I just spent four hours in LA. Was it worth it? Two words: Hell, yeah!
I got up at 4AM, was on the plane at 6, in LAX at 9 and at the studio at 10. Whew.
But this was a wonderful, poetic day.
First in was a great pal, Jason Alexander. We've done tons of stuff together and always have a great time working together. I love him! We kept circling on what to do. Jason loved a few but I had to tell him they were already done. (He really wanted to do ULYSSES and COY MISTRESS but Chris Sarandon and Guy Paul beat him to it!) Just Wednesday night we hit on THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER. And boy was that the right choice. He came in with all the voices down and then after nailing it two times said, I think I want to change the voices and came up with MORE! What a tour de force. Amazing!!!!
Next in were another set of old friends, Beth Howland and Charles Kimbrough. (I adore having my old theater pals make it so huge in TV!) But of course Beth and Charlie will always mean COMPANY to me! (And tons of other fans.) Beth knew she wanted to do Dorothy Parker right away and you've never heard a more wonderfully vulnerable performance of LOVE SONG. Charlie's poet of choice, who shall remain nameless, has an agent who is being way to difficult, so we moved on to Browning's MEETING AT NIGHT. You can "feel" him galloping on a horse, racing to the house of his beloved. Fantastic.
This section of old friends was capped off with our National Treasure, Greg Jbara. I'm so thrilled about his Tony this year. And his speech is etched in my conscience. (I haven't counted the Tony Winners on this CD but there are TONS. And Oscar winners, Emmy Winners, Obie Winner, and just WINNERS.)
He and I knew what he was going to do from the very beginning: BOTTOM'S DREAM. Greg is and always will be the definitive Bottom for me. And he didn't disappoint. Wait until you hear it. He said to me, "Can I do my dream Bottom?" What do you think I said? So we have Greg's Dream Bottom's Dream. Or something like that. I was busy listening to the recording but my pals in the studio said, "You gotta see this." He was performing Bottom full out for the session. So I asked if we could video him doing it again. He said yes and now we have his performance on tape! Wow!
An aside: This group--plus Patti LuPone--, being friends, was the first group I asked to be on this CD. I figured if they were interested, I might have something. Needless to say, they all responded immediately and said yes. I was encouraged to move forward. So this was a very special morning for me and SO WORTH THE TRIP TO LA.
Next in were a bunch of new friends. Peter Paige, who I so loved in Queer As Folk came in doing Ann Sexton's, TO A FRIEND WHO'S WORK HAS COME TO TRIUMPH. And Peter came to Triumph with that performance. He also knew what poet he wanted to do right away so I had to ask him about that on the interview. I won't give away what he said, but it's terrific! I love that all these great actors are all so classical trained and we can talk about the great Shakespeare parts they've performed. I guess I'm still naive but when I see an actor so deeply committed to a character, I think of them as that character. Dumb me! But Peter has a LONG history with the classics! That was clear from his beautiful performance of the Sexton. (An aside for my INTO THE WOOD fans: there wouldn't have been INTO THE WOODS without Sexton!)
Another great friend, James Patrick Stewart was next. I showed him Robert Pinsky's Doctor Frolic. He loved it and agreed to perform it. He was perfect. James is one of the funniest actors I know --quick story: we were doing a reading of a musical I wrote with a big star as the lead. The nameless big star, during one of their scenes together, looked over to James and said, er...er...can you...er...BE LESS FUNNY! James's sense of irony and his unerring comic timing really brought Doctor Frolic off the page. Boy can he act!
Another new friends was the lovely Michael Learned. Ed Dixon set that up. I called Ed the night before and told him I was going to LA and in my best Max Bialystock voice I said, "Who do ya got in LA, Ed?" He said he could ask Michael. I said, YES! Well, Ed called me right back and said Michael agreed instantaneously and the rest is history. Boy was she great. She also knew what she was going to do right away, MILLAY'S An Ancient Gesture. It was sensational. One take and done. SOOOO BEAUTIFUL. I'm thrilled Millay is so represented on this CD. I feel she's fallen out of favor in the last few decades and I know with these performances, she's going to once again be a favorite. Thanks Ed! Thanks Michael!
The last reader of the day was Paul Provenza. Another late booking. I met Paul for 5 seconds at my friend Joan's birthday. I am a huge fan, so it was fun to meet him. And I loved, like everyone, The Aristocrats. So I asked Joan to ask him and yet another actor replied within seconds, YES.
I sent him a few to chose from and he chose Justice's Men at Forty. I knew he would. He read it beautifully. He brought such a deep pathos to it, without sounding heavy, that I was in tears. An aside about Paul and Jason: When I was interviewing Jason earlier, he said Doing Poetry was rather like the film Aristocrats where you can ask 100 actors to do the same poem and you'll get 100 completely different performances. I told him Paul was coming in later. We both smiled. So it was meant to be. I also love the sense of universality Paul brings to our cast. We have stage actors, opera performers, a news caster, people at the beginning of their careers, legends, icons, etc and now one of my favorite stand-ups! Talk about a mix!
So then, with the tapes in hand, I got back on the plane and was in bed by 1 AM.
THANKS AGAIN.
One more day in the studio, one trip to Chicago and we are done!!!
More to come.
Lots of love.
G
PS. I just heard Dame Edna is going to do a poem! Is the Poetry World ready for that. HELL YEAH!
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