A Catered Affair

[Big Magilla]

Interesting.

[Damien]

Does anyone know anything about the musical version of A Catered Affiar due on Broadway next April?

From the NY Post:

FIERSTEIN FIRES BACK
By MICHAEL RIEDEL

October 5, 2007 -- AS a rule, theater peo ple tend to take their lumps from critics in silence. What's there to do, once you've been caned, but slink off into a dark corner and lick your lacerations?

But feisty Harvey Fierstein is having none of that. On his blog and in e-mails to several influential friends on Broadway, Fierstein has lashed out at Charles McNulty of the Los Angeles Times for panning the actor's new musical, "A Catered Affair."

The show, which Fierstein adapted from Paddy Chayefsky's 1952 movie starring Bette Davis, is in tryouts in San Diego. It opens on Broadway in the spring.

"To call 'A Catered Affair' a period piece . . . would be an understatement," McNulty wrote, adding that "Chayefsky's expiration date passed long ago, yet Fierstein serves up the saga as if it were fresh milk."

McNulty also dumped on John Bucchino's score and attacked Fierstein for playing a gay man from the 1950s as if he were a contemporary character on "Will & Grace."

The other reviews were positive, with the San Diego Union Tribune raving that the show is a "tender, touching treat." Variety prattled on about the brave "silences, when words simply aren't enough" - which is awfully pretentious coming from a rag that's supposed to gauge a show's Broadway prospects.

"In life there is always one badly behaved guest at the party, and in this case it was the reviewer from the L.A. Times," Fierstein wrote in his e-mail, which went to, among others, the head of the William Morris theater department and executives at Jujamcyn Theaters, co-producers of "A Catered Affair."

"The man begins his piece by telling us that he hates the original film, hates the original teleplay, has no respect or even like for the work of Paddy Chayefsky, dislikes social drama in general and downright loathes me.

"He then wastes the rest of his newspaper's space trying to justify his loathsome opinion. I'm sorry, friends, but that's not reviewing, that's simply proselytizing."

Fierstein's e-mail and blog quickly made the rounds, with theater insiders chuckling over such zingers as: "He dismissed our show before ever entering the theater. I think his newspaper should do likewise with his contract."

McNulty, it must be pointed out, seems pretty safe at the L.A. Times. His editor would not comment on Fierstein's attack, but the general rule of thumb in journalism is that if somebody famous goes after you, your editor takes you out to dinner.

Is there anything to be gained by attacking a critic?

On the one hand, it calls attention to a review that otherwise might have gone unnoticed by theatergoers in New York.

On the other, Fierstein's made sure the theater industry knows that McNulty was the only naysayer in the bunch and, therefore, should not be taken as the final word.

Fierstein is a pretty shrewd operator on Broadway. He beat back a stiff challenge from Antonio Banderas a few years ago in the race for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

And in laying the groundwork for "A Catered Affair," he's dined with some of Broadway's most influential reporters, columnists and bloggers. Critics, alas, don't do lunch.

[Penelope]

Tom Wopat ... Matt Cavenaugh

Harvey must be in heaven, looking at those two every night.

[Big Magilla]

Does anyone know anything about the musical version of A Catered Affiar due on Broadway next April?

This has the oddest gestation of any project I can think of. It started out as a TV play about a poor Irish family in the Bronx. It was written by Paddy Chayesfsky in 1953 with Thelma Ritter as the mother whose daughter wants to elope to save the family from spending money it can't afford on a formal weeding. It was made into a fairly successful film three years later with a script by Gore Vidal and a cast that inlcuded Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds and Barry Fitzgerald. Now Harvey Fierstein has re-written Vidal's re-write of Chayefsky's teleplay for the musical version (music and lyrics by John Bucchino) and will play the Barry Fitzgerald character of the mother's uncle, name changed from "Jack" to "Winston". The rest of the family, however, retain their decidedly Irish names of Hurley and Halloran. Faith Prince is the mother, Tom Wopat the cab driving dad, Matt Cavenaugh and and Leslie Kritzer the young couple.