NEW YORK -- The PG's annual spring ShowPlane to Broadway brought me here just in time for Wednesday morning's press event, a giant media reception for the Tony nominees who had been announced the day before. Call it a fan's fantasy, organized chaos or a scrum, it was a jam-packed 3½ hours.
I arrived early enough to get checked in, pass down the breakfast buffet and walk all around the site - the entire eighth floor of the Millennium Broadway Hotel, just off Times Square.
[Captions of all pix are gathered at the end of the story.]
Stepping off the elevator you met a big Tony Awards backdrop for the obligatory photographs with Tony dignitaries. Then turning left you passed nine TV cubicles, each with chairs, cameras, lights, monitors, interviewer and crew; continuing in a clockwise zig-zag, you walked down a packed photographers' gauntlet with another Tony backdrop; then 13 more TV cubicles; another gauntlet of radio, internet and Big Paper stations (Variety, N.Y. Times, Village Voice, USA Today); and then, finally, the smaller papers, among them the PG, tucked in between the Seattle Times (who apparently never showed up) and El Dario/La Prensa -- pretty fancy international company.
The g
reat thing about being at the end of the line was that it put you right back at the beginning, watching the nominees as they stepped off the elevators directly into interview maelstrom. So I can't say I spent much time at my table, instead ranging freely, talking with the celebs as they stacked up waiting for one TV interview or another.
The printed PG sign at my table lacked the final h in Pittsburgh, but just after I'd written it in, Theater Wing chief Howard Sherman showed up to do the same -- a measure either of his attention to detail or his having nothing left to do but let the morning's machine run itself. There was plenty of help with that, not just from all the nominees' flacks and agents but also a large P.R. staff. It was needed, because very suddenly the whole site was pulsing with nominees and their posses.
One of the first to arrive was fresh young Josefina Scaglione, the pretty Argentinian playing Maria in "West Side Story." I'd heard she'd once been at Point Park, and she confirmed it -- at age 14 she spent two summer months there in a musical theater program.
Equally fresh is tall, pencil-thin Sutton Foster, another part-time former Pittsburgher -- she spent one year at CMU. She says she's signed to play Princess Fiona in "Shrek" until November. We snapped a picture of her with the three Billy Elliotts, David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik and Keril Kulish. In the Tony committee's best move, they're nominated together as a trio, and they moved through the scrum as a diminutive three-headed unit, wider than tall, unfailingly cheery and responsive.
It happened that I talked most with the Billys' father, Gregory Jbara, mainly because I've enjoyed him in plenty of shows and he has such positive memories of Pittsburgh, having come through with several tours ("Born Yesterday," "Chess") and to work on a few movies. He especially recalled Grandview Avenue ("the name of the street I grew up on") and working once in "Forever Plaid" with Canonsburg's Paul Binotto. I'd seen Jbara's sweet, round face on Broadway in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," "Victor/Victoria" and "Damn Yankees," the latter two of which had him working with Rob and Kathleen Marshall, to whom he sends heart-felt best wishes.
He says the "Billy Elliott" company is so big -- 53 actors -- that there's hardly room for them in the dressing rooms. There are actually four Billys, counting the understudy, who performs twice a week just like the other three, although his billing precluded his sharing the nomination. I don't know which Billy the PG group will see, but they're all distinctive, giving Jbara and the rest the nightly challenge of variety, which helps keep the show fresh. "The entire evening hangs on each Billy," Jbara said.
Since I'd seen "Billy Elliott" in London, he pointed out how much his role was reconceived for Broadway, "allowing me to be goofier and more vulnerable." His role as the working class father confused by his son's dance talent touches many a nerve: "Dads stop me on the street" to talk about it. As we parted he said, "have a cocktail for me at the Gandy Dancer." And when I ran into him later in the melee, he'd obviously been thinking about Pittsburgh, because he'd remembered the fries at the O -- something that stays with you a long time, take that how you will.
I was particularly eager to talk with Roger Robinson, whose marvelous performance as Bynum in August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" should make him a lock for Best Supporting Actor. (Bynum is really the lead, but "Joe Turner" is rightly considered an ensemble play, so everyone's classified as supporting.) 
Roger told his accompanying publicist, Barbara Carroll, he was eager to get his picture taken with Dolly Parton (nominated for her score for "9 to 5"). I couldn't believe how small Dolly is, albeit interestingly structured and glowing all over like neon. I was eager to get a picture of the picture-taking. "Beauty and the Beast," I told him we'd caption it; "but which is which?" He liked that. But Dolly had her own mini-scrum moving her from one interview to another, and in the turmoil, I'm not sure if Roger got his wish.
I had a good talk with the "Joe Turner" sound designer Leon Rothenberg (co-nominated with Scott Lehrer). Sound contributes a lot to the magical realism of the show. Rothenberg pointed out it works on three levels: the natural environment (factory sounds, wind, rain), musical (a Taj Mahal score that reaches back from the blues to West Africa and combines guitar and African kora) and "the emotional or subliminal environment." Most of the latter is pretty subtle: "you get it when it goes away," he said.
This is only Rothenberg's second Broadway show, the first being "Impressionism," the modest Jeremy Irons-Joan Allen vehicle just now concluding a quiet run. So he could actually say of his Tony nomination that he's really "just happy to be here." Still, he wouldn't mind winning. Do you put it on your business card, I asked? "If you win," he said. "Or maybe print it on your forehead!"
Spotting Geoffrey Rush ("Exit the King") getting ready to leave, I made the obvious crack, asking if it was time for the king to exit. He smiled and said just about every photographer had had the same idea of posing him by an exit sign. He's also been given an ornate, antique electric exit sign for his dressing room, but the stage crew is still figuring out how to get it wired up.
Joining me for much of the time was Gwen Orel, a Pitt Ph.D. and former PG stringer who will be covering the Tony Awards for us -- blogging, twittering, who knows what all.
In the surging maelstrom I had brief encounters (or not) with a number of other stars -- Jane Fonda, Angela Lansbury, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden, Karen Olivo (a dynamite Anita in "West Side Story"), Liza Minelli (she's pretty tiny, too), etc., etc. 
Gradually camera crews started to pack up and the long morning wound down. Having been to a starry "Waiting for Godot" the previous night (Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin, John Goodman, John Glover), I was heading to the matinee of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Ruined" before meeting the PG group for "West Side Story" at night.
I'll start telling you about the shows tomorrow. By the end of the weekend, I should have a better line on how the Tony races are shaping up.
CAPTIONS, from the top:
(1) The "West Side Story" crew, with the Theatre Wing's Howard Sherman at left and Josefina Scaglione (Maria) and Karen Olivo (Antia) in the middle.
(2) Jeff Daniels ("God of Carnage"), right, intervewed amid the throng.
(3) Three Billy Elliotts and one Sutton Foster.
(4) Gregory Jbara, Billy Elliott's dad.
(5) Diminutive Dolly.
(6) Jane Fonda signs a Tony nominees display.
(7) Marcia Gay Harden ("God of Carnage").
(8) Back out on Times Square, show biz goes on.
Posted
May 08 2009, 08:45 AM
by
Christopher Rawson