Author(s):
Francis Lewis
The fall theater season kicks into high gear this month, with no fewer than seven openings on Broadway, from classic dramas to musicals to zany comedies. Read on to meet two real New Yorkers, a couple of naughty French aristos and a Californian who’s more than a little at home on Broadway.
Uptown Guys
Separately, Nick Kroll and John Mulaney are hot potatoes in the comedy world: Kroll for Comedy Central’s “Kroll Show” and Mulaney for Netflix’s “The Comeback Kid.”
As a team, the two have honed their alter egos, Gil Faizon (Kroll) and George St. Geegland (Mulaney)—crotchety and highly opinionated bachelors in their 70s who live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—for years on alternative stages in NYC. A cult following, viral videos and a Comedy Central special have propelled Gil and George to the next and inevitable step in their career: Broadway. “Oh, Hello,” part scripted and part improvised, premieres on the Great White Way on Oct. 10.
Naturally, we have a string of questions for Gil and George about their life in New York, which Kroll and Mulaney are happy to answer—in character, of course. This being irreverent comedy, some of the responses border on the blue, others need a bit of explanation, which is understandable. New Yorkers assume that the world knows what they are talking about all the time. This isn’t always the case, but don’t tell Gil and George.
Take it away, guys.
Q: You’ve chosen to live on the Upper West Side. What makes an Upper West Sider an Upper West Sider?
A: So many things. A drawer full of stolen Zabar’s [renowned gourmet food purveyor] napkins and individual chopsticks. A table made of Fairway [grocery store] shopping bags. Having two doorbells on your crown molding, one that works and one that doesn’t. Being a member of the elite Gristedes [another supermarket] platinum club: There’s a special lounge behind the sushi!
Q: Would you ever consider living on the Upper East?
A: No. The 92nd St Y has a restraining order against us. We’re not allowed to live within five avenues of the 92nd Street Y. Also, we don’t like the plans for this Second Avenue Subway [the first phase of which is scheduled to open in December 2016; the underground line has been under construction since 2007]: A lot of our friends are East Side Mole People and they’re gonna get chased out of their tunnel and have to crash with us. And they’ll keep adjusting the light in the apartment to please their mole eyes.
Q: What do you think about Midtown now that you’re on Broadway?
A: We love midtown. We once slept at Dave and Buster’s in a car racing game called Malibu Zoom!
Q: Do you ever go to Greenwich Village?
A: We don’t go below 14th Street. People down there live like Ninja Turtles. With the pizza boxes. And the half-pipes for sk’tboard.
Q: What are some of your favorite restaurants?
A: We love to eat at Le Bernardin. Wait, you typed that wrong. Not Le Bernardin. We said Bernie’s Den. Bernie Goetz’s Den is a fun place to eat. The two of us and Bernie do fondue once a week. He is misunderstood. Also we eat at any pizza place with a faded photo of Danny Aiello [actor born in Manhattan] in the window. He wouldn’t just take a photo with any old pizza place and sign it “Yo best slice.”
Q: You both have a distinctive look. Where do you buy your clothes and get your hair cut?
A: George gets his clothes from hospitals. We get our hair cut by a Roomba. We lay on the floor and that robot slides over and trims our bangs.
Q: Any tips for visitors to New York?
A: The climbing wall at Chelsea Piers [downtown recreation complex by the Hudson River] is great for upskirt photography. If you have a bathroom emergency in Union Square, the Strand Bookstore [new and used books] has a second floor bathroom that’s totally unmonitored. Also if you have a hankering for snacks and weak coffee, just wander into any co-op board meeting [a co-op board rules the roost in a cooperative apartment building, setting down laws and deciding who can and can’t live there; board meetings can be intense]. Yell “no one should be on the roof,” and then steal three-colored cake. “Oh, Hello,” Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St., New York, NY; 212.239.6200
The Treacherous Game of Love
With wits as sharp as rapiers, tongues as venomous as a viper’s and morals as corrupt as the ancien régime, ex-lovers Le Vicomte de Valmont (Liev Schreiber) and La Marquise de Merteuil (Janet McTeer) parry and thrust, toying with l’amour, in the Broadway revival of Christopher Hampton’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” In time, their aristocratic heads will roll, but hearts must first be broken and innocence destroyed. Cutthroats like these make for compelling theater. Previews begin Oct. 8 and it opens Oct. 30. “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., New York, NY; 212.239.6200
The Bryce Is Right
When actor Bryce Pinkham follows the butterflies in the pit of his stomach and chooses a project that speaks to him, he knows he is in a good spot. Butterflies led him to “Holiday Inn,” the new Broadway musical that is a rethinking of the 1942 movie of the same name that starred Bing Crosby as Jim Hardy (Pinkham’s role), a vaudevillian who ditches showbiz to run a country inn. Even though the score for movie and show is from the great Irving Berlin songbook, initially Pinkham wasn’t sure.
“But then I realized that Berlin created a joy vehicle during wartime,” he said, “and that people, for two and a half hours, could take a figurative holiday from their chaotic world and escape and be entertained. It’s easy to write that off as fluff or cotton candy, but I think it’s important. There’s no more important time than now for people to be given an escape.” And what Berlin standards to escape to: “White Christmas,” “Blue Skies,” “Easter Parade,” “Be Careful, It’s My Heart.” As Pinkham said, “The list goes on.”
“Holiday Inn” is Pinkham’s fourth musical on Broadway. The California native made his Main Stem debut in “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” in 2010, followed by “Ghost The Musical” in 2012. He hit pay dirt in his next venture, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Murder,” the Tony Award-winning Best Musical of 2014, receiving a Tony nomination for his leading role as Monty Navarro, the black sheep of an aristocratic family. He may have lost the award to Neil Patrick Harris, but he more than proved his chops as a leading man who can sing, dance (a little: He’s modest about his terpsichorean abilities), act and, most important of all perhaps, make audiences sympathize with his character even when he’s performing the most dastardly deeds. We’re talking matinee idol here.
But Pinkham’s route to matinee idol status may come as a surprise. He’s no city slicker, but a West Coat guy who revels in the great outdoors. He hikes, climbs and preps for every show with “a little exercise: a swim or a light jog to get the heart pumping.”
And how many Broadway stars can claim to have been an Eagle Scout in their youth, as Pinkham can? He values his scout training and calls upon it now that he’s captain of the good ship “Holiday Inn.”
“When you’re asked to be a lead in a show, you’re being asked to lead both onstage and off,” Pinkham told me. “I take that role seriously. It’s a challenge for me, and I love it. It’s the projects where I feel that I’m checking off more than one box at a time that I really get excited by.”
Another thing that got him excited about “Holiday Inn” is that audiences will finally get to hear him sing in his true voice. After years of putting on a Gilbert & Sullivan British accent in “A Gentleman’s Guide to Murder,” he sings the true-blue American songs of Irving Berlin. Not that he isn’t aware of the irony in that.
“Irving Berlin is as American as it gets, yet his is the voice of a Jewish immigrant. I’ve been really trying to remind people that what’s so great about Irving Berlin is that he was responsible for a large majority of the Great American Songbook. He was an immigrant to our country who was given a chance through song. And that’s the way our country is, or at least was. He was allowed to flourish and consequently created great songs.”
The Yale School of Drama grad also speaks Portuguese, an adventure that, like scouting, began early and informs his approach to life to this day.
“My best friend growing up was Brazilian, and I spent a lot of time at his house," Pinkham said. "Eventually his mom said to me, ‘If you’re going to come to my house and eat my food, you’re going to learn to speak my language.’ So they taught me a bit. I enjoy chatting with Brazilians who come to the stage door. I’ve been to Brazil three times in my life. [Editor’s note: He was hoping to get to the summer Olympics, but a little thing like “Holiday Inn” got in his way.] There’s a sort of mandate in Brazil to celebrate life, and I always try to carry that with me everywhere I go. Chatting in Portuguese and getting my words wrong and messing up and having to ask people for help is one of the ways I try to do that. One thing I’ve learned being an actor is failure is just a part of life, and you almost have to court it in order to find joy. I think joy emanates from our most vulnerable self. So to strike out and find a new country, a new culture and try to learn to speak the local language is something more Americans could stand to do.”
There’s an Irving Berlin song that Pinkham sings, as he says “right off the bat in the show,” that further defines his approach to life: “The Little Things in Life."
“Just a little room or two can more than do a little man and wife / That’s if they’re contented with the little things in life,” he recited. “A few simple pleasures are enough, and that’s another very American sentiment from Irving Berlin. Many Americans don’t need all the stuff they think they do to be happy. A little house on the prairie could be enough.”
And Pinkham hopes that his “little house on the prairie” will come in the next five years.
“I want a family and home life as much as I have wanted to be on the Great White Way,” he says. He also wants to strike a balance between life in the city he loves (he currently lives in Brooklyn) and the open spaces he equally loves. That day will come, but for now it’s curtain up on “Holiday Inn.” Opening night, Oct. 6, is just around the corner.
Want to take a sneak peek at “Holiday Inn?" See the slideshow below. “Holiday Inn,” Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., New York, NY; 212.719.1300
Another Opening, Another Show
Check out these October openings on Broadway:
• Oct. 6: “Holiday Inn”
• Oct. 10: “Oh, Hello”
• Oct. 13: “Heisenberg”
• Oct. 16: “The Cherry Orchard”
• Oct. 20: “The Front Page”
• Oct. 27: “Falsettos”
• Oct. 30: “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”
On the closing front, “Jersey Boys” is scheduled to shutter on Broadway, Jan. 15, 2017. If you’re in the Apple in October you may be facing a dilemma: Should you see the show at the August Wilson Theatre or the real McCoy himself—Frankie Valli—and the Four Seasons in their limited engagement concert performance at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre Oct. 21-29, “Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons on Broadway”? Our solution is simple: See them both.
Market:
New York City
Subtitle:
Theater news
Megan Lawrence, Bryce Pinkham and the company welcome in the New Year in “Holiday Inn.” (©Joan Marcus, 2016)
Corbin Bleu, Lora Lee Gayer, Bryce Pinkham and company celebrate the “Easter Parade” in “Holiday Inn.” (©Joan Marcus, 2016)
Bryce Pinkham, Megan Lawrence and company deck the halls in “Holiday Inn.” (©Joan Marcus, 2016)
Bryce Pinkham (center) and company in “Holiday Inn.” (©Joan Marcus, 2016)
Corbin Bleu, like co-star Bryce Pinkham, is having a blast in “Holiday Inn.” (©Joan Marcus, 2016)
Interest Type:
Cultured
Tag:
Broadway
Theater
Category:
Entertainment
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