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The
Empire State Building from behind a subway lantern. 8:45
PM. Photo: JH.
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The
weatherman forecast rain both days. But except for some spritzing
on Friday night, Mother Nature reneged, assuring
us that She has a mind of her own.
Rewind: Last Tuesday night I went over
to Weill Auditorium in Carnegie Hall for the New York Festival
of Songs’ “A Prince
of a Fella,” a tribute to Broadway’s now legendary
director/producer Hal Prince. The evening was
chaired by Jamie
Bernstein, Barbara Fleischman, Mary Rodgers and Henry Guettel and John
Kander.
Steven Blier, one of the founders of NYFOS, served
as host and musical director. The singers performing were Brent
Barrett, Jason Danieley,
Scott Dispensa, Jason Forbach, Patty Goble, Judy Kaye, Alex Mansoori,
Lisa Vroman and Mary Cleere Haran.
The New York Festival of Song is now in its 17th season. It was
founded in 1988 by pianists Michael Barrett and Steven Blier, and
is dedicated to creating intimate song concerts that entertain,
educate and connect adventurous audiences with extraordinary performers
in an informal atmosphere.
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Steven
Blier and Chas Strouse
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Tuesday
night’s concert included songs from several
of Mr. Prince’s shows including West Side Story, Company, A
Little Night Music, On the Twentieth Century, Superman and She
Loves Me.
To name only a few. This is unabashed Broadway on the Inside, for
all of us diehard outsiders who love it practically to the point
of worship. It’s show biz and it’s brilliant.
I don’t know Harold Prince. I’ve never met him. Although
I’ve been in the same room with him and even taken his picture
(again on Tuesday night after the concert). My first awareness
of him was a Broadway show starring Vivian Blaine and Robert
Morse called Say Darling, in which the Morse character
was said to be based on a young Harold Prince.
I saw the show in summer stock, a couple of years after it ran,
and my memory is vague except for Morse’s wily, witty, go-get-em
character who really wanted to make it in the theatre no matter
what-who-or-how. Whether or not it had anything to do with Harold
Prince is irrelevant at this stage.
However, in the mid-60s when I was studying at the Neighborhood
Playhouse here in New York, I had a part time job working with
Jimmy Molenski, the maitre d’ at Sardi’s during the
pre-theatre dinner hour. In those days Sardi’s was still
the mecca for the theatre crowd. Big time. And wonderful. My first
sighting of Hal Prince was his arriving on a summer’s early
evening in his Jaguar with his new wife (now still his wife) Judy.
They came in like a fresh and boisterous breeze, bright-eyed and
full of beans. Although he was only there to have dinner, he looked
like a man who was having the best time in life, a modern Mr. Broadway.
At that point, he was not only one of the most important producers
and directors on Broadway but had the reputation for very classy,
highly regarded, high-toned shows. And nice. He had a reputation
for being nice. Whether or not that was, or is, true, I may never
know – but it sure looked it from this outsider’s point
of view. And it still does. |
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The
cast of the evening taking their bow
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So,
ever since, I’ve maintained this image, this idea, of
the name “Hal Prince” with a robust and creative
energy that’s won 20 Tonys (a record), produced and/or
directed some of the greatest Broadway musicals of the past
half century – several working with his good friend
and also now legendary Stephen Sondheim – and
all the while having a good time along with making a good
time for millions of theatre-goers, world-wide down through
the decades.
That same energy was in the room at the Weill on Tuesday night, and then later
on at Shelley’s, the restaurant down the street from Carnegie Hall where
they held a dinner party for a hundred or more of Hal Prince’s friends
and admirers. Steve Sondheim wasn’t there, although of course he was – up
on that stage; his words and music filling the hall. Carol Burnett was
there, and Joel Grey, and the chairs, Rodgers, Guettal, Fleischman,
Bernstein. John Kander was there, and Sheldon Harnick and Mrs. Harnick.
And Charles Strouse who wrote “Superman,” one of my favorite scores.
And Mr. and Mrs. Prince (he still looked like he was having a great time, and
so did she), and Michael Tilson Thomas, Jay Cantor, Judy Auchincloss,
Howard and Abby Milstein, Ellen and Jim Marcus, Harriett Levine, Mr.
Bleir, Mr. Barrett, the entire cast and so so many others, enjoying that Princely
energy that I first saw come through the door of Sardi’s forty years ago
and which like a heavenly storm of stardust has blessed the world of Broadway
for even longer and ever since.
If you want to know more about New York Festival of Song and their upcoming concerts,
you can visit their web site: www.nyfos.org. |
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L.
to r.: Judy Kaye; John Kander, Hal Prince, and Carol
Burnett.
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John
Kander and Sheldon Harnick
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Mary
Rodgers and Henry Guettel
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Carol
Burnett and Joel Grey
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James
and Ellen Marcus
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The
following evening – Wednesday – the New York
City Ballet held their Spring Gala 2005 at
the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, chaired by Maria
Bartiromo and Mellody Hobson and Richard
Beckman of Conde Nast as corporate chair.
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Katharine
Bryan
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The evening’s program was made up of five ballet premieres – either
NYC Ballet or world premieres: Tala Gaisma with Darci
Kistler, Sofiane Sylve, Miranda Weese and Jared Angle.
Jock
Soto was originally scheduled to dance in this but had sustained
an injury and was replaced last minute by Mr. Angle, who at 21 is
only two years out of the School of American Ballet. It was stuff
of theatre legend – he went out the understudy and came back
a star.
Also in the program: Broken Promise (world premiere), danced by Ashley
Bouder and Stephen Hanna; then Double Aria (NYC
Ballet premiere) accompanied onstage by violinist Timothy Fain and
danced by Maria Kowroski and Ask la Cour. This
was followed by Distant Cries (also NYC Ballet premiere) danced by Wendy
Whelan and Peter Boal. |
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Stephen
Schwarzman and Roberto de Guardiola
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Jamee
and Peter Gregory
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Patsy
Tarr
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This is Mr. Boal’s last season at the New York
City Ballet. He made his first appearance on the
New York State Theater stage at age 10 in 1978 in George
Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. For that long
ago moment Mr. Balanchine made a point of giving him a direction
for his role as a feisty child who is dragged away by his father. “When
I pick you up, you have to kick me and punch me as hard as you
can!” the master told the child.
“So, he
scooped me up under his arm,” Boal remembers all these years
later, “and that’s what I did.”
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Peter
Boal photographed by Christian Witkin for 2wice magazine
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He went on to study at the School of American Ballet. After being featured in
a 1978 Workshop Performances, in Quadrille by Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux,
he realized that’s what he wanted to do in life. “It made me realize
that this was something I was really interested in, and that the audience was
responding.”
The ballet came naturally to the boy. His grandparents had a City
Ballet subscription the first year they were available and his mother first got
hers in 1960. Ballet was something the family did for fun, he told Susan
Reiter in an interview she did for Playbill (where I got all
of this information). Ironically his entry into the ballet company came on the
day Mr. Balanchine died – April 30, 1983. It had been Mr. B who had selected
him as one of eight advanced students for a special men’s class at SAB,
and had told the students: “In my mind, you are the principals of tomorrow.”
Today, Mr. Boal also teaches as many as 13 weekly classes at SAB.
Next year he will become the new artistic director of the Pacific
Northwest Ballet in Seattle
and, as it happens, 15 of his former students at SAB will be on the ballet company’s
roster.
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The
ten-year-old Peter Boal as the Prince with Katherine
Healy as Marie in the 1978 production of George
Balanchine's The Nutcracker
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Meanwhile, back at Wednesday night’s New York
City Ballet spring gala. The last ballet on the program
was the world premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s An
American in Paris, music by George Gershwin of
course and the stunning scenery by Adrianne Lobel strongly
influenced by the Cubism of Braque, Leger and Picasso.
Danced by Damian Woetzel, Carla Korbes and Jenifer
Ringer with the Corps de Ballet, this piece was
nothing short of SENSATIONAL -- to see, to hear, to thrill
to, especially if, like me, you love Gershwin’s composition.
The entire evening’s program was a great success with this insistent non-balletomane.
Maybe it’s the time, maybe it’s the world, maybe it’s me, but
I’m beginning to think it’s true: everything is beautiful at the
ballet. Bravo!
After the show, there was the dinner held on the Promenade, a beautiful
production in itself, black tie, with the ladies looking very glamorous
and the production
cast, staged and produced by Glorious Food, David E. Monn Events, Oberlander
Design, Restaurant Associates, Star Tents and Topspin Entertainment (“with
special thanks to Movado”). My friend, society’s brilliant DJ
Tom Finn made the music, and after the Sean Driscoll menu,
the wines, the champagnes, they danced the night away, celebrating the five great
premieres and the fund-raising: $2 million for the New York City Ballet. |
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Decor
at the ballet
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Alex Donner and friends
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Susan
Baker, Anne Bass, and Liz Peek
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Alex
Lebenthal and Jeremy
Diamond
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Damian
Woetzel
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Sheila
and George Stephenson
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Christian
Gudefin, Marisa
Brown, and Bettina Zilkha
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Michele
Herbert
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Debbie
Bancroft and Joanne de Guardiola
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Last
Tuesday Alice Mason’s devoted companion, her beloved
Maltese, Fluffy, passed away. The wee one would have
been fifteen on the 30th of December. The pup’s name came
from the nickname Alice’s
friend the late sportsman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt had dubbed
her years ago. “He
said when he met me that I had a mind like a steel trap and so nobody could
accuse
me of being a bit of fluff,” recalled the doyenne of Manhattan
private residential brokers and one of New York’s most famous
partygivers of the last four decades.Fluffy was Mrs. Mason’s
first pet and I think she was surprised at first at the years of
pleasure she would and did get from her company.
Fluffy 12/30/90 – 5/3/05
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