Over the past month, I was able to take in a couple of such shows -- Letters Live with an array of glittering names at Town Hall and Kathleen Turner's cabaret Finding My Voice at Cafe Carlyle.
The former, which started as a stage show in London that featured the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Ian McKellen, Mark Hamill and Sir Ben Kingsley made its New York debut with an illustrious cast that included Cumberbatch, Edie Falco, Hugh Dancy and Tony nominee Tom Hollander (who rushed over from his play at the Roundabout to perform his letter). Rose McGowan got a standing ovation after reading her own #metoo missive that launched a revolution (see the text below). Cynthia Erivo, Uzo Aduba, Ben Shenkman, Amber Tamblyn, David Harbour, Phillipa Soo, DeWanda Wise, Clarke Peters and Louise Brealey also took the podium. But no matter who the talent was, the true star was the letters they read. They ranged from hilarious to insightful, from fawning to brutal honesty.
Dancy's first piece was a letter from a commanding officer in the Civil War to his wife. He expected to (and did) die in battle and tried to explain how honor was the most important attribute he possessed, more important to him than even love for his family. Harbour of Stranger Things delivered an uproarious missive sent off to Harvard after by an applicant who rejected the institution's rejection.
Cumberbatch brought down the house with a piece that just kept on giving. The tale told was of a Nova Scotia man seeking to have his lifetime ban removed in the "Dear Empress Hotel" letter. But first, the banned individual recounted the raucous chain of events that led to his injunction. Let's just say it involved a suitcase full of pepperoni, open windows and some aggressive seagulls.
A woman from Nova Scotia was sitting by me, she recalled how that incident had become something of an urban legend, but the man indeed was welcomed back by the hotel after promising that his next stay would be a lot less eventful.Brealey -- who starred with Cumberbatch in Sherlock -- provided a couple of high points in the show, first with her solo letter about the wife of a future nobleman requesting as many services and amenities as she could think of, each starting with "and also..." I can't imagine anyone imparting "and also" with as much meaning and in as many different ways as Brealey did.
Falco worked wonders in her second appearance, a letter penned by Dorothy Parker in the hospital and imparted with all the witticism and pointed observations as one might expect from the legendary writer. Soo's second performance on the night was probably far less daunting, she read a flattering fan letter to the cast of Hamilton -- she originated the role of Eliza on Broadway -- before getting to read the ultimate punch line, it was written by Meryl Streep.
It's difficult to pick a Letters highlight, but it probably was Cumberbatch and Brealey coming on stage together to read both halves of a romantic correspondence between an old maid and the man who would finally relieve the burden of her spinsterhood when they finally were reunited.
How could Kathleen Turner top such a star-laden night? Basically by being herself and telling her stories between and sometimes during well-chosen musical selections. It was almost an addendum to the other show, they were letters from Kathleen to us. And they were up close and personal. Mostly because Jenna and I were sitting at her knee, but because of the content as well.
In fact, Kathleen winked at me during one of her first numbers -- Jenna's my witness, since it would be kind of rude to snap pictures with my cell phone with Turner in such close proximity. I do believe she strived to make eye contact with each and every of the 50, 75 people (sorry, I was looking at her, not at them) in the room.
My other particularly special moment of eye contact was during her Romancing the Stone story. (I have a lot of favorite Turner movies -- I like to proclaim over and over that I saw even the littlest indie upon original release -- but that one is at the very top of the list.) Anyway, she asked whether I ... we ... remembered the mud slide scene. "Yes, yes," I probably said too exuberantly. "Now think about doing it five times," she responded to me. Actually, that still sounds like fun to me.
For every funny story about the business -- like Kathleen telling Francis Ford Coppola, sure, he could direct the next Peggy Sue Got Married scene from his trailer if she could act it from hers or her friends' derisive responses to hearing her film debut would be in the questionably titled Body Heat -- there were a lot of poignant moments. She told of singing "On the Street Where You Live" to her daughter when they lived on 12th Street, then blew Rachel the most heartfelt kiss I've seen after performing it for us.She explained the debilitating horrors of rheumatoid arthritis. Turner wasn't diagnosed with it for a long time, and after she was, she was told she might have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She proved the doctors wrong, but seated so close, we could see her eyes filling with tears as she thought about those days while interspersing "Send in the Clowns" with the gory details. I could practically see her visualizing life on the road for months on end during "Sweet Virginia Ham."
Many of these tales were revealed in her fabulous read of autobiography, Send Yourself Roses, but they obviously take on a special luster when you hear Turner recounting them a couple of feet away from you. Like how a brash 20-year-old declared she would star as Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and then making that come to fruition on Broadway by charming the dickens out of playwright Edward Albee.
Kathleen seemed to cruise with great ease through the night, with the help of musical director Mark Janas on piano, Sean Harkness on guitar -- within striking distance of Jenna -- and Ritt Henn on bass. She and Janas concentrated on finding pieces in her range and that she really loves to perform. When she first started in the business, she was totally pointedly she couldn't sing. Just the first time Turner defeated the odds and certainly not the last.
