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04/21/2009 1:00 am

Culture

Liz Smith: Marlo Thomas – What Is She Doing 'New Year's Eve'?

Also from Our Gossip Girl, three women writers to watch for … and the publisher behind them.

“Do put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington, do put your daughter on the stage.” I am reversing Noël Coward here. I asked the actress Marlo Thomas what her famous father, the late comedian Danny Thomas – a devout Roman Catholic – would have thought of her current stage performance in a wicked, profane, sophisticated play. She said, “He wouldn’t have cared as long as I was getting real laughs!”

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Something wonderful is happening these nights – and until May 10 – at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ! And, with any critical luck, it might one day soon move itself to The Great White Way of New York’s Broadway!

I am talking about the witty and urbane new comedy of “manners” that has been written by theater genius Arthur Laurents – he of the most recent triumphant revivals of “Gypsy” and “West Side Story.”

When I came up the stairs at the George, there was my old friend Arthur in the lobby, looking much as he has looked through all the years since I met him back in the ’50s. Mr. Laurents is now 90 years old, and I said, “Arthur, I’ll bet you literally bounced up those stairs I just had so much effort in climbing.” He laughed. “I did. You know, a reporter asked me the other day how I can be so energetic at my age. I told him the answer was simple – sex!”

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Sex! Well, indeed there is plenty of sex onstage in Arthur’s new play, “New Year’s Eve.” I wouldn’t want to ruin the experience for you by giving away the plot, but this is all about dysfunctional life at the top — a superstar, legendary actress in the “All About Eve” tradition,  growing older, of course. Then, her fabulous, upcoming, star daughter is on hand, with the urbane, handsome playwright husband. Plus, their friends and enemies, gay and straight.

Arthur Laurents may once have been lightly touched by Noël Coward because there is all that same clinking of champagne glasses, black tie, fabulous gowns, jewels and beautiful high heels onstage, glamour galore and then all the low, conniving, funny and tragic underbelly of sex, lies, desertion, abandonment, jealousy, ambition, stinging wit and saucy dialogue. Mr. Laurents, however, always exerts his own confident brilliance and goes for the jugular. (Noël Coward would have fainted at this take on “Design for Living.”)  

As the super-glam actress and star, our own Marlo Thomas is simply unbeatable. With her shining, red mane of hair, her gorgeous clothes, her brilliant one-liners, her hidden hurt, her throwaway humor  – you can’t take your eyes off of her. The fabulous Keith Carradine is still a leading man with cojones. He is real and impressive onstage with the added thrill of our familiarity with his onscreen self. The third member of their entourage is actor Peter Frechette, who turns his mild-mannered business accountant into a formidable exotic gay threat. (A very funny, offbeat bit of casting and acting.) I also liked Natasha Gregson Wagner as the rising-star daughter and hunky Walter Belenky as a natural, sexy, creative man with hidden wisdom. (Something like Rousseau’s nature boy with surprising brains.) 

The night I saw this play with a New Jersey audience, the kisses onstage between male actors caused some people to go “Ooomph!” in shock, and I’m told one night someone  yelled out, “Stop it! Stop it!” But playwright Laurents isn’t listening to yesterday’s mindset. (He never has in his long, astounding and original career.) His characters go right on in their surprising, devious and sometimes good-hearted ways, “living” their complicated lives. Broadway will be more accepting and will, I believe, embrace this outing enthusiastically.