Loose Lips

TOP OF THE WORLD
Jessica Hecht has had a wonderfully busy year, having gone from playing Louise in After the Fall to Portia in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (opposite Denzel Washington!) to the central role of Marlene in the Williamstown Theater Festival’s current production of Caryl Churchill‘s Top Girls.

This is not her first experience with the work of the acclaimed British playwright. “I did Mad Forest out in Los Angeles when I was living there,” says Hecht, who is well known to TV viewers for her role as Susan on Friends. “That text was so beyond anything else I was doing out there. To read [Churchill’s] work is heartbreaking and amazing, but it’s a challenge to do her plays because she really writes for particular actors’ voices. In Top Girls, none of the character’s rhythms are what we have in our vocal or emotional memory, but the struggles of these characters are so similar to us.”

Though Hecht says that she hasn’t always been comfortable with the choices made by some of her directors, she has nothing but praise for Top Girls helmer Jo Bonney, with whom she worked in the Public Theater production of Stop Kiss. “This is really a revisitation of the play, which is very tricky, especially since we’ve only had a limited time for rehearsal,” she says. “But what’s so great about working with Jo is that I’m never worried that there will be any judgment on what I’m doing. We all do a lot of brainstorming every day, and there are moments when we get stuck, but I’ve felt much freer on this project than I have in a long time.”

The actress also gives credits to the all-female cast, which includes Becky Ann Baker, Reiko Aylesworth, and Ellen McLaughlin. “I went from Julius Caesar, a show that was basically all men, to all women,” she remarks. “Here, we’ve had these really emotional moments in rehearsal, people being upset and crying, and you don’t go on with it until you work it out. I have to say, this play is making us crazy — and we’re not talking about a cast of wusses.”

WHITE NOISE
If you want to know what to get Lillias White for her birthday on July 21 — and we absolutely will not reveal her age — the best gift would be your attendance that night at her incredible 21st Annual Birthday Party show at Joe’s Pub.

The Tony Award-winning actress is in fantastic voice, whether scatting her way through a jazz-tinged “The Other Side of the Tracks,” spreading joy in the late Luther Vandross‘s “Everybody Rejoice” (from The Wiz), or finding every ounce of pathos in Janis Ian‘s teen-angst classic “At Seventeen.” If you can’t be there to share White’s celebration on her actual natal day, don’t worry; she is also set to perform at Joe’s on July 22 and 23.

STARRY STARRY NIGHTS
The ageless Katherine Helmond returns to the stage in Morning’s at Seven, July 20-August 28, at Chicago’s Drury LaneTheater. Funny man Jim Caruso takes his Cast Party to East Hampton’s Guild Hall on July 23 with special guests Karen Mason and Johnny Rodgers. The incredible Tovah Feldshuh recreates her award-winning performance as Golda Meir in Golda’s Balcony, July 23-August 13 at A.C.T. in San Francisco.

Broadway babies Matt Cavenaugh, Jennifer Hope Willis, Emily Loesser, and Meg Bussert head the cast of the Pittsburgh CLO production of Carousel, July 26-30. Tony Award winner Amanda Plummer stars in the Stratford Festival production of The Lark, July 31-October 29. Former Falcon Crest castmates Susan Sullivan and Robert Foxworth will reunite in Honour at L.A.’s Matrix Theater, August 27-November 6.

SHER THING
It’s been worth the wait for Sir Antony Sher to return to Broadway. The great British actor, seen here previously in 1997 in Stanley, has earned triumphant reviews for Primo, his adaptation of Primo Levi’s Holocaust memoir Survival in Auschwitz. Sher is keenly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust though, fortunately, his family was untouched by its devastation. “They were originally from Lithuania, and when the pogroms started at the beginning of the 20th century, they fled to South Africa,” he says. “Of course, everyone wanted to go to America, but there were quotas.”

The show has previously played to enthusiastic audiences in London and in Sher’s native city of Cape Town, South Africa. Wherever he performs it, the 56-year-old Olivier Award winner — who has chronicled the experience of creating the show in the book Primo Time — always relishes feedback from his audiences, especially those who lived through World War II. “I have found talking to survivors of the Holocaust very humbling,” he remarks. “For people who have lived through that experience to be touched by this play is tremendously moving. Both in London and South Africa, people constantly talked to me about how New Yorkers — especially the Jewish audience — would find this show particularly interesting, so I felt very passionate about playing it here.”

Though his stage career has spanned three decades, Primo is Sher’s first solo show, and he’s found it to be a very different experience from Macbeth or Richard III. “It’s unusual to be alone backstage and then to be onstage by myself, speaking for 90 minutes,” he says. The show has received such fabulous reviews that Sher changed his mind and agreed to a one-week extension. (It will now play through August 14). Nonetheless, Sher insists that it will not be done again after this engagement, since he doesn’t plan to continue with it and the Levi estate won’t let any other actor perform the role. This show makes unusual demands on me,” Sher explains. “It’s been wonderful but, at this point, I don’t think I will ever bring it back.”

FEVER PITCH

Saturday Night Fever leading man James Carpinello seems to have faded into obscurity, but many of the women from that show are thriving on stage. Paige Price is starring as Reno Sweeney in the Westchester Broadway Theater production of Anything Goes (opposite the Billy Crocker of handsome Robert Bartley); the big-voiced Orfeh is set to play a sexy stripper in The Great American Trailer Park Musical; and Julia Danao, who was a Fever “vocalist”, is one of the nine leads in Lennon.

On the male side of the equation: Orfeh’s hubby Andy Karl, who took over the role of Joey during the Fever run, is set to headline the Off-Broadway musical Slut alongside Jenn Collela, Mary Faber, Harriett D. Foy, Jim Stanek, Kevin Pariseau, and Karl’s recent Altar Boyz co-star David Josefsberg. But perhaps no Feverite has gone farther than Casey Nicholaw, who’s come a very long way indeed from playing Frank Manero; the Tony Award-nominated choreographer of Monty Python’s Spamalot will soon have the yet-to-be-announced cast of The Drowsy Chaperone dancing up a storm. This hilarious send-up of old musicals is set to receive its first full production at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theater in November.