Izzy

Last week I saw a fantastic play, Call Me Izzy starring Jean Smart.

One woman, two hours, no intermission.  Just Jean.  Such a range in her acting ability, especially if you’re a Hacks fanatic like me.  Not a remote chance you’d feel a pinch of Deborah Vance in this performance.  She made the audience laugh uncontrollably, sob for minutes, and received a standing ovation mid-performance.  That’s rare.

One person plays are so intriguing.  I’ve seen Master Class several times and with several different actors portraying Maria Callas during her brief stint as a vocal coach (from hell) at the Juilliard School.  I saw the original with Zoe Caldwell, Patti Lupone in London, a great Dixie Carter and finally and probably the best … Tyne Daly.  She coaches, reflects and/or hallucinates her life and was captivating. 

I saw Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking on Broadway.  It’s unthinkable the concentration an actor must employ in a one actor show.  And then there’s the whole cell phone idiot thing.  A cell went on and was eventually silenced which clearly broke Vanessa Redgrave’s concentration. She politely smiled and backtracked a bit until … the same cell phone goes off and this time the owner not only takes the call but starts a conversation. Well she wasn’t polite.  She and stood up and glared at this moron and two ushers got him out of there in a matter of seconds.  Well that one threw her off completely. Visibly shaking.  They took a ten minute break.

Just one actor ever played Charlotte von Mahlsdorf on Broadway.  His name is John Tufts and was tasked with playing a transvestite in Berlin during World War II … AND thirty other distinctly crafted characters.  Different accents, languages, ages, genders.  Nothing short of amazing.  No understudy.  No one else could possibly do this play and I doubt it was ever done again.  Thankfully the audience was sensitive to the complexity of what was going on and/or speechless at what they were witnessing.

But Call Me Izzy.  One can only hope the Tony Nominating Committee has a long memory when they place their bets next May and remember Jean Smart.  But the really interesting thing is this.  Two weeks after it opened, Jean Smart broke her knee and had surgery to pin it together.  Her understudy took over for two weeks and the director completely restaged the play for a now immobile Jean Smart upon her return.  Talk about brilliance.  They choreographed scene changes with furniture being rearranged including a human chair named Izzy.  That’s right.  She was moved about four times on stage like an arm chair.  Talk about suspending belief.  After the second time I was barely aware of it.  They graciously extended the run for two weeks to honor all the ticket holders that didn’t see Jean Smart at her insistence.  

Classy woman.  And what an actor.