Loose Lips

LENNON LOVERS
The road to Broadway for the cast of Lennon has been a long and winding one, with the show’s San Francisco tryout earlier this year having been less than ecstatically received. But Julia Murney and Chad Kimball, two of the musical’s nine stars, believe that their show is headed for Hitville.

“I read all the reviews and I agreed with some of what was said and not with other things,” says Murney, who is making her belated Broadway debut in the show. “The story, especially in the first act, has been drastically recalibrated. Don Scardino, our brilliant director, was at the airport when the Beatles landed here in 1964, and I think he forgot that not everyone knows John’s history as well he does. But I believe this show will succeed, especially through word-of-mouth. Our audiences actually got bigger towards the end of the San Francisco run, and that was after the reviews came out.”

Murney’s and Kimball’s roads to being part of the show were drastically different. “Growing up, I really didn’t have much of an idea of who John Lennon was,” says Kimball, last seen on Broadway in Good Vibrations (which he left shortly after it opened to join this show). “But, before our auditions, we got a CD sampler of his music. I just fell in love with his songs and bought all of his recordings that I could. He was so creative, and his music is so soulful. In a way, I think John wrote his own musical.”

As for Murney, “I was actually named after the song ‘Julia,’ which is on The Beatles’ White Album. John wrote it when his mother, who was named Julia, died. After John was killed, my family went to the vigil at the Dakota [where John and his wife Yoko Ono lived], which wasn’t far from where I grew up on the Upper West Side. Actually, Don Scardino is an old family friend; he and my dad acted together a long time ago. Don made me sing ‘Julia’ at my callback. Yoko was there, and I started crying. I was a little intimidated with her sitting there in her black sunglasses.”

It turned out that neither Murney nor Kimball needed to be scared of Ono. “She has been so gracious; she always hugs us after rehearsals and says something specific about our performance,” relates Murney, who plays the role of Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia, in the musical. “Yoko came to opening night in San Francisco, and she brought her daughter Kyoko from her first marriage. Kyoko was so sweet, like someone you’d meet at the A&P. Sean [Lennon’s son with Ono] hasn’t seen the show yet; I hear that he thinks it’s silly.”

Ono’s positive feelings about the show and the performances are much appreciated by the cast. Says Kimball, “It’s so neat when she says, ‘John would’ve loved that.’ John made a claim once that his life didn’t start until he met Yoko, and I believe it. This show is basically a love story.”

LETTS DO IT
Tracy Letts had plenty of good reasons for taking on the role of a sardonic plastic surgeon in the Steppenwolf Theatre production of his friend Bruce Norris‘s new play The Pain and the Itch, about a dysfunctional family under attack by mysterious forces. “I don’t think people are writing enough satires these days,” says Letts. “I love the idea of satirizing these politically correct American families who over-protect their children. And having acted in so many period shows lately, such as The Dresser, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Orson’s Shadow, the idea of doing something contemporary was very exciting to me.”

Letts is equally well known as a playwright, and he originally thought he’d be on the other side of the footlights this month: “Bruce and I were vying for the same spot in this Steppenwolf season, but when I realized that I wasn’t going to get the actors I wanted for my play, I decided to wait until 2006-2007.” Though he won’t reveal many details about the new work, or even its title, Letts lets on that it’s a big family drama — “and I mean big in every sense of the word.”

Next March, Oscar winner William Friedkin — who’s also scheduled to direct the screen adaptation of Letts’ smash hit Bug, starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon — will helm a production of Letts’ The Man From Nebraska at South Coast Repertory. Though that play was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize, there’s been no interest in it from theaters on the East Coast. “I’m very surprised, but I shouldn’t be,” says the author. “After all, it took a lot of years for Killer Joe and Bug to get there.”

EVERYBODY DANCE!
How much is that dancer in the window? New Yorkers will be asking that question when Chashama presents Oasis 2005, featuring 20-minute works by 20 different choreographers and 20 different composers, in its storefront window space at 217 East 42nd Street from July 18-29. Meanwhile, the fabulous Noche Flamenca has extended until July 31. Dance is an integral part of Invisible Child at the Midtown International Theater Festival. And choreographer Eva Dean‘s theatrical spectacle Bounce comes to Dance Theater Workshop for a July 20-31 run.

For pure, unadulterated dance, Merce Cunningham‘s one-of-a-kind Ocean (created with John Cage) will open the Lincoln Center Festival on July 12. The super-athletic troupe Pilobolus has landed at the Joyce through August 6, and Russia’s peerless Bolshoi Ballet is making a rare Gotham appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House July 18-30 with productions of Don Quixote, Spartacus, The Bright Stream, and The Pharoah’s Daughter.

WINNERS’ CIRCLE

This month, one doesn’t have to go to Broadway to see a Tony Award winner. They’re everywhere! Melba Moore is presenting her one-woman show Sweet Songs of the Soul at the Harry De Jur Playhouse. James Whitmore, who won his Tony way back in 1948, is starring alongside his son James Whitmore, Jr. in the Peterborough Players’ Inherit The Wind. Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell will sing selections from Porgy and Bess at the Hollywood Bowl on July 15 & 16. And the extraordinary Liza Minnelli will receive the second annual Provincetown Theater Foundation Award on July 16.

Christine Ebersole and pal Billy Stritch will bring their critically acclaimed cabaret show back to Birdland on July 18 (click here for details). The one-and-only Lillias White will hold her 21st Annual Birthday Party at Joe’s Pub, July 18-23. Daisy Eagan will appear in a reading of Rebecca Gilman‘s new play Snake Tank at the Eugene O’Neill Conference, July 30-31. (And here’s big news for Eagan’s fans: She is also scheduled to appear in this year’s World AIDS Day concert musical presentation of The Secret Garden, the show for which she won a Tony Award at age 11, on December 5.)

Looking farther ahead this summer, Judy Kaye will do a two-night stand at Caramoor in Celebrating Harold Arlen at 100, August 3-4, before heading up to the Berkshire Theater Festival for a reprise of her Off-Broadway hit Souvenir. B.D. Wong will-star as the Leading Player in Pippin at the Bay Street Theater (though another Tony winner, Karen Ziemba, has just dropped out of the production). And Linda Lavin will bring her new cabaret show The Song Remembers When to Birdland on August 29 before bringing it to the Empire Plush Room in San Francisco, September 6-18 (click here for details). Lavin will be followed at the Plush Room by Rita Moreno, September 20-October 9.