Donald Margulies and Eric Bogosian

Playwright Donald Margulies – author of Time Stands Still, a Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway with Laura Linney, Brian D’Arcy James, and Alicia Silverstone – taped an interview for Theater Talk, with another one of the play’s stars, Eric Bogosian, a well-known playwright himself.

In the Greenroom, Bogosian was chatting about his wife’s (director Jo Bonney) production of a new play by Darci Picoult, Lil’s 90th, just closed at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven with Lois Smith and David Margulies in the cast.

Bogosian is relishing playing the part of a New York photo editor (“A genuine nice guy” versus his customary “edgy New York Jewish” types) in Margulies’s new play about two couples, one of which is comprised of journalists who are recuperating from covering wars, and the other which is in the heady, early days of a relationship that can’t logically last. Margulies says the play is about “people trying to live a moral life” given society’s conflicts at home and abroad. The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friends, Sight Unseen, and What’s Wrong With This Picture? Margulies has been teaching playwriting to undergraduates at Yale for 20 years while continuing to write and be produced in New York and around the country.

Beane's Bon Mots

With his new play Mr. and Mrs. Fitch opening at Second Stage, Douglas Carter Beane paid a visit to Theater Talk’s studio at CUNY TV -- and the laughs and one-liners flowed effortlessly, both off- and on camera.

His newest play is about married gossip columnists, portrayed by John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle. Theater Talk co-host Michael Riedel comments that they “are still trying to live in an era that’s ended,” mirroring Beane’s own surprise at the state of New York City when he first arrived in 1977.

A native of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania who listened to Noel Coward CDs at the library and dreamed of life in New York City, he arrived in New York at a time when it was overrun with trash in the streets, street crime, and an out-of-control “Club Kid” scene full of drugs, sex and murder. (A bright side to today’s New York: “You can use a credit card in a cab!”)

Addressing the ever-shifting critical evaluation of his work, he marveled at the news that his plays are being taught at Colgate University (“I couldn’t get into Colgate!”) and how he was now “the toast of London” with excellent notices for his play, The Little Dog Laughed. Acutely aware of the “build ‘em up/tear ‘em down” strain in American life, he admits that what he loves about theater “is that you can never get too big … Just wait!”

News Updates from Recent Tapings

For Liev Schreiber, Naturalism is Tough

Coming off tremendous personal reviews for his role as Eddie Carbone in the newly-opened, lavishly-praised revival of Arthur Miller’s “A View From The Bridge,” Liev Schreiber tells Theater Talk hosts Michael Riedel and Susan Haskins that it “never occurred” to him to play Eddie – that, in fact, he is “not drawn to naturalism in general.” Before the taping, he admitted that for him it’s easier to play Iago (in “Macbeth”) than Eddie Carbone.

Schreiber has words of praise for his co-star, new-to-the-stage Scarlett Johansson. “She has tremendous composure… tremendous emotional facility,” and is “more interested in the goal of getting better than being appreciated” – “the sign of a great actor.”

Reprising his famous observation that actors can be compared to breeds of dogs, Schreiber says he’s “like the Jack Russell that won’t stop ripping the felt off of your tennis ball.” Director Gregory Mosher, also interviewed in the half-hour, describes him differently – “like a German Shepard, and the gentle St. Bernard, particularly for his stewardship of this production.”

This interview begins syndication on Feb. 5 -- and is on Thirteen/WNET in New York on Friday, Feb. 5 at 1 AM and streamed on www.cuny.tv by February 15.

Founder of Famed Circle in the Square
With his memoir of the founding of the historic Circle in the Square now out in paperback (“Journeys in the Night – Creating a New American Theatre with Circle in the Square,” Applause Books), Ted Mann paid a visit to Theater Talk.

Describing his frequent attempts in the 1950s to get the rights to the work of Eugene O’Neill – who, says Mann, was “considered forgotten and old-fashioned” – he names the Circle’s May 1956 revival of “The Iceman Cometh,” starring a little-known Jason Robards, as the theatre’s greatest production. With a cast of 25 and running 4-1/2 hours, Mann and director Jose Quintero decided, “If we’re going to go down, let’s go down BIG.” With a budget of $2,500, the show was a smash and revived interest in O’Neill. It led O’Neill’s widow, Carlotta, to give them the manuscript of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” and history was made once again.

Airdate TBA

Oscar-Nominated Maury Yeston’s Career
Composer/lyricist Maury Yeston dropped by Theater Talk for a 2-part review of his work, including a stint at the piano. Yeston is a fountain of Broadway lore, collected from his relationships with the late librettists Larry Gelbart and Peter Stone, director Mike Nichols, and many others, and regaled the Green Room with stories of Frank Loesser and “the one show that was perfect out of town and never needed any work – Kiss Me, Kate” (as passed on to him by other Broadway hands, as Yeston was only 3 years old when the show opened in December 1948).

Yeston’s Broadway hit “Nine” is now on movie screens, garnering him an Oscar nomination for a new song written especially for the film, and he is at work on a musical version of “Death Takes A Holiday.” His past triumphs include “Titanic” and “Grand Hotel.” He is a talent with one foot in the Old School, and one in the New – one that, we hope, has the opportunity to keep writing wonderful shows.

This two-parter begins syndication March 4 and will be streamed on www.cuny.tv

Mosher & Schreiber: ""A View from the Bridge"

Jan 29, 2010: A great time with celebrated director GREG MOSHER and the great LIEV SCHREIBER, discussing their hit Broadway Miller revival. Liev said that playing Eddie Carbone was more difficult than playing Iago, because he felt more comfortable playing the classics than "naturalism."