Loose Lips

DEAR JOHN

John Dossett has a long history, both onstage and off, of being in love with strong women, from Gypsy’s Mama Rose to his real-life wife Michele Pawk. That trend continues with the Roundabout Theater Company production of The Constant Wife, in which he plays Bernard Kersal, a nice chap who’s still in love after 15 years with the now-married Constance Middleton (played by Kate Burton). “As Constance says, Bernard is very dull but very sweet,” Dossett remarks. “But I’m trying hard not to play him as dull. He does get a little lost; his world clouds over because he’s trying to fulfill this long-unrequited love. But I understand the part about wanting to do anything for the woman you love.”

Dossett began rehearsals for the play less than two weeks after closing in Democracy, in which he played German politician Helmut Schmidt. Didn’t he want to take a little break from acting? “Actually,” he tells me, “this is the first time in my life that I took a part without even reading the play. The night that Democracy closed, I got a call that Mark Brokaw — whom I had worked with so happily on the Kennedy Center production of A Little Night Music — wanted me for this show, so I just said yes. And once I read the part of Bernard, I was very happy that I said yes.”

He wasn’t entirely surprised that Democracy didn’t have a longer run: “To be honest, when I saw the early write-ups that it was the surefire hit of the season, I thought that was the kiss of death. Our director Michael Blakemore, who is a very intelligent man, said to us during rehearsals that New Yorkers are the smartest audience in the world — for three months. And that was true. For the first three months, they got all the jokes. Then it just fell off, and we were kind of dumbfounded.” (Dossett hasn’t completely left Democracy behind; his former co-star and good pal Michael Cumpsty plays the inconstant husband in The Constant Wife.)

Dossett, Pawk, and their son Jack will be moving to New Jersey later this summer. The fresh air might just do his wife good, jokes Dossett: “Michele comes home at the end of the day and wants to slit her wrists because of the subject matter of her play, but I leave the stage on the top of the world. Our show is so clever and so witty. People are constantly telling us how nice it is to hear dialogue like this.”

HAI LIFE
As Oscar Hammerstein II wrote, “If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?” For the sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall on June 9, it was a dream come true to enjoy a live concert version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific. Brian Stokes Mitchell, in glorious voice, and the delightful (if underrehearsed) Reba McEntire took on the leads. They were more than ably supported by the golden-throated Jason Danieley as Cable, the remarkably glamorous Lilias White as Bloody Mary, and the very funny Alec Baldwin as Luther Billis.

There were even more stars in the house than on the stage for this enchanted evening, including Lauren Bacall, Barbara Cook, Brent Barrett, Dina Merrill (with husband Ted Hartley), Phyllis Newman, Julia Murney, Harvey Evans, and supportive spouses Marin Mazzie (a.k.a. Mrs. Jason Danieley) and Becky Ann Baker (whose hubby, Dylan Baker, appeared in the concert as Bill Harbison.)

GETTING HER GOAT
Proving that good things do come to those who wait, Pamela Reed is finally getting her first crack at an Edward Albee character — and it’s a doozy. She’s playing the role of Stevie, a woman who learns that her husband is in love with a barnyard animal, in the American Conservatory Theater production of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?. “I’ve always wanted to play Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and I figure this is my preparation for the next major production in 10 years,” Reed says. “This play is like wrestling a bear down to earth. It’s very funny and very tragic. You don’t see a level of writing like this anymore. The layers and references are so fun — references to other plays by Albee, to Greek tragedies, to Shakespeare. It’s like walking on glass; you think you see the bottom of the floor, but there’s so much underneath it. My brain has never been happier, even if my body’s bruised.”

Reed, who was one of the hottest young actresses in New York for much of the 1970s and ’80s, says that she’s not drawing directly from her 17-year-marriage to TV director Sandy Smolan in portraying the volatile and ultimately vengeful Stevie, “but I don’t think any woman faced with the horrific situation in the play would have trouble summoning the anger that Stevie has.” The Goat reunites Reed with director Carey Perloff, with whom she worked two decades ago in New York in a now-legendary production of Electra. It was Perloff who convinced Albee to let one of his works be performed at ACT for the first time in 30 years (after they did a production of Tiny Alice that he didn’t approve of). “I asked her what she did to convince him, and she said she begged,” Reed relates. “So now I’m inviting him to come out and see us.”

Sadly, there’s little chance that we’ll be seeing Reed in the Big Apple anytime soon. Happily ensconced in Los Angeles, she is a devoted mom to her son Reed, 14, and daughter Lily, 10. “Right after the first week of rehearsal,” she tells me, “I went back to L.A. for a three-day weekend, and while I was packing to come back to San Francisco, I started sobbing — which is weird, since I don’t cry often. All of a sudden, I started thinking about how much I love my kids. I think it was connected to the whole family dynamic in The Goat. Feelings have a funny way of traveling through your body and wrapping around your heart.”

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO YOUS
Long-running marriages aren’t exactly common in the show-biz world, so it’s not surprising that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially declared June 10 to be “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding Day” in New York in celebration of the hit show’s 18th anniversary. A reception was held outside the Edison Hotel with cast members, producer Jeff Gitlin, and Julianne Cho, the assistant commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, in attendance.

COMEDY TONIGHT
The irrepressible Dixie Longate will bring her hilarious solo show Dixie’s Tupperware Party back to Ars Nova on June 21. Marilyn Michaels will share her life experiences in Comedy, Courage and Clonopin at Makor on June 22. Craig Bierko, who has earned rave reviews for his performance in the film Cinderella Man, will be the special guest in Creation Nation at Ars Nova on June 23. Those funny British guys known as The Hollow Men are set to begin a four-week run at the Village Theater on June 24. And Jane Stroll and the hysterical Sidney Myer will do their stuff in Jamie deRoy & Friends on June 30 at The Encore.