Orphans and dirty gossip

Being the cultural philistine that I am, if I’m going to see a play it must have someone famous in it.

And the only time I go to see plays is in New York. So that’s three plays in the past 20 years. I saw Molly Ringwald in Cabaret. I saw Eddie Izzard in the A Day In the Death of Joe Egg. And last night I saw Alec Baldwin in Orphans.

I’d been hoping to see Tom Hanks in the Nora Ephron play she died writing, but tickets, if you could get ’em, were going for $300 a pop.

I sent Husband to wait 90 minutes to see what he could get for half-price at the TKTS booth in Times Square while I did a spot more shopping and had a lovely lunch with the editorial director of ivillage.com at Chelsea Market (the former Oreo biscuit factory turned into a trendy foodie spot.

Husband was pretty cross about the wait and his final selection – Orphans – at $70 a ticket because it hadn’t been reviewed yet.

But I was stoked because Orphans is dripping with lots of awesome behind-the-scenes gossip. In the first week of rehearsals Alec Baldwin and Shia Lebeouf clashed because Shia reckoned Alec hadn’t prepped enough. So Alec got him fired. And then Shia leaked a whole bunch of emails between himself and the director and Alec. And had a few sprays on Twitter.

Such as: “The theater belongs not to the great but to the brash. Acting is not for gentlemen or bureaucratic-academics. What they do is antiart.”

Then Shia appeared on David Letterman and said why it all went to shite: “I think because me and Alec had tension as men, not as artists, but as men. That became a hard thing to deal with. When you’ve got tension as men, that’s tough till July. It’s cool for increments, but I think to do that for a long period of time would be tough.”

Alec responded to the controversy saying: “I mean, he was never in the theater. He came into a rehearsal room for six or seven days and, uh — you know, sometimes film actors — I mean, there are people who are film actors who have a great legacy in the theater. Some of the greatest movie stars had really serious theater careers and still do. And many film actors, though, who are purely film actors, they’re kind of like celebrity chefs, you know what I mean? You hand them the ingredients, and they whip it up, and they cook it, and they put it on a plate, and they want a round of applause. In the theater, we don’t just cook the food and serve it. You go out in the garden and you plant the seeds and you grow it.

And: “It wasn’t meant to be; he was gone. I’ve seen that happen before. People, on occasion, leave films, TV shows. It’s unpleasant, but it’s unavoidable. He’s going through whatever he’s going through. We’ve all been in that situation when we were younger where we want to tell everyone to go kiss off. We want to be our own man. And, I mean, I’m older now. And there does seem to be an inverse proportion to how much experience you have and how much you shoot your mouth off.”

And then Shia sat in the front row on opening night … Like that wouldn’t have been awkward.

Anyways, so I was quite keen to see the finished product.

Husband and I pootled to the theatre via a gorgeous little bar called Flute – in honour of its champagne menu (I had a cocktail with merlot, orange juice, grand marnier and bubby … OK, I had two – which is a former 1920s speakeasy with live jazz. Very nice! (See below)

As for the play … Meh. Tom Sturridge (Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon) was great, Alec was in top form, loved both their characters. But it all felt a teensy bit ham-fisted to me. Not truly great theatre, but on the other hand, not dull.

Husband reckons the standing ovation was a bit forced, the applause a bit muted.

But we enjoyed ourselves all the same. And I was very glad Husband didn’t get tickets to Jekyll & Hyde, it looked AWFUL.

Have you ever seen a Broadway play? Who was in it? What did you think of it?