Encounters with Mike Nichols: A Book Review and Memories

Mark Harris' comprehensive biography of wonder boy director Mike Nichols is over 600 pages but reads like a shot. There are literally hundreds of top-name show-biz figures interviewed and quoted directly, giving a multi-faceted, complete picture of the subject's diversified career. (It is weird to read quotes from Scott Rudin, the now disgraced producer who has withdrawn from an active role in all of his productions due to his toxic behavior). Nichols was one of the few directors to achieve prominence in film, theater and TV, winning the top awards in all three plus a Grammy for his comedy recordings with Elaine May.

My earliest memories of Nichols were listening to those LPs with May. Their hilarious sketches recreated the push-pull war between the sexes as well as commented on contemporary foibles of society with satire by turns gentle and barbed. I used to do imitations of the pair at post-performance parties for the community theaters in which I acted. The one time I encountered May in person was at an awards event where her partner the legendary movie director Stanley Donen was a presenter. I told her I loved her and Nichols' routines and would do them at the drop of a hat. She said "Do one now." So I did the first few minutes of the Telephone sketch. She said, "It's amazing that you remember all that." I now wish I had done the Mother and Son sketch ("Hello, Arthur, this is your mother. Do you remember me?")

B'way Update: Dana and Room To Play in Rep, Etc.

The new post-shutdown Broadway season just got really interesting. In an unexpected and startlingly different move, two highly-praised, but bizarre Off-Broadway plays will transfer to Broadway to be performed in repertory. Tina Satter's Is This A Room and Lucas Hnath's Dana H. will alternate performances at the Lyceum Theater with the former beginning previews on Sept. 24 and opening Oct. 11 and the latter commencing previews on Oct. 1 and 

 Is This a Room? (top) and Dana H (bottom)
will alternate performances at 
Broadway's Lyceum Theatre
(Credits: Carol Rosegg; Craig Schwartz)

opening Oct. 17. The dual-show engagement will play until Jan. 16, 2022. Both plays were presented at Vineyard Theater as part of the foreshortened 2019-20 season.  

Each presentation is unique and not your typical Broadway fare. Is This A Room, directed and conceived by Satter, concerns the real-life Reality Winner (her actual name), an Air Force linguist who was imprisoned for leaking information that the Russians interfered in our 2016 Presidential election. The entire 70-minute play is composed of transcripts from her FBI interrogation and the search of her home. Emily Davis repeats her stunning performance as Reality. She won an Obie and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and the production won a Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience.

Dana H. is also based on actual events and transcripts. The playwright's mother Dana was abducted and held captive in a series of Florida motels for five months. Deirdre O'Connell lip-synchs to recordings of an interview conducted with the real-life Dana and directed by Obie winner Les Waters. The production was interrupted by the COVID shut-down and O'Connell won the Obie, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and New York Drama Critics Circle awards. 

B'way Update: Company Opens Early; Waitress Returns; etc.

Terence Archie, Patti LuPone and Katrina Link
in Company
Credit: Brinkoff Moegenburg

The Broadway calendar keeps shifting in anticipation of the first full season since the COVID shutdown in March of 2020. The gender-reversed revival of Company, which was in previews when all the theaters closed, has pushed up its opening by one month. The show, directed by Tony winner Marianne Elliott, had previously announced a preview start date of Nov. 15 and an opening of Jan. 9, 2022. The show will now begin previews Nov. 15 and open on Dec. 9 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. The cast will include the legendary Patti LuPone, Tony winner Katrina Lenk (The Band's Visit), Matt Doyle (War Horse), Tony nominee Christopher Fitzgerald (Finian's Rainbow, Waitress), Christopher Sieber (Shrek), Jennifer Simard (Disaster, Hello, Dolly!), Terence Archie (Kiss Me, Kate), Greg Hildreth (Frozen, Cinderella), Claybourne Elder (One Arm, Bonnie and Clyde) and Nikki Renee Daniels (Porgy and Bess).

B'way Update: Second Stage Announces Dates

Dame Jasmine Hughes and Reza Salazar
in the Guthrie Theater’s production of “Floyd’s” 
which will open as "Clyde's" on Broadway
Credit: T. Charles Erickson

Second Stage has announced dates for its 2021-22 on and Off-Broadway season, bringing the NYC post-COVID theater schedule into sharper focus. The company will open with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage's Clyde's premiering at the Hayes Theater with previews beginning Nov. 3 and an opening set for Nov. 22. The play, previously titled Floyd's appeared at the Guthrie Theater in 2019 and is set in a truck stop diner where the tough-talking female owner hires ex-convicts. The title was changed, presumably to avoid confusion with George Floyd, the African-American man who was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Nottage will also be represented this season by MJ, the Michael Jackson bio musical for which she wrote the book, and an operatic adaptation of her New York Drama Critics Circle Award winning play Intimate Apparel. In related news, Tony nominee Ephraim Skyes will be replaced in the title role of MJ by newcomer Myles Frost. Skyes cited scheduling conflicts as the reason for departing the show which has been delayed many times, not just by the COVID pandemic. 

Patrick J. Adams, Jesse Williams, and 
Jesse Tyler Ferguson will star in
Take Me Out
Credit: Catherine Wessel

B'way Update: Chicken and Biscuits, Plaza Suite, Harry Potter

A new show, a revival, and an altered previously-running show have been added to the 2021-22, post-COVID Broadway calendar. Chicken and Biscuits, a new play, will open at the Circle in the Square, the long-delayed Plaza Suite has announced preview and opening dates, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will resume performances at the Lyric as a condensed, one-evening presentation rather in its previous two parts. Only a few announced productions have not yet claimed dates, so the Broadway schedule is nearly complete.  

The cast of Chicken and Biscuits
at the Queens Theater
Credit: Dominick Totino

Chicken and Biscuits, a new play by Douglas Lyons, will begin previews at the Circle in the Square Theater on Sept. 23 with an opening set for Oct. 10. Tony nominee Norm Lewis (Porgy and Bess) and Drama Desk winner Michael Urie (The Temperamentals, Buyer and Cellar) star in this comedy which premiered at the Queens Theater in Flushing Meadows in Feb. 28, 2020, but had to close down two weeks into its run because of the COVID pandemic. The play is staged by Zhailon Levingston, who at 27 will be the youngest African-American director in Broadway history. Lyons is also making his Broadway debut as a playwright and has appeared on the Main Stem as an actor in Beautiful and The Book of Mormon. The comedy will have a limited run at Circle in the Square until Jan. 2, 2022. A revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo with Shia LaBeouf was scheduled for the theater before the pandemic and there are plans for the production to open there in March.

'Bewitched' Family Therapy

Would Darren and Endora
benefit from family therapy?

While watching Bewitched reruns, it occurred to me that Samantha, Darren, and Endora should attend a family therapy session. Conflict is the source of all comedy, but it seems that in every episode neither witch nor mortal would give in and there is no learning or healing on either side. How could Samantha stand all that bickering and having her spouse constantly transformed into various beasts or given personality changes? Here's an imagined scene with Samantha, Darren, Endora, and a family therapist, perhaps played by Norman Fell who played Sigmund Freud on an episode.

Therapist: Thank you all for coming. So Samantha, why would you say you, your husband and your mother are here today?

Samantha: Well, doctor--

Therapist: I'm not a doctor. I'm a therapist.

Endora: See, this mortal isn't even a doctor. We are wasting our time. You and I could be in Paris right now, attending all the couture shows instead of babbling on about our insides. The least you could have done was whipped up Sigmund Freud like I did that time--

Samantha: Mother, please. You said you would try. (Endora makes a face of compliance and gestures to Samantha to continue). OK, we're here today because my husband and my mother just can't seem to get along. They get into the most violent arguments. I love them both, but there is endless conflict. It's getting to the point where I feel my loyalties are being divided and it's really hurting me. My mother is a part of my life and I want her to be, but she zaps into the house any time she wants, gives Darren a hard time, belittling him. She can't even say his name correctly. 

B'way Update: Mormon, Mockingbird, Love Supreme Return

Jeff Daniels and Celia Keenan-Bolger
in To Kill a Mockingbird
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

The new Broadway calendar is almost complete. Two more shows shuttered during the pandemic have announced their reopenings and another will have a return engagement. This means nearly every 2020 production has definite dates for a comeback. To Kill a Mockingbird and The Book of Mormon, two shows formerly under the aegis of producer Scott Rudin, have posted their return dates. Rudin has withdrawn from producing due to reports of workplace harassment and toxicity. Mockingbird, Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and the highest-grossing straight play in Broadway history, will resume performances at the Shubert Theater on Oct. 5. Jeff Daniels will return to the role of Atticus Finch and Celia Keenan-Bolger takes up the part of his young daughter Scout through Jan. 2, 2022. 

The Book of Mormon 
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

The Book of Mormon, winner of nine 2011 Tony Awards, will continue its raucous hijinks at the Eugene O'Neill Theater on Nov. 5. The satiric show about Mormon missionaries in an impoverished African village, will also continue performances in London on Nov. 15. It's been reported that the authors Trey Parker, Matt Stone and Robert Lopez will attend rehearsals in response to cast members expressing concerns over the depiction of the Ugandan villagers in the show. Whether this means there will be any script changes remains to be seen.