In a Red State

Sure, being on the red carpet for the Tony Awards is fun — but it’s grueling, too, when your newspaper expects you to track down celebrities for quotations. This year was going to be harder than usual, for our gossip columnist wanted me to find out from the female nominees who designed their dresses, if they commissioned them, and what they thought of them. I moaned in horror. “I have to ask about dresses? As Vittorio Vidal used to say in Sweet Charity, “The things I do for money!” I told the gossip columnist that when these women told me the names of their dress designers, I wouldn’t understand what they were saying. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” she pooh-poohed blithely. “I’ll be able to figure out who they are.”

She would later come to see that making heads or tails of what I think these women said to me wasn’t as easy as she assumed it would be. When Dana Ivey told me that her midnight blue dress was made by what sounded like “James Fitell,” I asked, “Did you pick the color or did he?” Ivey gently corrected me with a “she.” (Is it Jane Fitell?) Alison Janney said “Monique Lil-yay.” When I asked the color, she tried to be helpful: “It’s kind of a dusty lavender rose mauve-y amethyst.” (I phoned in this information to our gossip columnist but I found out later that she didn’t use it.) Sally Field told me “Armani!” but nothing more as she kept walking. Diane Sawyer was no help at all: “I’ll let you know tomorrow,” she said — but here it is, days later, and she still hasn’t called.

Was “Alberta Coretti” what Joan Allen proclaimed as she passed by? Was “Christian Le Croix” what Anne Hathaway said? I was amused when Hathaway remarked, “I went on www.style.com to get it.” I heard Megan Mullally yell out “red snapper,” and considering that she was wearing a black dress, I assumed that someone had just asked her what her favorite meal is. Maybe it was someone from The Food Channel, which must have its own set of concerns.

When I asked Mireille Enos for the name of her dress designer, I heard a name that sounded like “Nayeem Carm” to me. “Did you pick the color or did she?” Enos gently corrected me with a “he.” I had an easier time when Heather Goldenhersh, Laura Linney, and Bernadette Peters respectively told me that theirs were designed by Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, and Donna Karan. I spent the rest of the night wishing that more women had used these three. At least when Cherry Jones said that hers was by “Nayeem Carm,” I used the right pronoun in my follow-up question.

Now Chita was standing in front of me. “How’s your show coming along?” I asked, and she replied, “What show?” (I guess she’s taking the cancellation of that Los Angeles booking pretty hard.) “Your show!” I reiterated. “Are you going to tell us how you felt when Bajour closed?” She smiled and said, “We’ll see” — and she moved on before I could suggest that, at that moment in the show, the sound system could play “She’s No Longer a Gypsy.” It’s probably all for the best.

Steve Buntrock entertained me while his wife Erin Dilly was otherwise engaged. “I close shows, I don’t open them,” he said, referring to his stints in Martin Guerre and Oklahoma! Dilly finally reached me and said that her dress was made by what sounded like “Joanna Mastroianni,” a name I heard again when Sherie Rene Scott and Kurt Deutsch sauntered by — only she had trouble pronouncing it and he had to help rescue her with Joanna’s last name.

Sara Ramirez passed and, instead of my asking about her dress right away, I said soothingly, “How are you feelin’? Are you all better?” (She had been out of Spamalot for a week or so.) She shook her head slowly and replied, “I’m not all better yet. I’ve got several…” At that precise moment, some guy came up and shunted her away from me before I could hear about her — what? Leprosy? Mange? Cooties?

Of course, on The Red Carpet, you can’t be rude and just concentrate on the women while ignoring the men. I spent the whole time hoping they would say something interesting. Wayne Cilento told me that he “gave up hope I’d win somewhere along the way.” I mentioned to him that I remember when he was dancin’ in Dancin’ in Boston and a piece of scenery dropped and almost took off his head. “You’re lucky you’re alive,” I assured him.

Michael Stuhlbarg told me that he prepared for his Pillowman role by watching documentaries on the developmentally disabled, and — to get that childish quality — watched his nephew, who’s currently going through the terrible twos. Pillowman director John Crowley said matter-of-factly, “We’re gonna lose.” Spamalot co-composer John DePrez opted for the cliché that “we’ve won already, and if anything else comes, that’ll be a wonderful bonus.” Michael McGrath said with that winning smile, “I’d like to think that Chris Sieber and I will tie. You’re an expert,” he suddenly added, pointing to me: “Has there ever been a tie at the Tonys?” I nodded and told him, “Yes, most recently in 1993, when Kander and Ebb tied with Pete Townshend for Best Score. And,” I commented, “whoever thought we’d see those three guys on the same stage winning the same award?”

I let Tom Wopat know that I just got his Harold Arlen album, carefully omitting the salient fact that it was a press copy I’d glommed the day before. I should have guessed, though, that Wopat would enthusiastically ask, “How’d you like it?” Alas, I hadn’t yet listened to it, so God bless Gordon Clapp for rescuing me with a warm, “Peter!” (See? It does pay to emcee the Theatre World Awards.) Oh, and one person — I’m purposely not saying of what sex — told me that the pan I wrote about his or her show “made more sense than anyone else’s.” Pretty gracious of him, or her. (By the way, in case you’re wondering if the talk on The Red Carpet is all theater, the answer is no; I was told that Jujamcyn ganser macher Rocco Landesman is trying to buy the Cincinnati Reds!)

When I asked Mario Cantone what he expected to happen that night, he said, “I’m gonna win the whole fuckin’ thing” Then he immediately added, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.” To which I amiably replied, “Well, I did once write that ‘Mario Cantone knows every four-letter word but tact.’ ” Cantone’s eyes bulged as he shrieked, “You’re the one who wrote that?! But you came around later when you liked me in The Crumple Zone! You even gave me a Straw Hat Award for best performance that summer!” I was astonished to learn that he reads reviews, and I told him so. “Oh, honey,” he said, “I read every word ever written about me — pro or con.” Then he turned to his partner, Jerry Dixon, and said about me, “Look at him with his great Sicilian skin! Just like my father’s!” And he pinched my cheeks the way my Aunt Sally used to do.

I recovered just in time to see James Earl Jones approach with a short, petite Caucasian woman on his arm. “That’s right,” I suddenly remembered, “he married Julienne Marie.” Her name may not mean much to youngsters, but Marie was in the famous 1963 revival of The Boys from Syracuse and the original Broadway productions of Whoop-Up, Foxy, and Do I Hear a Waltz? I smiled because I knew how good I was going to make this long-retired actress feel when she passed by and I let her know that, yes, some of us do remember and miss her. So she approached and I said in a tender voice, “Julienne Marie. Whoop-Up. Foxy. Do I Hear a Waltz? We remember.” To which the lady coolly replied, “That was his first wife.” As Cecilia Hart walked by, I turned the same shade as the red carpet.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]