West, which have sustained her for several years. Two years ago, she says "in an ironic twist of fate, I was rediscovered here though I've never stopped working! It has been most gratifying."

There's more good news: a new CD is in the works. For ore information, visit www.marilynmaye.com.

The cover for Marilyn Maye In Love Again at Feinstein's..., depending on day and time of show, is $40 with a $40 food/drink minimum. Shows are at 8:30 Tuesday - Thursday, 8 and 10:30 on weekends. $60 premium and $75 up-front seats are available. The weekend late show has and additional $25 minimum. For all shows, there are some seats, based on availability, for $40 and no minimum. Jackets are suggested, but not required. To reserve, call (212) 339-4095 or book online at feinsteinsatloewsregency.com or TicketWeb.com.

TalkOut

Jon Marans' The Temperamentals at New World Stages begins TalkOut Mondays, post play discussions with celebrity guests on Monday. Obie-winning playwright/author/activist Larry Kramer, co-founder of Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP, and playwright/novelist Paul Rudnick kick off the series.

The Temperamentals, a love story set against the turbulent founding of the Mattachine Society, the country's first LGBT rights org, stars Thomas Jay Ryan [In The Next Room] as outspoken labor activist Harry Hay, and Michael Urie [TV's Ugly Betty] as Viennese up-and-coming designer Rudi Gernreich. The director us Drama Desk nom Jonathan Silverstein [The Dining Room], resident director of the award-winning Keen Company.

The title refers to the early 50s slang/code word for "homosexual." According to Marans, "it was part of an underground language used to communicate in their world where danger was always an underlying presence."

Upcoming guests will be Elizabeth Ashley, Charles Busch, playwright Bill C Davis [Mass Appeal, Avow, Judith Light [Ugly Betty, among other countless credits; producer of the gay-themed film Save Me], Terrence McNally, David Hyde Pierce, co-producer Daryl Roth, radio host/activist David Rothenberg, and BC/EFA exec director Tom Viola.

Ticket for The Temperamentals are: $65 and available at the box office, through TeleCharge (212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250, and at www.TeleCharge.com. There are mezzanine $25 student tickets, available in advance, which must be purchased at the box office. For performance schedule, TalkOut guest updates, and more information, visit www.thetemperamentals.com.

Brush Up on Half Your Shakespeare

The New Victory Theater will be presenting Reduced Shakespeare Company's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) from March 5 - 14. One of London's longest running comedies, this production is a 21st century adaptation of the 90s cult classic, which played on the West End for nine years, achieving international cult status.

The Complete Works... features Reed Martin, Matt Rippy, and Austin Tichenor, taking audiences through raucous, fast-paced parodies of the Bard's 37 play canon in 100 minutes - or less. This irreverent romp includes a send-up of Romeo and Juliet, Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, a rap Othello, and, along with many others, and a one-minute Hamlet.

Since its 1981 California origins as a pass-the-hat performance troupe. the RSC has created numerous stage shows, TV programs, even played the White House. The company has been nominated for an Olivier and two D.C. Helen Hayes Awards.

The 7 P.M. performances of March 12 will be sign-interpreted performance with a teen-only, post-show programming [suitable for ages 12-15]. Member tickets are $12.50 - $24.50; non-Members, $12.50 - $35 and available at the New Victory Box Office, online at www.NewVictory.org , or by calling (646) 223-3010. Those purchasing tkts to this and at least two other N.V. prods during the 2009-2010 season become members and save 30% on tickets.

Lea Playa Café Carlyle

Olivier, Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Award-winning actress Lea Salonga
will make her New York supperclub debut at the Café Carlyle in The Journey So Far from March 9 - 27.

The Philippine star was catapulted to international stardom when cast at 17 as Kim in Miss Saigon. She later appeared in Les Miz and was chosen by Disney for the singing voices of Princess Jasmine in Aladdin and the title character in Mulan.

In her 30-year career, Salonga has performed for five Philippine and three U.S. presidents, at benefits for Diana, Princess of Wales, and for HRM Queen Elizabeth II. For more information on her career and recordings, www.leasalonga.com.

In The Journey So Far, Salonga will feature songs that cross the genres of Filipino music, musical theater, film, and the American songbook. She'll be accompanied by a quartet. Larry Yurman will be music director/pianist. Directing will be Daniel Kutner.

For shows Tuesday - Friday at 8:45 P.M., seats are $75, with VIP seating at $125 and seating at the bar, $45; and Saturday at 8:45 and 10:45, $85, $125, and $45. Dinner seatings are at 6:30, 7, and 7:30. For reservations, call (212) 744-1600.

There's the strong possibility that Salonga will soon be back on Broadway. While she's in town, she'll continue in development readings of a musical set in the U.S.'s infamous Japanese internment camps during WWII.

Salonga will play Grizabella in a limited July premiere engagement of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, to be presented at Manila's Philippine Culture Center mainstage, the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo Theatre. The international cast will also feature Australia's John O'Hara in the role of Rum Tum Tugger.

Still a stunning beauty at 38, Salonga made her stage debut at age seven in The King and I, which was followed by roles in a number of local productions of Broadway musicals, and she later hosted her own national variety TV show, Love, Lea. She was "discovered" by Cameron Macintosh in the Philippines when casting for Miss Saigon. Salonga went on to be the original Kim on the West End and Broadway premieres. Additional Broadway credits including Les Miserables and Flower Drum Song. She's also the singing voice of Princess Jasmine in Disney's Aladdin, which had the Oscar-winning song "A Whole New World."

Salonga, who had been making her home on the West Coast, returned to her native Philippines about two years ago with her husband and daughter. She recently toured Asian mainstages with Broadway Asia's production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.

Theatrical Recipe for Good Eatin'?

Food for Thought/Cause Célèbre is presenting the final two performances of Recipe For Life, one-act comedies and dramas by Susan Charlotte, Tandy Cronyn, A.R. Gurney, and Neil Simon on Sunday at 2 and 7 P.M. and March 7 at 7 P.M. at Theatre Row's Acorn. The casts include Kathleen Chalfant, Jake Robards, Miriam Silverman, Frances Sternhagen, Maria Tucci, and Harris Yulin. Directing are Christopher Hart and Antony Marsellis.

Ms. Cronyn's piece is about her mother, theater icon Jessica Tandy, "whose talent," she says, "was not all on stage. She was quite a wonder in the kitchen as well." Simon "explores the art of cooking or not, as it were" in his Tallulah Finds Her Kitchen which he wrote for Tallulah Bankhead. Gurney's The Love Course "mixes two professors, two students, a limited amount of love and a lot of literature are the ingredients in this comic stew." In Charlotte's The Hairdresser, Chalfant "faces a bad hair day as she is about to go to the Tonys on her sixth nomination and suffers an identity crisis."

Tickets are $66.25 and available at the Ticket Central box office on Theatre Row and by calling (646) 366-9340.

Boston Arts Fest in NY

March 4 - 10, for its third annual visit to New York, Boston U's College of Fine Arts' InCite Arts Festival, themed What's Past Is Prologue, is branching out to venues throughout the city. Jim Petosa, director of B.U.'s School, is the Festival A.D.

The festival will feature performances, exhibits, gallery walks, and screenings of the docs I Remember Better When I Paint, on the positive impact of art and creative therapies on people with Alzheimer's, and The Redstones NYC, a festival of short films by grads/undergrads of film/TV studies sponsored by Viacom chair Sumner Redstone.

It will premiere Jenny Rachel Weiner's Diventare, directed by Ellie Heyman; and Marjorie Merryman's one-act opera adaptation of Antigone. There'll be a performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 by the Grammy-nom'd Boston Baroque period orchestra and chorus; and an exhibit of alumni art and sculptures, Reunited.

Some events are complimentary. For schedules, pricing, venue, and other information, visit www.bu.edu/cfa/incite or call (617) 353-3350.

At the Movies

Don Argott's damning The Art of the Steal [IFC Films], a hit at the 2009 New York Film Festival, is a quite intriguing doc with thriller intrigue on how culture has become big business. It focuses, no-holds-barred, on the shameful and determined-at-any-cost quest for tourism dollars by powerful Pennsylvania politicians and normally highly-respected charities as they go about breaking the will of the founder of the prestigious Albert Barnes Foundation museum [established in 1922] and school in order to acquire its beyond-priceless treasure of Post-Impressionist masters. A rough estimate of the value of the Cezannes, Degas, Manets, Matisses, Modiglianis, Monets, Picassos [46], Renoirs [181], Rousseaus, Seurats,Van Goghs [7] is $35-billion!

Their goal, successful in the end, was to move the trove from its jewel box site in the nearby sleepy suburb of Merion to a new multi-million dollar parkway site in central Phily. Worse than the powerbrokers' greed is the silence of America's major museums, including the Met. This is quite an eye-opening film.

On DVD

The award-winning documentary, The Brothers Warner, an intimate family portrait of four legendary Hollywood film pioneers who founded and ran Warner Bros. for more than 50 years, makes its DVD debut March 9th [Warner Home Video, 94 minutes; SRP, $20]. Written and directed by Cass Warner Sperling, long-time studio head Harry Warner's granddaughter, and produced by Warner Sisters, Sperling's independent production company, the documentary has been presented at 33 national and international film festivals.

It traces the history of the studio that brought sound to film and contains film clips, never-before-seen photos, and interviews with Dennis Hopper, Debbie Reynolds, Angie Dickinson, Norman Lear, Tab Hunter, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and Samuel Goldwyn Jr.

Collaborating with Sperling is Oscar -winning editor Kate Amend; cinematographer Arlene Donnelly Nelson [A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration], and multi-Grammy-winning composer David Campbell [Brokeback Mountain].

The Brothers Warner is based on Sperling's best-selling book. The bros. rose from nothing, overcame personal tragedies, and as the film industry was emerging opened a storefront theater with a sheet for a screen and borrowed funeral parlor chairs. They were among the first to shoot stories that were ripped from headlines. Warner gathered quite the A-list of stars, but didn't take kindly to rebellion. When James Cagney, Bette Davis, and Olivia de Havilland fought the contract system as a way of demanding quality pictures, the bros. fought hard but eventually caved.

Posted by Ellis Nassour at 12:00 AM | Permalink

In 1967, when "starving" writer Mart Crowley "on the brink of destitution" but sitting in the lap of luxury finished his play The Boys in the Band, he says he intended it to be controversial. But, having distanced himself from gay politics, he didn't set out to be an rights activist. "I probably didn't even know what that meant," he laughs.

He soon found out. When the play opened Off Broadway in 1968, whether he wanted it to happen or not, Crowley and his play became catch words of the gay civil rights movement. Accolades and anger were heaped upon Crowley. Looking back, Crowley says he never thought he'd achieve such acclaim -- or be so reviled. In the matter of the latter, one leading critic termed BITB, "The Uncle Tom's Cabin of homosexual literature."

If you are going to be reviled [even by a segment of the gay community] for something you wrote - a ground-breaking comedy with a very dark side about eight gay men at a birthday party which segues from celebration to bitchy and brutal onslaught among the participants - better it become a world-wide hit and film [which Crowley co-produced in 1970] and provide the good life you always wanted to be accustomed to.

The cherries on top would be 35 years later writing a sequel about those boys [The Men from the Boys] and 42 years later having a second revival, with it's Sunday opening Off Broadway in a 99-seat site-specific production at 37 West 26th Street [between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, Penthouse], produced by the Transport Group and directed by T.G. A.D. Jack Cummings III.

Cummings had a unique idea on the staging. "I wanted you to come in and feel at home with the cast, so our design was going to have to be non-traditional." Sandra Goldmark created a 99-seat apartment setting in a loft space on West 26th Street. At first, Crowley wasn't wowed. "He'd always seen the play proscenium-bound," states Cumming. "He told me, 'This is going to look like a 12-step AA meeting,' and I shot back 'Well, in a way, it is!'"

BITB cast members are Jonathan Hammond [Ragtime] as Michael; Christopher Innvar [110 in the Shade, Floyd Collins] as Larry; Kevin Isola as Alan; Jon Levenson [Irish Rep's The Hairy Ape] as Harold; Kevyn Morrow [Olivier nom, West End, Ragtime] as Bernard; Graham Rowat [Lovemusik, Guys and Dolls, 2009], as Hank; Aaron Sharff as Cowboy; John Wellmann as Emory; and Nick Westrate as Donald.

The Boys in the Band has a disadvantage now. It appears years after an across-the-boards acceptance of just about everything homosexual; and Crowley is considered a pioneer in gay theatricals.

After becoming a worldwide cause celeb, Crowley described the years after the release of the film; the Off Broadway production of, perhaps, his finest work, the autobiographical A Breeze from the Gulf; and his career as a TV producer/writer as "relaxing and dull years."

Now, relocated to New York where it all began when he was living in the Theatre District with late Boys director Robert Moore, just as his career as an acclaimed director was beginning, life is hectic again with non-stop calls, faxes, and conversations with his agent.

Success at age 32 was exhilarating for someone who dreamed all his childhood of writing and making movies; but it also brought its demons: stress, depression and alcoholism. Following the failure of his second play, Remote Asylum, in L.A., he began to ruminate about being a "one hit" playwright. It was a theme that haunted him for years.

At 74, the past is behind him. He admits he went though "tons of money" buying the good life in New York, Los Angeles and throughout Europe; but he's not bad off. During his Hollywood era, he lived in a historic and legendary area of Hollywood where Fitzgerald wrote and Monroe lived -- in a 20s bungalow complex whose architecture typifies the "old" grandiose Hollywood -- where he had a stylish duplex, drove a Mercedes, and mixed with the rich and powerful.

Crowley grew up in Vicksburg, MS, site of a fierce siege that was a turning point in the Civil War and where Coca-Cola was first bottled. He describes his childhood in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and drug-addicted mother as a "Eugene O'Neill nightmare. I was always pissed off that O'Neill had stolen all my material." Not to mention Tennessee Williams.

He attended Catholic school where, interestingly, he was an equipment boy for the football team. His escape was working with the Little Theatre, where he impressed with his set designs. He also spent "endless hours in the dark." Movies were his world and, he reports, where he developed his writer's imagination.

After graduation in 1953, Crowley went West, where he washed dishes in the UCLA cafeteria. In his spare time, he was obsessed with visiting movie lots. His father demanded he attend a Catholic university. "My goal was UCLA's film school, but I found that Catholic University in Washington had an excellent drama department. That led to a compromise."

Over Christmas, 1955, he met director Elia Kazan. Recalls Crowley, "He was shooting Baby Doll [with a screenplay by Tennessee Williams based on one-acts 27 Wagon Loads of Cotton and The Long Stay Cut Short] in the Mississippi Delta town of Benoit. I'd seen On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Streetcar Named Desire and, onstage, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , so I was already in awe. I spent days hanging about the locations, gawking at Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach."

The crew befriended him. It didn't take long for Kazan to take notice. "I asked him a ton of questions," he says. "He seemed rather amused, and we developed a fast rapport. However, when I began talking about working in the movies, he advised 'Go back to school. Get your education, then come and see me.'"

After working on an art degree at UCLA, briefly becoming an illustrator, and majoring in speech and drama at Catholic U., Crowley performed in regional theater and began writing.

On a trip to New York, he got a job as a production assistant on the Mickey Rooney film The Last Mile, which led to jobs on The Fugitive Kind, based on Williams' play Orpheus Descending, starring Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton, and Buttlerfield 8, starring Elizabeth Taylor.

One night, Crowley bumped into Kazan, who offered him a job as his personal assistant on Splendor in the Grass. He did everything from making the director Greek salads to being the shoulder Natalie Wood cried on. When Wood was cast in West Side Story, she hired him as an assistant.

"She knew I was writing all these screenplays and said if I came to California she'd introduce me to agents. Natalie trusted me enough to read scripts she received. Their relationship blossomed into a lifelong friendship [and continued later with husbands Robert Wagner and Richard Gregson and their children]. Of Wood he says, "She was that extraordinarily rare individual - warm, caring, wonderful. I loved her deeply."

The pressure of stardom and romance led Wood to attempt suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. It was Crowley who discovered her unconscious and rushed her to the hospital, registering her under a pseudonym and avoiding a Hollywood scandal.

In Hollywood, he wrote scripts, submitted them and received nothing but rejection slips. But in 1967 he was hired to develop projects for Paramount. Shooting began on his screenplay, Fade-In, starring Burt Reynolds. It was an insider's take on how they make movies. Studio heads thought it a little too inside and brought in another writer.

"In the end," notes Crowley, "the film was ruined and deemed unreleasable." He hated it so much that with his first money from BITB, he paid to have his name removed from the credits. It occasionally popped up on TV and was released on video as Iron Cowboy.

At Paramount, Crowley had an office "but nothing to do. On days when I didn't have one martini too many, I'd fall asleep reading or start a project of my own. One of those was the seed for Boys. The idea of setting it among a gathering of gay friends had been rolling around in my head, but the idea of setting it at a birthday party came when I attended one, attended an interesting collection of people. In the end, the characters are based on people I knew."

The title came from a Garland line inA Star Is Born, but he says the stimulus that really got him motivated was a New York Times feature on "closeted drama." "This critic wondered why America's leading playwrights didn't really write what they were really writing about. It stirred lots of controversy and I thought, 'Why hasn't anyone done that?'"

By the summer of 1967, Crowley says, "I had dried up as a Hollywood screenwriter and was so exasperated at being shut out that I considered throwing in the towel." Then he got a call from actress Diana Lynn, who asked him to house-sit her Beverly Hills mansion. "For five weeks," he laughs, "in a state of sheer determination and hysteria, I sat in the library and fought off the servants and wrote."

When he began shopping his play around, doors didn't exactly fly open. Crowley recalls the reaction of a New York agent, who exclaimed "A play about homosexuals at a birthday party! Come back in five years." BITB predated by a year the so-called Greenwich Village Stonewall riot, one of the flash points of gay liberation.

Edward Albee and his producer Richard Barr, no strangers to controversy, presented a workshop through their Playwrights Unit for invited audiences at the Vandam Playhouse [now the Soho Playhouse]. The list must have been long for the lines stretched around the block. With Charles Woodward as co-producer, the play premiered Off Broadway at West 55th Street's Theatre Four, where it ran 1,000 performances.

Co-star Cliff Gorman [Lenny], in the role of Emory, won an Obie for Ditinguished Performance. Other cast members included Leonard Frey, Laurence Luckinbill, Michael Keith, Kenneth Nelson, and Peter White. A later replacement was Tom Aldredge.

Clive Barnes, writing in the Times, noted: "The Boys in the Band is one of the best-acted plays of the season. It is quite an achievement. I have a feeling that most of us will find it a gripping, if painful, experience - so uncompromising in it's honesty that is becomes an affirmation of life." More recently, a critic wrote: "It was a brave play for 1968, vividly juxtaposing societal abhorrence and gay self-hatred against a growing desire to live and love openly."

Crowley and Moore, a longtime college friend, were blessed with the perfect cast. For the longest time, Crowley declined big movie buy-outs because he wanted to maintain control and keep the cast intact. William Friedkin directed the film adaptation [1970].

"My history up to then had been nothing more than one flop or false start after another," says the playwright. "Those failures left me unprepared for the sudden acclaim."

For a time, Crowley had more money than he ever imagined, "but," he says, "it didn't last the way I lived." And after the failure of his next plays, from 1973-1979, "I sort of evaporated, spending time in Paris, Rome, the south of France, so you see where the money went. But, like Edith Piaf, I am regret-free!"

On his return Stateside, desperately in need of money, he was hired by Aaron Spelling as executive script editor and later became a producer for TV's Hart to Hart, which co-starred old friend Robert Wagner. After four years, he left to concentrate on writing Movies of the Week. "I was under immense stress to prove myself again, and had a heart attack. It was a wake-up call to change my diet and stop drinking."

The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley is available from Alyson Books. Boys film adaptation is available on DVD. A doc, entitled Making the Boys, about the original production, was an official selection at last year's Tribeca Film Festival.

One criticism consistently leveled against The Boys in the Band is that it depicts only guilt-ridden self-hating gay men who wish they weren't gay. Maybe, but thousands of young gay men claimed their lives were changed as a result of seeing the play and/or it's immense worldwide success. One young fan wrote Crowley: "I am 19 and I know why these men are so guilt-ridden and self-hating. It's still tough to be gay in America. If The Boys in the Band seems a bit narrow for focusing only on that, it's remarkably deep in spite of that."

Through the years, Crowley's been asked if the character of Michael is based somewhat or in whole on himself. He says, "I'm not ashamed if anyone wants to make an association between Michael and me. It's obvious he's based on me more than on anyone else."

Notes Crowley, "The themes of The Boys in the Band and The Men from the Boys - self-loathing and self-destruction -- fascinate me and are what I was hung up on for years. I've learned we do not have to be our own worst enemies. After all this time and a number of very expensive psychoanalysts, I've changed about as much as I'm going to change. The most amazing thing about life is that if you can come to grips with yourself, you can be a lot happier. I've finally been able to achieve happiness!"

Crowley appeared in the docs The Celluloid Closet (1995), about homosexuality and its depiction onscreen, and Dominick Dunne: After the Party, a biography of his and co-producer of the film, late author Dominick Dunne.

The Collected Plays of Mart Crowley is available from Alyson Books. Boys film adaptation is available on DVD. A doc, entitled Making the Boys, about the original production, was an official selection at last year's Tribeca Film Festival.

Crowley was also hand-picked by Kay Thompson's heirs to carry on the tradition of her Eloise books with her long-time collaborator [and long-time Crowley friend] illustrator Hilary Knight.

[BITB tkts are available at www.transportgroup.org or by phoning TheaterMania at (866) 811-4111 or (212) 352-3101. The venue box office opens one hour before curtain.]

Transport Group is sponsoring several special events connected with their production of The Boys in the Band: Thursday, March 4, at 8 P.M. tickets will be half price for buyers under 30 and there will be a post show reception [photo ID required]; and Friday, March 5, 7 P.M. , T.G. joins with the Matthew Shepard Foundation for a special intergenerational post show dialogue on equality. For tickets and information, visit www.transportgroup.org.

The company's "Dark Nights" series will give theatergoers a rare opportunity to experience readings of Mart Crowley's theatrical body of work. Sunday, February 28, following the 5 P.M. performance, there will be a reading of Crowley's BITB sequel, The Men From the Boys, set as the "boys" meet again at Larry's wake; and on Monday, March 8, 7 P.M., For Reasons That Remain Unclear, the autobiographical play, set in Rome, of "the chance meeting that brings a man face-to-face with the priest who abused him when he was nine years old." Tickets for the series are $19 each and may be reserved at www.transportgroup.com.

On dates TBA T.G. will present readings of Crowley's critically acclaimed A Breeze from the Gulf, about a 15-year-old Mississippi homosexual "suffering through adolescence with a drug-addicted mother and alcoholic father and how he grows into success as a writer"; Remote Asylum, the playwright's first post BITB work which focuses on a group of "bruised souls forced to deal with fears of loneliness, mortality, and emotional wounds not yet healed"; and Avec Schmaltz, which tells of "a perilous, smug, comfortable family, on the brink of dissolution," as they experience Christmas in Connecticut and New Year's Eve in California.

[N.B. - In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm a native of Vicksburg, MS, and have long known Mart Crowley.]

A Review

The Boys in the Band, Transport Group, 37. West 26th Street, Penthouse, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Set to run through March 14, but now with the likelihood of an extension.

For a long time, Jack Cummings and his Transport Group have been known for innovative, award-winning revivals. The tradition continues with the current revival of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band.

BITB takes place in a NY UES apartment where Michael, an alcoholic on the wagon who lives way above his means, and friend Donald ready to host a birthday party for long-time friend Harold, who has issues with his looks and who seems to know exactly how to push Michael's buttons. They are joined by seven friends: Bernard, an African-American who allows himself to be denigrated by best bud, the ultra flamboyant Emory, who's always on; bi-sexual Hank and promiscuous Larry, who disagree on relationship monogamy; and Cowboy, a prostitute who has been hired as Harold's present. The unexpected arrival of Michael's college chum Alan, as the "boys" do a Fire Island line dance, upsets the apple cart and turns the party topsy turvy.

Cummings concept of staging the play in a non-traditional site which 99 seats placed throughout Sanda Goldmark's evocative set was an idea that has paid off handsomely. The staging intimately involves audiences as spectators very close by the sidelines and, often, right in the middle of the action. This intimacy gives the play even more blistering bite.

Beginning in 1961, Neil Simon gradually built a rep as king of the comic one-liners. He had a brilliant skill of being able to craft these jolts that elicited great audience laughter into a coherent whole. You might say that Crowley, some seven years later, could have easily inherited the crown.

Amazingly, some 42 years later, 99 99/100% of his groundbreaking BITB holds up extraordinarily well not only as absorbing storytelling [much of it very autobiographical] but also as black comedy with almost two hours of slung one-liners that still elict mighty laughter. Perhaps one reason is that many of Crowley's zingers have found a home in hip vernacular - not only gay, but also straight.

The revival is sharply focused by Cummings' direction in a work that doesn't seem the least bit dated [though younger audiences might not understand a time when some had two phone lines or, when dialing Information, getting a human voice who miraculously and immediately has the number you're looking for at her fingertips. Often, and very powerfully, the director's deft hand is even felt in moments of silence when the "boys" are caught by surprise or standing, heads bowed.

The staging, as effective as it is overall, can be a disadvantage at times to those not seated close to a particular sequence - particularly true of those moments in Michael's bedroom, an elevated area at the far end of the loft space.

The Boys in the Band, with its black comic overtones that mask bitchiness, hostility, revenge, and tones of self-hatred, is a play not only dependent on excellent writing but also on perfect casting.

The original cast of the play is so indelibly set in many people's minds because of the work's inital long run and the fact that the film adaptation, though immensely opened up in early moments, starred - thanks to Crowley's insistence - the original cast. It's hard to forget those portrayals.

However, to a great extent, Cummings' cast is incredibly well chosen. Jonathan Hammond, in the pivotal role of Michael, covers all the camp and minefield of emotional bases excellently except in a prolonged breakdown that's just a little too hysterical and prolonged for its own good. He receives steady and able support especially from Graham Rowat as Hank, Nick Westrate as Donald, Kevyn Morrow as Bernard, and, as the unexpected guest, Kevin Isola as Alan.

It's never fair to make comparisons with actors in an original cast, but the performances of Clff Gorman as Emory and Leonard Frey as Harold are still so memorable and the characters so vital to making the play work that, respectively, John Wellmann and Jon Levenson have big shoes to fill.

In a clever touch, which especially adds nuance to the fadeout, Dane Laffrey has lit the playing area with assorted lamps and a light fixture.

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