Loose Lips

TRUE ROMANCE
Alison Fraser has kept a low profile for the last two years, and that’s more than understandable: Her husband of almost 20 years, songwriter Rusty Magee, died in February 2003 after a long illness and the popular singer/actress has been busy settling his estate and parenting their adolescent son, Nat. “But I think it’s a good time to get back on the horse,” Fraser says. So she’s one of the many stars who’ll be appearing this Monday in “Cabaret for the Cure,” a benefit for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation at St. Clement’s Church.

Then on Monday, June 28, this two-time Tony Award nominee will be on stage at the Lucille Lortel Theater as co-host (with Karen Mason and Anne Runolfsson) of New Mondays in Concert, a benefit for the Storefront Theater. It will feature the works of more than 20 composers, including Tom Andersen, Amanda Green, Mark Hartman, Michael John LaChiusa, Andrew Lippa, Galt McDermot, and Charles Strouse. “I have always been dedicated to new songwriters and new material,” says Fraser. “Scott Alan, whose work will be performed that night, just came to my house to play his new piece, and it was just thrilling.”

But the biggest news of all is that Fraser will be doing two solo concerts at Joe’s Pub on June 27. “I think it’s going be fun,” she says. “I don’t do these often enough to be really nervous. A lot of it will be Rusty’s songs, stuff from New York Romance and The Green Heart. I’ve been revisiting his material and there will be some songs in the show that haven’t been heard before — well, except by me! But I am also going to do some things from The Secret Garden, Romance/Romance, and some Billy Finn — because I would feel like something was missing if I didn’t. And I’ll probably do my famous Law and Order song. I have been on the SVU series since I wrote it but that’s not really official.”

Keeping her husband’s legacy alive takes up much of Fraser’s time these days: “We’re going to be publishing a Rusty Magee songbook, about 30 songs. I’ve gotten so many requests for his music since he passed away. Rusty kept everything; I think I have a bowling score from when he was 10. A lot of his songs were on his computer, so all I have to do is print them out, but I’ve hired someone who will have to create sheet music from old tapes. And I’ve been talking about getting an all-star recording done of The Green Heart. I think the time has come to revisit that show. Henrietta is the best part for a woman ever — though I am not going to do it!”

THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR
Most of us would give our eyeteeth to spend the summer in Santa Fe but David Garrison is leaving his New Mexico homestead behind. The former Tony nominee will star in the season finale to the 92nd Street Y’s Lyrics & Lyricists series The Wit and Wisdom of Ira Gershwin, June 12-14. “I will be doing some of his more obscure songs, like ‘I Don’t Think I’ll Fall In Love Today’ (from Treasure Girl), which I once sang with Dawn Upshaw, and ‘A Typical Self-Made American’ (from Strike Up The Band), which is one of those songs that drifts into political satire and is a perfectly lovely one to do during this Republican administration. I’m also doing ‘Tchaikowsky’ — they’re catching me before my memory goes completely — and ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’ with Rebecca Luker.”

It’s hardly surprising that the show’s artistic director, Rob Fisher, cast Garrison, who has spent much of the past 10 years singing Ira’s lyrics in concerts and on recordings — including the City Center Encores! production of Strike Up The Band. But there’s more to the story. “I think Rob and I were actually separated at birth,” says Garrison. “We were born six days apart. We actually met at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. when I was just out of college and he was doing his graduate work at American University. He became the onstage piano player for Christopher Durang‘s A History of the American Film, which we started there and which eventually became all of our Broadway debuts. And we’ve worked off and on continuously ever since. I’ve also taken Rob white water rafting — I was a guide in my misspent youth — and he’s a natural. He always manages to find the spot where the current just glides him along.”

After L&L, Garrison will be performing in a 10-minute musical by his old friend Norman Weiss at the Samuel French Festival. During his New York stay, he’s also doing the backer’s audition for Dr. Sex, the hit Chicago musical that just won this year’s Joseph Jefferson Award and may be produced in NYC later this season under the direction of John Rando.

At month’s end, Garrison is off to Seattle’s Intiman Theater to star in the world premiere of Craig Lucas‘s The Singing Forest from July 23-August 21. The play re-teams Lucas — who happens to be Garrison’s former college classmate — with his Light in the Piazza director, Bartlett Sher. “Ironically, given the title, it’s the only thing I’m doing this summer that doesn’t involve singing,” says Garrison. “Each of us in the cast plays different generations of the same family, one in contemporary New York and one in pre-World War II Vienna. I’m both the son and father to this matriarchal character. It’s a wildly ambitious play and I’m thrilled to be doing it.”

LUCKY SEVEN
Speaking of Light in the Piazza, Audra McDonald is giving a sterling performance of that show’s title song as part of her magnificent Seven Deadly Sins concert, which concludes its four-night engagement tonight at Zankel Hall. The now quadruple Tony Award winner is also offering definitive renditions of such contemporary fare as “Stars and The Moon,” “Unexpressed,” “I Won’t Mind” and “Come Down From The Tree.” The “Sins” themselves, created by 10 brilliant songwriters, are mostly irresistible — especially Jeff Blumekrantz‘s hilarious “My Book” and John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey‘s clever fable “The Greedy Tadpole.”

Among the enthusiastic crowd of admirers on Tuesday night were Karen Akers, Mary Testa, Mary Rodgers Guettel, Michael Winther, Lincoln Center’s Jon Nakagawa, Prince Music Theater artistic director Marjorie Samoff, and PR guy Michael Borowski.

SONGS OF NORWAY
For most of the world, the name “Fosse” conjures up images of black-hatted slinky dancers. But it’s a very different story in Norway, where Jon Fosse (pronounced Yoon Foss-a) is the country’s leading novelist and playwright. Americans are now getting their first taste of his work with a production of Night Sings Its Songs, directed and translated by Sarah Cameron Sunde, at 45 Bleecker. This bleak drama focuses on the unraveling of an young couple’s marriage but it is not autobiographical. “I never write anything based on me or anyone in particular,” Fosse told me during a brief visit to New York. “I’ve tried, but it never works. So I just make it up.”

Theater was not Fosse’s first calling. “I had my first novel published when I was 23,” he says, “and then someone in Norway thought I could write for theater. I had rarely even gone to theater, so doing that first play was a very big experience. But I thought it was good and, from there, one play just pushed onto the next. I have no interest in directing my own work. Many playwrights want their plays done just like this or that but I think a play needs different voices to come to life. It’s like a song that can be played by many different instruments.”

GETTING MARRIED TODAY
Since June is the traditional month of weddings, it’s a most appropriate time to catch some theater about those blessed nuptial days. The HB Playwrights Foundation is presenting The Wedding Plays, a group of 17 short pieces (grouped in two series) at its Bank Street Studios through June 27; the 10-minute works feature such celebrated actors, directors and writers as Lynn Cohen, Mike Doyle, Marilyn Sokol, Amy Wright, Cusi Cram, and Quincy Long…A Match Made in Heaven — The Interactive Jewish Wedding Experience plays every Monday this month at Levana, the Kosher restaurant on West 69th Street…Meanwhile, the on-again-off-again-on-again Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding is back at its old haunt, St Luke’s Church on West 46th Street.