Loose Lips

Patricia Kalember hardly needs to rely on family connections to get good parts, but her husband, actor Daniel Gerroll was instrumental in the former Sisters star being cast as a 1960s war-protesting mother in Stuart Warmflash’s new play, Shortly After Takeoff. “Stuart and Danny are old friends from school, and when Danny read it, he knew it had a great part for me,” she says. “So Stuart and I now have a new relationship, which is fun. He’s also directing the play, which is fine in this case, because he really knows his material and how to talk to actors. Plus, he’s pretty good at separating the jobs. There have been several times when the cast has called for just the playwright, and he’s been very collaborative with us. It’s really a terrific play.”

Kalember was only 10 years old in 1967, when the play is set, so she has looked at magazines from the period and talked to people who were around in order to get firsthand reports on the times. “You really get the sense that people then felt they could make a difference,” she notes. “I think that belief skipped my generation — we were into disco and big shoulders — but I see my kids getting involved in causes. My 16-year-old, Benjamin, is going down to Costa Rica to build housing for the poor, and my nine-year-old, Toby, wants us to give money for the animals that lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina.”

While Gerroll is sitting on the sidelines for Shortly After Takeoff, the couple may work together again this summer in Rupert Holmes’s comic thriller Accomplice at New Jersey’s Two Rivers Theatre Company in June. In August, they’ll return to Long Island’s Bay Street Theatre, where they first performed Accomplice; Gerroll will direct the American premiere of Down in Malibu. “We just love working out there,” she says. “It’s beautiful, and a lot less pressure than doing a show in New York. Even a small Off-Broadway play like [Shortly After Takeoff] is a workout.”

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Predicting Tony Award nominations in March is risky business at best, but I’d be willing to bet a week’s salary that one of the anointed will be Jayne Houdyshell for the role of playwright/actress Lisa Kron‘s mother Ann in Well. Her performance has already earned Houdyshell an Obie in 2004, and she received a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award last week for the show’s San Francisco production. (In recent months, she has also won a Jefferson for The Pain and the Itch and a Barrymore for The Clean House.)

The irony is that Houdyshell was cast at the very last minute. “When I started working on the play, I was writing the part for Lola Pashalinski,” Kron tells me. “Then Lola was cast in Fortune’s Fool on Broadway, and I needed someone quickly to do this workshop in Baltimore. I asked about five obvious casting choices — I won’t say who — but they were all busy. I was afraid I might have to cancel the workshop. Then someone suggested I go see Jayne in True Love. She was playing a very different role than Ann, but she was physically in the same ballpark. So we asked her to read, and she really channeled my mother. It was unbelievable. A lot of people don’t think she’s an actress; they think she’s really my mother, and they come back and ask her if she’s ever done a play before.”

Working with Houdyshell has been a singular experience for Kron, who says, “Her work completely raises me to another level; I’ve become a much better actor because of her. It’s astonishing to see this bottomless well of talent.”

HEART TO HEART

Larry Keith is no stranger to playing powerful people, from department store titan Isidore Straus in Titanic to King Charlemagne in the Bay Street production of Pippin; but playing the head of an organ transplant selection committee in Mark St. Germain‘s The God Committee is a new challenge for the veteran actor. “I’ve talked to several doctors, including my own cardiologist, about the subject,” he says, “and I’ve learned how hard these decisions are — especially removing the subjectivity in what is supposed to be an objective discussion. And, sometimes, they’re really racing against the clock; a heart needs to be transplanted within four hours. The play is about flawed people who trying to do their best in a critical job.”

Keith says the play is important because “Organ transplants aren’t in the consciousness of most people; it’s very hard to think about how to handle your own demise. But you need to think about what you’re going to do with these very valuable organs. I think we’re even going to have a booth in the lobby where you can sign up to donate them.”

As of yet, Keith hasn’t been approached to reprise his Broadway role of the wordly-wise Mr. Stopnick in the National Theatre’s upcoming production of Caroline, or Change, but he says that he would do so in a heartbeat: “I love that piece so much, and I’d love to live in London for a little while. I’ve been all across the country, but living overseas would be nice.”

A HEDDA EXPERIENCE
How hot is Brooklyn these days? BAM’s annual Spring Gala included the first performance of Hedda Gabler, starring Cate Blanchett — who was stunning in every sense of the word — and it brought out an unusually large quotient of glitterati. The starry crowd on February 28 included such mega-names as Shubert Organization head Gerald Schoenfeld and legendary film director Martin Scorsese (who guided Blanchett to an Oscar in The Aviator); Tony Award winner Liev Schreiber and gorgeous gal pal Naomi Watts; fellow Tony winners Zoe Caldwell, Estelle Parsons, and Mary-Louise Parker; Oscar winner Marisa Tomei, Golden Globe winner Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Theatre World Award winner Mark Ruffalo; and such talented couples as Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Saarsgard, John Turturro and Katherine Borowitz, Byron Jennings and Carolyn McCormick, Rebecca Luker and Danny Burstein, and Charles Busch and author Eric Myers.

SAVE THE DATES
Lucie Arnaz will perform her solo show An Evening With Lucie Arnaz at Connecticut’s Ridgefield Playhouse on March 11. Becky Ann Baker will star in a free reading of Jon Lonoff’s play Skin Deep at the National Comedy Theater on March 13. That same night, two stars of Jersey Boys will appear in separate shows: Tituss Burgess will be at the Bitter End, while Michael Longoria will perform at the Duplex as part of the Broadway Downtown series. Looking ahead, former Rent star Ryan Link will star in a reading of the new musical Utah’s Crying: A Rock Opera at the Abingdon Theater on March 15-16; the legendary couple Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson will star in a benefit performance of Bits and Pieces at L.A.’s Theatre 40 on March 19; and Drama Desk Award winner Isabel Keating will host the Hourglass Group’s annual benefit, Paradise Follies, at F.I.T. on March 25.