The Breakfast Club

After seeing Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto, the centerpiece selection of the New York Film Festival, we asked two-time Tony Award nominee Liam Neeson — one of the movie’s many theater-trained stars — if it was helpful to have so many stage folks in the film. “Of course,” he said in his familiar brogue. “Doesn’t everyone in the movies come from the theater?” When we gently replied that there are plenty of Hollywood actors who have never seen a live audience, he smiled knowingly.

You’ll smile knowingly when you hear that the movie also stars Cillian Murphy, who has extensive theater credits in Dublin and London, and Stephen Rea, a Tony nominee for Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me. In fact, the combination of Rea’s presence and this movie’s ostensible subject — a man named Patrick who would rather be called Patricia, if not “Kitten” — will remind audiences of Jordan’s breakout international hit The Crying Game, in which Rea also starred.

But the similarity between the two movies is largely on the surface. Scrape away the makeup and you will see a director at the top of his creative game, spinning a picaresque tale with a visual flair that has a light, almost fantastical tone while, in counterpoint, our hero/heroine goes through one traumatic episode after another. It’s that remarkable tension between Kitten’s outlook on life and life itself that gives the movie its vitality. Another plus is that the performances of Murphy, Neeson, Rea, and the rest of the cast are beautifully nuanced and grounded. After you see the provocative, stylish Breakfast on Pluto, you’ll probably be talking about it throughout lunch and dinner.

********************

The Laugh’s Not on Us

A comedy should make one laugh. By that definition, In the Wings, the new play by Tony-winning producer Stewart F. Lane, is not a comedy. Except for (1) a couple of good lyrics in a single song written by Michael Garin, and (2) Marilyn Sokol’s turn playing your classic Jewish mother, the show is as lame as a three-legged horse. Nobody enjoys plays about theater people more than we do — that is, if they’re good. Unfortunately, this supposed back stage story rings false on almost every note. It should have stayed in the wings and not dared to come out on stage.

Similarly, the so-called musical comedy Dr. Sex is neither funny nor sexy; it’s just innocuous. Based on the real-life story of Dr. Kinsey and his wife Clara, the show disappoints by playing it safe from start to finish. The jokes are tame, the musical numbers are occasionally cute but forgettable, and the performances are conventional — except for that of the scintillating Jennifer Simard as Clara. She deserves a better vehicle than this, and audiences deserve a better show.

********************

MAC Muddles On

The Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) is in trouble. During MAC president Barry Levitt’s administration we served on a variety of committees, only to see MAC suddenly veer down a dangerous path. Several months ago, the organization’s Board of Directors unanimously decided, without any consultation or vote by its 800 members, to make a drastic change in the MAC Awards voting procedure. The result disenfranchises the membership from choosing its own slate of nominees, as was traditionally done before. A nominating committee will now do the job instead, starting this year.

The unease over this dramatic change has not abated; in fact, it’s gotten much worse. As the annual MAC membership meeting was about to begin last week, Levitt orchestrated the removal of a vocal and passionate cabaret activist from the room. Using a rule never adhered to in the past, he asked singer Ludmilla Ilieva — who is not a member of the organization — to leave the meeting. But this stifling of debate does not obscure the fact that MAC is suffering a public relations meltdown.

Criticism of MAC by the press and interested members of the cabaret community has often been met with stonewalling or bitter attacks, or both. Our colleague David Finkle was harshly attacked in a letter to the editor of Back Stage, and we received a snarky personal note in response to a private e-mail that we sent to the MAC board, pleading with them to allow membership input before instituting such a dramatic change.

Of late, MAC has had a tendency to blame the press for all its ills. Of course, the organization is only strong when it represents a united cabaret community — and, right now, that community is starkly divided. We’ve heard from several cabaret performers who have privately expressed their concerns about MAC’s future; most will not speak publicly for fear of either harming their chances of winning a MAC Award or getting slammed on a chat board. Nonetheless, the organization has been condemned in the cabaret community’s most widely read newsletter, Stu Hamstra’s Cabaret Hotline Online. Hamstra wrote that MAC was “probably beyond fixing” and ended his piece last Thursday with the words, “R.I.P. MAC.”

MAC’s problems go well beyond the decision to remove the membership’s right to choose its own award nominees. Controversy also swirls around the proper use of the organization’s name and logo for the ALL MAC JAZZ shows. Though Levitt recently hailed ALL MAC JAZZ as one of the organization’s notable accomplishments, MAC is now backtracking and saying that these shows were privately produced. But if that’s the case, it was surely improper to use the MAC name and logo to promote the shows. The mishandling of this issue and others speaks volumes about the need for MAC to repair its image.

We urge MAC to make changes that are both practical and wise. First, give the membership back its involvement in choosing the award nominees. (It’s not too late; no nominating committee has yet been named.) Give the membership the opportunity to discuss in an open meeting the merits of the proposed changes in the nominating procedure, then let the members ratify those changes (or not) by vote. All of this would demonstrate that MAC respects the judgment of its membership. In the end, cabaret will survive with or without MAC, but MAC cannot survive as an effective organization without the full support of the cabaret community.

********************

[To contact the Siegels directly, e-mail them at siegels@theatermania.com.]