A punk memoir by Steven Taylor, one of the instructors in Wesleyan University's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. The institute is now accepting applications for its 2012-13 program.

A couple of years ago, Wesleyan University, ever-aware of the difficulties inherent in supporting and promoting progressive artforms, started its Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. This professional-certificate program is described in a press release as an “intensive, nine-month, low-residency academic program designed to encourage emerging curators to enrich their understanding of intellectually rigorous, innovative and artist-centered curatorial models.”

Exactly the sort of buzz-phrases and lingo one needs in order to convince patrons and foundations that such art is a worthwhile investment.

Here’s more: “The Certificate Program considers performance in its broadest sense and the curriculum addresses time-based art practices of artists, curators and cultural leaders working in dance, performance art, experimental theater and traditional/culturally specific programs and various combinations of these and other disciplines.”

Good for them. This is apparently the only academic program of its kind in the U.S. Applications are now being accepted, through Feb. 1, 2012, for the nine-month 2012-13 ICPP. The format has students working on their own (at home and online), then gathering for “on-campus intensives” for a fortnight in July and weekends in November and March.

The range of teachers in the ICPP ensures a lively debate and hands-on training. Wesleyan-based instructors include Associate Professors of Dance Katja Kolcio and Nicole Stanton; and Associate Professor of Theater Cláudia Tatinge Nacimento and ICPP Director Samuel A. Miller. “Field professionals” inlcude Walker Arts Center’s Senior Curator Philip Bither, MOMA’s  Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture Doryun Chong, UCLA Live’s Executive Director/Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds, Danspace Project’s Exec. Director Judy Hussie-Taylor and punk-guitarist/ethnomusicologist/poet Steven Taylor.

For details on how to apply, contact the institute at (860) 685-3283 or www.wesleyanb.edu/icpp

My daughter Mabel (age 9) couldn’t sleep last night, so she created a booklet illustrating her favorite numbers from the Long Wharf Theatre production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, which closed yesterday.

See if you can match the song title to the drawing:

• “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie”

• “Honeysuckle Rose”

• “Your Feet’s Too Big”

• “Fat ‘n’ Greasy”

Now here’s Mabel’s take on the ensemble routines “Black and Blue” and “that one where they all sing really high and low”:

Makes me pine for Punch Magazine and the way it used to illustrate theater reviews with Ronald Searle cartoons.

The Chicago band Secret Colours released a new song today, called “Faust.” It’s the lead track from a 5-song EP which Secret Colours will release on New Year’s Day. You can find “Faust” on MTV Hive here.

“Fall down/Get back up,” it intones. Later, “Original sin/Comes from within.” The music starts with a horse-trot beats, then builds into a swirling psychedelic tumult. For psych revivalists, Secret Colours are admirably controlled. The sounds are as suspenseful and dramatic as a “Faust” opus deserves.

Faust interpreters Secret Colours

New Haven Theater Jerk’s personal Faust fetish should be abundantly obvious to loyal readers. Here are ten other musical manifestations of the soul-selling classic. (There are many more, and there will doubtless be future opportunities to rock Faust further in NHTJ.)

1. “Bedazzled,” Bedazzle original motion picture soundtrack. Those who strangely don’t believe that this is one of the funniest films ever made allege that its main fault is its wordiness. That just means that it would be a terrific stage play or musical, right? The title song was composed by Moore, who spreads variations on its melody throughout the film’s entire soundtrack. Cook performs it in the scene where Moore has been transformed into a pop star. The song has been covered by actual pop acts, Bauhaus among them.
2. Mephistopheles. Faustus’ temptor got his own opera in 1868, thanks to Arrigo Boito. Hardly ever comes up, especially when compared with Gounod’s Faust.
3. Georgia Carr, “You Got It Made.” The theme song from the film version of George Axelrod’s Faust comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is a hard-to-find calypso number by Bobby Troup, who also wrote the title song for an earlier film by comedy auteur Frank Tashlin, “The Girl Can’t Help It.” Axelrod’s play has been altered beyond recognition, but Troup’s song is at least in the right exotic spirit.
4. “Faust,” Phantom of the Paradise original motion picture soundtrack. Phantom of the Opera is the chief inspiration for Brian DePalma’s Phantom of the Paradise, yes, but the show-within-the-film is a purloined rock musical called Faust, and devilish deals are the main thrust of the plot. William Finley, who co-stars in the film as aggrieved composer Winslow Leach, entered experimental theater legend as the title character in Performance Group’s Dionysus in 69. “Faust” is heard in a heartwrenching solo version, then as gussied up for commercial success. Other numbers include “Never Thought I’d Get to Meet the Devil,” “Old Souls” and “The Hell of It.”
5. Damn Yankees, “Goodbye Old Girl.” The song sung while armchair shlub Joe Boyd is transitioning into baseball sensation Joe Hardy. Saw Jerry Lewis as the devil in this musical three times.
6. Doremidan, “The Faust.” I have no idea what this heavily made-up Japanese rock group is saying. I expect I’d have trouble even if I knew Japanese. Doremidan is of the “visual kei” genre, which means androgynous glam outfits and elaborate facepaint.
7. “Sandman’s Coming,” Randy Newman’s Faust. One of Newman’s best albums. I regret not being able to see the regional try-outs of its stage version, which starred David Garrison in the Devil role assumed by Newman himself on his original concept album. The child-abandonment lament “Sandman’s Coming” later appeared on the debut episode of the much-maligned Steve Bochco musical TV drama Cop Rock.
8. Gorillaz, “Faust.” “After a hard day/I need to wake up/After a hard dayAfter a hard day/It’s time to wake up/I need a make-up/After a hard day.”
9. Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.”
10. The Fall, “Dktr Faustus.” I’ve noted this song on a NHTJ list before. It’s more genuinely respectful of Christopher Marlowe’s play than a lot of stage productions I’ve seen of it are.

A Thought in Three Parts

Through Nov. 19 at the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. (203) 432-1566, yalecabaret.org.

By Wallace Shawn. Directed by Hallie Cooper-Novack. Set & Lights: Adam Rigg. Costumes: Martin Schnellinger. Sound: Palmer. Sound Associate: Keri Klick. Producer: Kate Ivins. Dramaturg: Delilah Dominguez. Stage Manager: Kirstin Hodges. Technical Director: Michael Place. “Summer Evening” performed by Chris Henry (David) and Lupita Nyong’o (Sarah). “The Youth Hostel” performed by Will Cobbs (Dick), Carmen Zilles (Helen), Jillian Taylor (Judy), Seamus Mulcahy (Bob) and Josiah Bania (Tom). “Mr. Frivolous” performed by Max Roll ) Mr. Frivolous.

Seamus Mulcahy and Jillian Taylor in "The Youth Hostel," the centerpiece of Wallace Shawn's A Thought in Three Parts, at the Yale Cabaret through Nov. 19. Photo by Ethan Heard.

A Thought in Three Parts has come, and makes a splash.

This is far from the first Yale Cabaret show to feature full frontal nudity. Nor is it the first to use bodily fluids as a sort of post-modern pie-in-the-face comedy fodder. In the context of the Yale Cabaret, it’s a natural extension of what’s been happening at the space for years now—an aggressive and open-minding testing of theatrical boundaries, a redefining of what theater is and what it can achieve.

The distinction of A Thought in Three Parts is that it’s a play by Wallace Shawn which has only been performed once before in this country. That prior production was just three years ago, done in Austin, Texas, by the Rubber Repertory Theatre. (Shawn happily attended the Austin production, and is scheduled to see the Cabaret’s this weekend.)

The play has been around since 1976. A London production in 1977 (under the title Three Short Plays) engaged the UK in the same debate about government arts funding and the content of the arts being funded as did Tim Miller and Karen Finley in this country a few years later.

A Thought in Three Parts could be considered ahead of its time, but not because it’s a seldom-produced play filled with sex and violence that’s near impossible to stage realistically; that sort of thing is a dime a dozen, and dates back to the Greeks.

Thirty-four years ago, when he was 34 years old himself, Shawn tapped the same concepts which had folks racing to big-screen comedies such as There’s Something About Mary and American Pie throughout the ‘90s: Sex is more funny than it is sad. Young people enjoy sex. Older people have funny ideas about the way young people enjoy sex.

Wallace Shawn is Wallace Shawn, so the levity of the sex act is shortlived. A Thought in Three Parts isn’t devoid of cheap sex gags (one of the characters is even named Dick), but has more cold-shower moments than it does erectile ones. These are plays of missed connections, miscommunications, chauvinism (male and female) and bitter recriminations. Unsurprisingly for these self-absorbed characters, the most satisfying and lasting sex they indulge in is masturbation.

First up is “Summer Evening,” in which a couple have found themselves a delightful hotel room but somehow can’t get in the mood, any mood. “The Youth Hostel” has a more absurdist style, and plays like a series of personal-chemistry experiments among free-spirited, needy young adults who are just beginning to grasp—and rebel about—mature relationship concepts like trust and respect. Following the frolicsome, bitter and explosive “Youth Hostel,” the short, sedate, sedentary and fully clothed monologue “Mr. Frivolous” ends the evening with an almost daunting decorum.

More "Youth Hostel": Carmen Zilles and Will Cobbs. Photo by Ethan Heard.

Is it titillating? I don’t think that’s for me to say. Did you find Belleville at the Yale Rep titillating? Attractive people are having simulated sex and professing to put aside severe problems, in scenarios where it’s clear that greater difficulties are mounting. There are personal priorities to sort out if you want to be turned on by this show. Let’s just say it’s not celebratory. In the classic legal sense of having no redeeming social value, it’s not at all pornographic. It’s, you know, NAKED and RAW, in body and mind.

The anger, resentment, nervousness and disgust which fuels these plays is far more intense than the lust. Yet the sex acts are so gamely and enjoyably enacted by the ensemble (especially the five in the show’s centerpiece The Youth Hostel) that they provide a neat physical release which beautifully balances the internal anguish of Shawn’s characters.

As engrossing as the pages-long monologues he’s devised in his better-known dramas such as Aunt Dan and Lemon or The Fever can be, other Wallace Shawn works would definitely benefit from long, glorious bouts of fucking. Shawn’s scripts require a nerve-popping level of intensely, much of it intellectual. A Thought in Three Parts is more of a full-body work-out, and a more physical interaction than just throwing about blankets of rage.

A Thought in Three Parts isn’t really out to shock; it simply doesn’t want to shortchange its propulsive subject matter. Moments of calm reflection fill these plays, but so do moments of outrage which come at the end of too many of those reflective moments. Shawn doesn’t overwrite or overplay these exchanges. He gets down and dirty. Director Hallie Cooper-Novack likewise doesn’t slow down the action to signal the intellectual or ironic properties of the piece. Adam Rigg has designed the set and lights for crisp practicality and sturdiness; no creaking matresses or soft lighting, everything clear and uncluttered. The cast, all of them, are shorthair-triggered to switch up emotions at the drop of their pants. An admirable mix of attitudes, accents and body types, they infuse Shawn’s discourse with variety and vitality. They get into themselves, they come out of themselves, and then they just come.

Ejaculation, in both the melodramatic conversational sense of the word and its more popular sexual connotation, just seems the natural culmination of what’s going on here.

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour Ever, Saturday the 19th at Hartford's XL Center.

Disney’s done all right on Broadway for a couple decades now, but they’ve ruled the stadium touring circuit for much longer, maintaining high standards despite having very little competition. Disney road shows are often produced by Feld Entertainment, the folks who bring you Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the monster truck show Monster Jam, the motocross madness of ArenaCross and the daredevil Nuclear Cowboyz. The insane schemes of Phineas & Ferb are right up Feld’s three-ring alley.

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour Ever first hit the road in August, with plans to hit over 80 cities. Demand for the Hartford XL Center stop on the tour led promoters to arrange three performances on a single day—this Saturday, Nov. 19. At first only two shows were scheduled, at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.  A couple of weeks ago, a 7 p.m. performance was added. May seem like a busy schedule, but on their TV show Phineas and Ferb have been known to built a moonrocket, or the world’s largest roller coaster, in a matter of minutes. This is child’s play by comparison.

Besides, when you’re dressed as a platypus, nobody can see you sweat.

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour fits the genre of “Big Head shows”—events in which the lead players’ faces are entirely covered by gigantic masks. But technically, most of the actors simply have big eyes. There have been tours of shows such as Dora the Explorer where actors’ real faces are exposed in the middle of otherwise cartoonish monkey or backpack costumes. I’m not sure which distortion is creepier.

The talent assembled for tours of kids TV phenomena can be extraordinary. When the Rolling Stones are not on tour, their road crew goes out with Barney the Dinosaur. Playwright Gip Hoppe, known for his political satires A New War and Jackie!, has scripted the live adventures of Clifford the Big Red Dog. Danny Herman of the original cast of A Chorus Line directed and choreographed Rugrats: A Live Adventure in 1998. Rupert Holmes wrote an original multi-part Goosebumps musical.

The creative team for Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour includes: director choreographer, who worked with Madonna on her “Sorry” video and Confessions World Tour and with Feld Entertainment previously on Let’s Rock the Mouse; writer Bradley Zweig, who wrote and produced Sid the Science Kid and has created live shows for the Los Angeles Zoo and the Smithsonian; scenic designer Rick Papineau, who’s risen through the Feld ranks to become the company’s Vice President of Scenic Elements; costume designer Cynthia Nordstrom, who’s done dozens of projects for Walt Disney World but also Off Broadway productions of Jewtopia, Silent Laughter and Evil Dead the Musical; music director Mike Avila and lighting designer Sam Doty.

As is the case with most of the Feld/Disney tours, the live performers mime to precorded dialogue spoken by the same actors who regularly voice the roles on TV or in movies. In this case, that means Vincent Martella, Ashley Tisdale and Thomas Sangster as sibling Phineas, Candace and Ferb, Dee Bradley Baker as Perry the Platypus and Dan Povenmire as Doofenshmirtz, to name a few. The live cast is made up largely of dancers adroit enough to maneuver gracefully in baggy clothing and giant fake eyeballs.

Phineas and Ferb: The Best LIVE Tour apparently features a Broadway showtune medley, including “One” and “I Feel Pretty,” as sung by the show’s resident supervillain Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Original songs include “Gitchee Gitchee Goo,” “Everything’s Better With Perry,” “Truck Driving Boy,” “Truck Driving Girl” and “Squirrel in My Pants.”

Don’t underestimate kids’ show tours. They adapt cartoons to the stage, add singing and dancing, and perform in 5000-seat stadiums. That’s commedia, Broadway and Greek drama rolled into one. Phineas and Ferb themselves could barely have the imagination to conceive that.

Gilbert Gottfried’s Rubber Balls and Liquor (St. Martin’s Press, 2011) is the most unassuming memoir by an abrasive, polarizing international celebrity (hello, Japan!) that you’re ever likely to read.

In contrast to his squinting, braying stage persona, in his book Gottfried underplays everything—his fame, his talent, his maturity. I highly recommend you purchase the thing. It makes fame and glamour seem mundane and confounding, a frank perspective which will appeal to a great many clear-headed working actors.

He also savages the very act of writing a memoir. When he uses a clichéd phrase, he instinctively stops himself, backs up and challenges the word choice:

It was music to my ears, a comment like that. No, he didn’t sing it. As far as I know, the man has no musical talent. Music to my ears is just another one of those meaningless expressions. He said something nice, and I was glad to hear it, that’s all. Maybe if Marvin Hamlisch was on the show that day there would have been some musical accompaniment.

The other main delight of the book for me is its theater-savvy namedropping, especially Gottfried’s deft use of stage icons as masturbatory material. Here are some juicy excepts:

Confession: watching Natalie Portman on Broadway was the only time I’ve ever jerked off to a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. I have, however, jerked off on several occasions to Hal Holbrook’s stirring performance as Mark Twain, for those of you keeping score.

***

The first famous person I ever met was Chita Rivera. She was probably fifty at the time. I had a vague idea who she was, and as far as I knew I’d never jerked off to her, so it wasn’t the most exciting encounter. She came up to me after one of my shows, when I was just starting out. She said, “Hi, I’m Chita Rivera.”

In response, I wanted to say, “Hi, I’m Gilbert. I jerked off to you in West Side Story.” But I was too shy. Plus, I wasn’t so sure this was the case, and I wanted to be accurate. Instead, I said, “Nice to meet you, Chita Rivera.” She told me I looked like one of her nephews or cousins. I told her she looked like Rita Moreno. And that was that.

***

The closest I came to landing an actual show business job was working the concession stands in Broadway theaters, selling T-shirts and drinks and overpriced candy. I got the job through another comic, who also needed to support his stand-up habit. The way it worked was that one guy owned the concessions in a bunch of different theaters, and we struggling comics or out-of-work actors would move from theater to theater, wherever we were needed. There were a lot of great shows playing on Broadway at the time, so I got another fine education. It was like taking an extension course, after watching all that television. There was American Buffalo, with Robert Duvall and John Savage. There was Equus, with Richard Burton. For a while, Richard Burton had to take a temporary leave, which I believe was what he did of his senses every time he married Elizabeth Taylor, and he was replaced by Anthony Perkins. The best part about working the concessions at Equus was the show’s famous nude scene. After I sat through the show a time or two, I had it all timed out. I’d go downstairs and relax in the lobby and listen for a certain speech, which was my signal to hurry back to my post in time to watch this girl take her clothes off onstage. This was another career highlight—for me, not the girl. My only regret was that I couldn’t jerk off to it. There were too many people around, and the couple times I tried I came all over the overpriced candy, which I was told was bad for business.

Rehearsal photo from the Jacques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far, the title one-act of the four-play evening Jacques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far, Nov. 18-Dec. 10 at New Britain's Hole in the Wall.

Unlike Jacques Brel, who is alive and well and living in Paris, Jacques Lamarre has gone too far. At least that’s the view of New Britain’s Hole in the Wall Theater, which is producing four of Lamarre’s one-acts Nov. 18-Dec. 10 at their hole in the wall at 116 Main St., New Britain.

“I kind of work in a fever,” Lamarre said in a phone interview last week. He caught the solo playwriting virus rather recently, churning out “close to a dozen one-acts” and three full-length plays in the past couple of years. As a collaborator, Lamarre’s been busy for much longer, co-concocting eight shows for the divine Varla Jean Merman, the glamorous cabaret provocateur whom Connecticut audiences also know from the Hartford Stage and Long Wharf Theatre co-production of Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery of Irma Vep in 2004.

“I ruminate on them for a while. When I finally find the time to sit down and do it, the writing happens very quickly.”

Lamarre pitched the idea for the show himself at one of the democratically run HITW’s general meetings. He’d worked with the company previously on a benefit performance of “R-Rated Mark Twain”—an extension of Lamarre’s day job as Manager of Communications & Special Projects at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford. Before joining the museum, he was well known in the regional theater realm—not as a writer but as a marketing specialist and publicist for Hartford Stage, TheaterWorks and the Yale Rep.

Considering Lamarre’s comfort in theater climes, it’s surprising that he doesn’t insinuate himself into the production process. But when his Grey Matters was produced in New York, he only attended “one half of a rehearsal,” and has been to only a couple of rehearsals for the Hole in the Wall show. He did make a few suggestions early in the game. There was talk of doing the four one-acts with a tight, flexible ensemble, but one of the glories of community-based theater is the availability of lots of actors. Each play in Has Gone Too Far has a different cast and a different director.

“I brought eight one-acts. In the end they picked three, and asked me to write a fourth one based on the title Jacques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far. They suggested that title by the way,” Lamarre illuminates, which he finds amusing since Varla Jean Merman calls him “Too Far Lamarre” whenever he crosses a taste line in one of their cabaret scripts.

“I wasn’t sure there was a guiding philosophy to the ones they picked, but as a whole it seems they’re really all about bad behavior in America. I kind of wish they’d picked this play I did called Miss Corrupticut, which is a pageant where the contestants are Ganim, Perez, Rowland and Giordano. I hope that one will get done someday, but you could only do it in Connecticut.”

The four plays Hole in the Wall is doing are described in a press release thus: In Mignonette, directed by Bethany Sanderson, an encounter between two women in a dog park turns into a cat fight. In The Buck Stops Here, directed by Michael Daly, a frustrated housewife engages the services of an ad agency to give her husband a marketing makeover. In Cain DisAbeled, directed by Terri D’Arcangelo, a FarmVille fracas between brothers turns into a battle of biblical proportions. And in Jacques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far, directed by Kit Webb, the Disneyfied town of Celebration, Florida gets turned on its Mickey Mouse ears when the title character moves in next door to a pack of Tea Party Patriots.

Rehearsal shot of Cain, DisAbled, from Jaques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far at the Hole in the Wall Theatre.

When writing, Lamarre finds that “I have little empathy for the characters. The goal is to do something funny. I’m influenced by things like John Waters—the earlier stuff, like Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble—and the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. I like that comic anarchy. But what I really like is not stopping the comedy to find the soft spot.” This leads to a rant about movies such as Bridesmaids which, despite their intended comic chaos, feel an odd need to stop the film short with emotional confessions or somesuch.

Lamarre offered Hole in the Wall his plays royalty-free—always appreciated by financially strapped small theaters which nonetheless want to present new work. LaMarre gets an honest showcase for his writing. He’s entered new-play competitions and done pretty well at some of them, but those efforts rarely end in full productions. “Contests are like throwing your work down a hole. So instead, I’m doing them at Hole in the Wall.”

But Lamarre’s also going too far in other directions. Last Sunday the Hartford Opera Theater premiered composer Philip Martin’s 12-minute opera based on LaMarre’s play The Family Plan. Martin and Lamarre have plans to add two more acts and expand the piece into a full-length opera. Two nights before that Hartford Opera “New in November” performance, Lamarre’s one-act The Rub was presented as part of a new-work night by the Floating Theatre at the Buttonwood Tree in Middletown. Quite the well-traveled writer.

As he says of the one-act which bears the same title as the Hole in the Wall anthology—Jacques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far—“I just wanted to get in that world and fuck with it.” Well, a lot of nearby worlds are welcoming him. Too much!

The Buck Stops Here, one of the four plays in Jacques Lamarre Has Gone Too Far. Photos courtesy of Hole in the Wall Theatre.

Little Ambrose, the tyke in the red cap, is the Stubby Kaye of the Little Archie gang. My daughter Mabel caught the Guys & Dolls reference in this story, reprinted in Archie’s Double Digest #208, June 2010.

Ambrose has recently resurfaced as a grown-up in Life With Archie magazine, living in New York and turning his retro diner into a nightclub. So his love of New York pop music has stayed with him into adulthood.

Death Dance by Linda Fairstein (Scribner, 2006).
In which the bestselling Fairsten’s regular heroine Alex Cooper (an NYC Assistant DA) and two NYPD pals are “drawn into the machinations of New York City’s secretive theatrical community.” There are long stretches when nothing theatrical is happening at all, but then there are some richly resonant passages that show Fairstein knows her stuff: a multi-page conversational rundown on the Evelyn Nesbit/Stanford White affair, for example.
Plus cool asides like this:
Kehoe called over to Mona, “Sweetheart, Mr. Chapman wants to know about the swing. Where’d we get it?”
“The Brooks Atkinson Theater, Ross. Revival of Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, remember? The girl on the swing that was decorated with the crescent moon.

Promo photo for The Game's Afoot, world-premiering at the Cleveland Play House later this month.

Connecticut's own William Gillette, at home (if not at Holmes).

The Cleveland Play House calls itself “America’s first professional regional theatre,” (begging the churlish question “What’s a professional region?!”). Their next production, The Game’s Afoot (or Holmes for the Holidays) is a world premiere with a Connecticut connection.
The title’s no mystery—this is a Sherlock Holmes caper set during Christmastime. Can a more commercial regional theater project be found? Yes, of course it can—the umpteenth adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and Cleveland is to commended for not attempting that. Instead, they’re debuting a new old-fashioned work by American farceur Ken Ludwig.
It was Ludwig who put the sass back in Gershwin with his book for Crazy for You. He wrote two comedies that have balanced and salvaged untold summer stock seasons: Lend Me a Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo. His work has played as well on Broadway as it has in the provinces.
‘Round these parts (New Haven, Connecticut), Ludwig is known for the musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which had a lavish pre-Broadway try-out at the Shubert Theater in 2001. It lasted less than two dozen proper performances in New York and (despite some obvious second-act problems) deserved better, and got a much nicer reception here in the state where Twain resided.

That’s not the Connecticut connection I’m talking about re Cleveland, however. The Game’s Afoot concerns not the fictional Sherlock Holmes but the actor who famously embodied the character onstage for over 30 years, William Gillette. Born on a farm in Hartford in 1853, Gillette continued to reside in the state even after achieving international fame—in a castle that’s become a major Connecticut tourist attraction.
Gillette Castle is a stone’s throw (or rather a stone’s skip along the river) from the Goodspeed Opera House. It’s also not far from the Ivoryton Playhouse, where the summer stock River Rep troupe performed the Gillette version of Sherlock Holmes (with Stephen Kunken, recently Tony-nominated for Enron, as Holmes) in 2003.

Here’s the Cleveland Play House promo synopsis of The Game’s Afoot:
We meet famed stage actor William Gillette at his Connecticut castle, recovering from an attempt on his life following a performance of his renowned play, Sherlock Holmes. It’s Christmas Eve, and much to his mother Martha’s chagrin, William invites fellow actors, Aggie & Simon and Felix & Madge, over for the holiday weekend. His elaborate home, filled with gadgets and hidden passageways, becomes the setting for a murder, and Gillette must use the Sherlock Holmes crime-solving skills he made famous on stage to catch the culprit. Will Gillette uncover the secrets his guests are hiding? Will he discover who the murderer is before he/she claims another victim? Will his guests ever be able to drink eggnog again?

The play, directed by Aaron Posner, plays the Play House Nov. 25 through Dec. 18.

Which will be the first theater in Connecticut to stage it?