Loose Lips
LUKER’S HOME RUN
On her superb, just-released CD Leaving Home (PS Classics), Rebecca Luker shifts gears from the work of Broadway legends Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern to the songs of such pop giants as Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Billy Joel, and Paul McCartney and John Lennon. “Growing up in the woods of Alabama, this is the stuff I listened to,” says Luker, a two-time Tony nominee. “Of course, I stuck to the soft side of things on the CD. I could’ve done some Kiss or Lynnrd Skynnrd.”
The album isn’t completely devoted to covers; there are also new songs by Amanda McBroom, Christopher McGovern (the album’s producer), and the late Rusty Magee (whose widow, Alison Fraser, joins Luker on “Wick” from The Secret Garden). “Rusty passed away while we were doing this album so it seemed only right to include one of his songs,” Luker notes. “The CD is dedicated to him.”
With no theater projects on the horizon, Luker is redirecting her energies. She has shot some TV pilots here in New York and is doing a lot of work on commercial jingles. “It’s really creative and I love the fact that I don’t have to get dressed up and wear make-up,” she says with a laugh.
Luker is also concentrating on her family — namely husband Danny Burstein and his two sons. In the coming weeks, the clan will be spending a lot time downtown at The Flea, where Burstein is co-starring in A.R. Gurney‘s new political comedy Mrs. Farnsworth alongside Sigourney Weaver and John Lithgow. “It’s a very good play and particularly satisfying for George Bush bashers, which I am,” says Luker, who sat in on a rehearsal or two. “Sigourney is really wonderful, John is just perfect — and, of course, Danny is amazing.”
YIP, YIP, HOORAY!
When Victoria Clark takes the stage of the 92nd Street Y this weekend for the Lyrics & Lyricists tribute to E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, it will be more than just another gig. “Ted Sperling [the series’ artistic director] and Jeff Klitz [the show’s musical director] and I went to college together, and Ted is one of my closest friends,” says Clark, who worked with Sperling on Broadway’s Titanic and How to Succeed…. “And, when I first came to New York, I was in Yip’s apartment a lot because one of my best friends lived with his widow.”
Of course, the best reason for Clark to do the show is Harburg’s lyrics. “I get to sing ‘Right as The Rain’ and some songs from Finian’s Rainbow. But I am really excited about doing ‘The Jitterbug,’ a song that was cut from The Wizard of Oz. He wrote it before the dance came out; it has to do with a bug that gives you the jitters.”
Clark is also hoping to be singing the music of Adam Guettel again very soon; she starred in the composer’s new musical The Light in the Piazza at the Goodman Theater last month (where she also worked with Sperling). Like many theatergoers, she hopes Light sees the lights of Broadway this fall. “If it was up to me, I would have kamikazied it right here for this season,” she says. “But I realize that the show is like a beautiful bottle of wine; if it ages another six months, it will only become more valuable. The cast is thinking about going to Italy this summer to do more research. I’ve only been there one day in my whole life. It was during college, I was going to meet my mother, and I only have a vague memory about shoes.”
DREAM LOVER
One musical we are definitely not going to see on Broadway this fall is the planned revival of Camelot that was to have starred Liam Neeson. “I am afraid it’s been postponed,” says the show’s director, Edward Hall. “It’s a really big show to put on and we just need more time to plan.”
Those who want to see Hall’s work right now should head to BAM, where his theater company Propeller is presenting its all-male production of William Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream through March 28. Hall says that he’s never had trouble finding guys to (figuratively) fill women’s shoes: “The female parts in Shakespeare are so good that when you say to actors, ‘Do you want to play Titania or Viola,’ they just jump!”
One of England’s most successful young directors, the 37-year-old Hall has literally come a long way in the last 15 years. “The first play I directed was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at some small community theater in northwest Wales,” he relates. “I had four people I wanted to work with and no money, so I needed a play with one set. We even borrowed furniture from people’s houses. I honestly had no idea what the play was about, but I knew it was brilliant.” Hall couldn’t have done too bad a job since he didn’t get a thumbs-down from his dad, Sir Peter Hall: “He didn’t tell me to stop directing, so I figured that was good.”
CASTING ABOUT
Though some members of the Public Theater cast of Caroline, or Change will not be coming to Broadway with the show, Veanne Cox has just been confirmed for the transfer…Raúl Esparza, Karen Ziemba, Marla Schaffel, Cady Huffman, Jeff McCarthy, Julia Murney, and Ann Hampton Callaway are among those who’ll variously perform in Scott Siegel‘s two upcoming “Broadway By The Year” shows at Town Hall…André DeShields and Tony winner Phyllis Frelich will star in Mark Medoff’s Prymate, which bows at the Longacre on April 16… Jeffrey Carlson (Taboo, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?) will headline the McCarter Theater production of George Bernard Shaw‘s Candida, which begins on Tuesday.
SEEING STARS
Alfred Molina will be the speaker at Monday night’s Harold Clurman Lecture presented by the Stella Adler Studio at 31 West 27th Street. Admission is free…Emmy winner (and recent Paper Mill leading lady) Robin Strasser caught up with old pal Dorothy Lyman‘s smashing solo turn in My Kitchen Wars at 78th Street Rep….Singing sisters KT and Heather Sullivan were seen hugging Melissa Errico at the Algonquin Hotel on opening night of Errico’s new cabaret show in the hotel’s famous Oak Room.
