BY BEN WINTERS
February’s big theatre story—outdoing the Rockette who is suing her former employers for stealing her likeness, and Broadway’s minor Superbowl-related ticket slump—had to do with a show yet to be seen. Namely Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Gold!, which carries the superfluous exclamation mark of a hit on Broadway, but not yet the chance to get there.
The Chicago Tribune’s Richard Christiansen laid out the backstory and the Chicago connection on Dec. 6, 2001: "According to Roche Schulfer, Goodman’s executive director, [director Harold] Prince earlier this year talked to Robert Falls, Goodman’s artistic director, about launching the musical here. Falls, after reading the script, agreed to commit to the production, Schulfer said. 'Within a few days, we had a letter from Mr. Rudin’s attorneys telling us, in effect, 'Don’t even think about it.’"
That’s Scott Rudin, the movie producer and muckaluck who had thrown six hundred grand at the project back in 1999 and therefore felt entitled to a say in its future. Sondheim and Weidman disagreed, and the resulting lawsuit kept the Goodman from keeping Gold! on the schedule as the opener for the 2002-03 season.
All has been sorted, though, as per this Associated Press story of Feb. 4: "Under the settlement, Rudin…will be reimbursed $160,000 if the musical is produced commercially. He will also drop any claim to the rights."
By the by, the AP story claimed that "Sondheim and Weidman…spent 10 years creating the musical." In Christiansen’s Tribune piece we are told that "Sondheim last summer said the show had been in the works for about five years, 'much too long.’"
Whether it’s been a decade in the making or half a decade—and whether the show is worth Rudin’s original $600,000 or just the $160,000 he now stands to take out of the Goodman’s box office—Gold! better be good. I mean…good!
GROSS OUT
Cool-as-a-cucumber Terry Gross, host of NPR’s Philadelphia-based arts program "Fresh Air," had an unexpectedly fresh interview with rock star Gene Simmons of the band Kiss on Feb. 4th. As charmingly reported in Inqlings, Michael Klein’s bold-face-names entertainment column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Simmons behavior was not what the refined Gross, or "the latte crowd" that listens to her, were expecting.
"Ninety-five percent of [her listeners] bestow high praise on Gross for sassing back at the memoir-shilling Simmons," Klein writes, explaining that Gross got over 3,000 sympathetic e-mails in the week after the interview. "His opening remark was: 'The notion is if you’re going to welcome me with open arms, you also have to welcome me with open legs.’" After detailing another give-and-take from the interview, in which Simmons explained to Gross that his studded codpiece "holds my manhood. Otherwise, it would be too much for you to take," Klein offers what may be one of the first great quotes of our young century: "The other day, Gross reflected on the question. 'If he can’t laugh at his own studded codpiece, what can you laugh at?’"
MASSOW OUT
Recall that in a previous "ArtsLine," Ivan Massow, chairman of London’s Institute of the Contemporary Arts, earned a tut-tut when he wrote in The New Statesman that contemporary art was "in danger of disappearing up its own arse." Shockingly, Massow has since been relieved of his chairmanship. According to the entertainment pages of The Scotsman, "Some opponents believe [Massow] was deliberately engineering his departure from the ICA, using controversy to mask a failure as fund-raiser since his appointment in 1999."
The Scotsman piece wraps up like so: "But if the purpose of art is to provoke controversy, Massow himself may have achieved more than most workers with oils, plaster and formaldehyde. 'There is no such thing as real working,’ said Massow. '…My life has become a piece of conceptual art.’"
Ironic, or what?"
AND SPEAKING OF IRONY…
Does anyone remember when the whole idea of irony was said to be a goner in the week after Sept. 11? It was Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair who drew the most attention for this ludicrous pronouncement, but he certainly wasn’t the only one to make it; there was a slew of articles on the topic, and then a follow-up slew about how, OK, so maybe it’s not dead after all. A Canadian humorist named David Martin returned to the scene for a Feb. 3 piece in the Washington Post. "Mortally wounded on Sept. 11, 2001, Irony finally succumbed during President Bush’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday when the threat of future attacks drained it of its cardinal humors," wrote Martin. "A longtime resident of Western civilization, Irony was …a graduate of Athens’ famed Socratic School…" and so on.
Martin’s piece was sort of funny and very ironic, which of course was the point. A lot funnier was the work of satirical newspaper The Onion in the weeks and then months after the great calamity—if there’s a Fake Pulitzer for fake news, this year’s is a no-brainer. "HOLY FUCKING SHIT" screamed The Onion’s front page when it returned from two speechless weeks after 9/11. Particularly satisfying, both as humor and commentary, was a long article titled "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don’t Kill’ Rule."
"Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand," The Onion’s writers have the Holy One say. At the end, God cries.
One final tragi-comic note. If this column had yet existed, we surely would have noted the sad fate of Dan Gellar and Amy Dykes, who together faced an existential crisis unlike any other. As reported by Michael Bertin in the November 30 Austin Chronicle, Gellar and Dykes make up a British band called I Am The World Trade Center. "To me, it was the perfect band name," says Gellar in the article. "I felt like I had done it. I had come up with the band name."
Now that’s irony.