Loose Lips

SHE IS SILVIA
Plenty of New Yorkers have both day jobs and night jobs, but few are as happily employed as Renée Elise Goldsberry. Right now, the beautiful actress-singer is spending her nine-to-fives on the set of the ABC soap opera One Life to Live, playing the unlucky-in-love attorney Evangeline Williamson, and her nights at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater as Silvia — that overwhelming object of desire — in Two Gentlemen of Verona, the musical version of Shakespeare’s comedy that won the 1971 Tony Award for Best Musical.

“I am so glad I didn’t have to choose between those roles,” says Goldsberry. “I was in a bit of a similar situation, working both days and nights, when I started on the soap because I was playing Nala in The Lion King, so I knew what I was getting into. Plus I come from a long line of women on our show, like Robin Strasser, Kathy Brier, and Heather Tom, who’ve done the same thing. We’re all New Yorkers, so we’re real hustlers and happy to take any job we can get.”

She admits that she auditioned for Two Gentlemen mostly to introduce herself to the folks at the Public Theater. But once Goldsberry prepared for the role by doing a scene from the original Shakespeare play and then heard “this wonderful rock n’ roll music,” she decided that she really wanted the part. “Silvia is really kind of fabulous,” she comments. “She makes me laugh. And I love the fact that she’s so different from Evangeline; Silvia is the toast of the town and has all these suitors. It’s good to be the princess! Meanwhile, Evangeline is in love with a man who can’t even say ‘I love you’ to her.” (Goldsberry doesn’t have that problem in real life; she is a very happily married lady.)

Goldsberry has missed her soap family during her days away (for tech rehearsals of Two Gentlemen), but she has high praise for her new colleagues. “Kathleen Marshall, our director, is so amazingly talented,” she says. “It would’ve been torture if I didn’t get to work with Norm Lewis. Rosario Dawson is awesome. And Oscar Isaac — this guy who is just out of Juilliard — is hilarious. It’s rare to meet someone so young who is already a star, but he is!”

STARS IN THE SEATS
Sarah Jones came to the Culture Project’s reading of The Scarlet Letter, starring Marisa Tomei, on August 8. Rent‘s Anthony Rapp took in Joy on August 11 — the same night that Kevin Kline, wife Phoebe Cates, and their children gave Lennon a chance, and Orfeh paid a visit to Once Around The Sun. But the big attraction was Terrence McNally’s Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams at Primary Stages. Tony Award winner Tyne Daly came to see her good friend (and fellow Tony winner) Marian Seldes on August 12. Yet another Tony winner, Frances Sternhagen, was spotted in the house on August 13. And the show’s opening night — August 18 — brought out actress Judith Light (who’ll return to the New York stage next month in MCC’s Colder Than Here), director/choreographer Susan Stroman, and TV hearthrob Joshua Jackson (who has grown up a lot since Dawson’s Creek; see photo).

IF I ONLY HAD (MOTHER) COURAGE
Although he’s been dead since 1956, Bertholt Brecht is about to have a very good year. Later this month, the Jean Cocteau Repertory will kick off its 35th anniversary season with a production of Mother Courage. Ralph Lee’s Mettawee River Theatre Company will celebrate its 30th birthday with a streamlined version of The Caucasian Chalk Circle that is set to play August 30 at Lincoln Center Out of Doors before moving to the Garden of St. John the Divine for a six-night run. Rounding out this Brechtian trifecta, Creative Mechanics will stage Brecht’s version of Edward II at the Bank Street Theater, September 8-25.

San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater will also present The Caucasian Chalk Circle, September 29-October 15, and will conclude its season with the Brecht-Weill musical Happy End. Back on the East Coast, the Public Theater has already announced that a production of Mother Courage directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Meryl Streep (who last appeared on Broadway in a 1977 production of Happy End) will kick off the summer 2006 season of Shakespeare in the Park.

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

Linda Lavin is known to many theatergoers as a great dramatic and comedic actress, having starred on Broadway in such plays as The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, The Diary of Anne Frank and Broadway Bound — and, of course, in the hit TV sitcom Alice. But the Tony Award-winning star has also shone in such musicals as It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman and Gypsy. Now she’s touring the country with her cabaret show The Song Remembers When, which will land at Birdland on August 29. (Lavin will then re-open San Francisco’s posh Plush Room on September 6 and play there for two weeks.)

“I’ve worked on this show with my dear friend Jim Caruso for two years,” she says. “We went through yards and yards of music, and notes on my whole life that were written on cocktail napkins. It was really like writing a play.” But the show isn’t a strict chronological history: “It’s a really personal look at the songs I grew up with, the songs I love, the songs I’ve sung, and the songs I’ve always wanted to sing,” Lavin says. “I think you have to be willing to sing your history — and the more you keep in touch with who you were, the more you know you are. It’s like revisiting my early days in the business, though I am in a different position than when I started out singing in clubs while trying to get a break in the theater. I don’t have that edge of desperation any more.”

Though Lavin prefers not to reveal too much of her song list, rest assured that it includes some unusual choices, from jazz to pop. (Yes, Linda Lavin sings Steely Dan!) Fans of a certain age will be pleased to hear that she’ll perform “The Boy From,” the Stephen Sondheim/Mary Rodgers tongue-twister from The Mad Show that earned Lavin a following about 40 years ago. And yes, TV fans, she will sing “New Girl in Town” — the theme song from Alice. “I’ve found that a lot of people don’t realize I sang it,” she says. “What’s even funnier is I also used to play piano on the show — to do that was Alice’s heart’s desire — and people still come up and ask if it was really me. You could see my hands on the piano keys, but people don’t always believe what they see.”