Fame or Famine

Actually, they are five people, stars that you’ve seen on stage and screen but who are coming instead to Broadway to show that they’re not just pretty faces in edited footage – they have the chops to get on a stage and command your attention.

1. Stephen Rea in Sam Shepard’s “Kicking a Dead Horse,” a one-man, one-act, one-horse play opening at the Public Theatre on July 14.
2. John Turturro, who you may have seen most recently in “the Bronx is Burning“, will be tackling a Beckett play, “Endgame”, April 25th. While he’s known for a lot of roles and directing triumphs, my favorite will always be “Illuminata”.
3. Two days later, Morgan Freeman will play a down-on-his-luck actor in the Clifford Odets classic “the Country Girl” at the Bernard Theatre.
4. I could celebrate May Day watching Laura Linney portray Marquise de Merteuil in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses, one of my girlfriend’s favorite plays (I’m not good enough with French to truly appreciate it, but I love Ms. Linney’s work and enjoyed Dangerous Liasons, the “dumbed down” movie version of the play).
5. And the final (and probably biggest) reason I’d love to spend the spring in New York: Ellen Burstyn is in “Little Flower of East Orange,” opening at the Public on April 6. But the surprise is that the production is directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, the creepiest villain ever in M.I. 3 and other films.

Alas, I suspect none of these are meant to be in the realm of my experience. But it’s nice to dream, don’t you think?

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