Gee, Officer Laurents

There's an interesting column by Michael Riedel in the New York Post about director Arthur Laurents supposedly laying down the law to the cast of West Side Story over repeated absences. (Thanks to Steve on Broadway for the tip.)

"His tone, I'm told, was chilling. The 91-year-old told them that professionals don't miss performances, and that they'd better get their acts together or find another line of work."

Whoa!

I think there were five understudies the night I saw West Side Story but luckily, all of the principals were in. And I would have been disappointed if I'd missed seeing Karen Olivo in her Tony-winning role as Anita or Josefina Scaglione making her Broadway debut as Maria.

I'm sure this is a musical that takes a pretty heavy toll on its cast. I've sat close enough to the stage to see the sweat, so I know that some Broadway performers get quite a workout up there, especially in musicals. It's not the type of thing you'd want to do when you're sick or hurt.

The comments from (naturally) anonymous producers struck me as a tad unfair, making generalizations, painting everyone with the same broad brush - "Some of them are more loyal to their gym than they are to their show."

I'm sure there are lots of dedicated young performers on Broadway who go on no matter what. And I have no way of knowing whether the criticism of the West Side Story cast is justified.

Still, maybe there is a bit of a generational divide.

I think 79-year-old John Cullum, who was then in August: Osage County, made an interesting point in a Variety article in June about older actors treading the boards on Broadway:

"The young people are just as good as they ever were. If you work with people my age, though, you're talking about people who really feel terrible if they can't go to a performance. That mentality is really part of their makeup."

New York magazine on Arthur Laurents

I guess everyone will have their favorite parts of New York magazine writer Jesse Green's article on the irascible 91-year-old Arthur Laurents.

Laurents comes across as both fearsome and vulnerable. Mary Rodgers Guettel declined to be interviewed, saying "Call me back when he's dead." There's also this tender side that I wasn't expecting, mostly when Laurents talks about his partner of 52 years, Tom Hatcher, who died of lung cancer in 2006.

But this bit, about casting for the Broadway revival of West Side Story, I found among the most interesting. (And this is from Green, not Laurents.)

"The cast would be younger, and the Puerto Ricans, if not Puerto Rican, at least Hispanic. (This wasn’t always easy; Josefina Scaglione, the 21-year-old Argentine who plays Maria, was tracked down on YouTube.)"

I understand that perhaps he wanted a young, fresh face. But Green makes it sound as if Laurents was almost desperate. Thank God for YouTube. Otherwise, well I don't know what they would have done. Because, you know, young Hispanic actors and actresses are not easy to find!

Arthur Laurents tells all

This is going on my must-read list. I didn't even know Arthur Laurents was writing a memoir.

Mainly on Directing: Gypsy, West Side Story and other Musicals will be published this month, coinciding nicely with Laurents' revival of West Side Story, which opens at Broadway's Palace Theatre on March 19.

Longtime Connecticut arts writer Frank Rizzo, who blogs for the Hartford Courant at Behind the Curtain, has read an advance copy. He says the 90-year-old Laurents pulls no punches.

"While the "mainly" part is full of insights and history, it's the not-so-mainly parts I loved, where he went off-topic and shared some juicy, what-the-hell, behind-the-curtain tales (and settling a few scores, setting the record straight along the way)." Plus, Rizzo says there are some great Patti LuPone stories.

Rizzo says the book will be published March 16 but every other source I checked seems to peg the release date at March 10. In either case, I'm looking forward to it.