New Tell-All Spills the Dirt About Faye Dunaway and Mommie Dearest!

In 1981, I caught a screening of Mommie Dearest, with Faye Dunaway as aging Hollywood gorgon Joan Crawford in all her penciled-eyebrowed neuroses, and I was perhaps bizarrely impressed. I promptly called a friend to tell him I'd just seen something that works on every level, and I felt that no one could have made a better Joan than plucky, problematic Faye. After all, Joan herself had declared Faye the best of the new breed, and as if in preparation for playing this role, Faye had even battled with Joan's nemesis, Bette Davis. They clashed while making a 1976 TV movie called The Disappearance of Aimee, after which costar James Woods told me: "Faye Dunaway needs a step ladder to sniff Bette Davis's ass!"

I gaily assumed that all sorts of accolades awaited Faye and Mommie, but half-empty theaters led to a desperately campy ad campaign and Dunaway was suitably horrified. The film impacted her career, one reason being that Hollywood always protects its own legends, even when they're nightmares, and another being that many observers found Dunaway's work far from award-caliber, especially when gossip about her divaesque antics started getting passed along like soggy popcorn.

Interestingly, Faye was voted the first runner up for Best Actress at the New York Film Critics Awards that year and she was simultaneously awarded the Golden Razzie for the same performance. But whatever people think of her and this film, I've long felt that she should embrace it rather than constantly act mortified and try to run away from its power. The truth is, it's never going to go away, especially for the gays. And word has leaked that Dunaway is finally addressing the movie in a book, and she even reached out to Rutanya Alda, who so ably played Joan's trusty assistant, Carol Ann, for help remembering things. But Rutanya advised Faye to simply read her own book--the extremely readableThe Mommie Dearest Diary: Carol Ann Tells All, detailing Rutanya's experiences with one troubled Oscar winner playing another one. And if Faye does read it, I bet she'll be mad at the dirt!

DEAF POETRY JAM

Misunderstood youth made for another classic: Spring Awakening, the 2007 Tony winner that took Frank Wedekind's banned 1891 play about hormonal students at odds with misguided adults and made it throb with a stunning score by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, ripely delivered by a cast of newbies. As the melodramatic plot bubbled into suicide, pregnancy and gay love, the show's catch phrases ("the bitch of living", "My junk is you," "I'm gonna be your wound") instantly entered the musical theater lexicon with their blistering bouts of casual frankness and poetic pain.

And now, the show's been given new life by Deaf West Theatre, which has some actors signing their lines while their counterparts talk and sing for them; some signing with subtitles; and yet others (who are hearing) doing all three. The use of hearing and deaf actors--which was extraordinary when the company revived Big River in 2003--works well again, especially since all that movement is coordinated into choreography (at times, it almost comes off like voguing) and besides, it's a show about masturbation, and obviously that requires a lot of hand action! In all seriousness, the use of deafness to echo the play's themes about outcasts and nonconformity are moving, and the production--directed by Michael Arden and choreographed by Spencer Liff and featuring Marlee Matlin and Camryn Manheim among the grownups--makes a re-awakening out of this pulsing, rocking work. Hear, hear.

"I'VE WRITTEN A LETTER TO DADDY"

Another reinterpretation is Daddy Long Legs, an intimate chamber musical about an orphan girl who develops the attention of an anonymous donor who finances her education, as feelings simmer through her monthly letters to him. For the off-Broadway show--which has music and lyrics by Paul Gordon and book and direction by John Caird--they've ignored the relatively splashy 1955 Fred Astaire/Leslie Caron movie and gone back to the original Jean Webster novel instead. The two-character show has benefactor Jervis and schoolgirl Jerusha reciting their letters to each other, usually in song, which could be a limiting premise, especially considering the frustrating contrivance that "Daddy" won't reveal himself. But, with echoes of both She Loves Me and Love Letters, the result is sweet and charming, with pretty songs ("The Secret of Happiness" is a standout) and top-notch performances. Paul Alexander Nolan is strong as the conflicted rich guy with a crush, and Megan McGinnis--a leading lady in the Judy Kuhn mode--is a knockout as the evolving young lady who's getting her eyes pinned open by the minute. By the way, this is the third Leslie Caron movie in a row to be made into a stage musical. (There was already Gigi and An American in Paris.) When they sing and dance to the abortion drama The L-Shaped Room, we'll definitely have a trend. In any case, this Daddy definitely seems nicer than Mommie.