"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I, myself, deny it," wrote H. L. Mencken.

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I won’t attempt to actually critique the Hugh Jackman-Daniel Craig play, "A Steady Rain," which opened on Broadway this week. The critics were fairly uniform in their recognition of the mega fame of the play’s problem in its offering of these two huge screen stars. Contrast that with the slightness of the playwright Keith Huff’s mano a mano drama about two Chicago cops who find themselves in a mess. (As people kept remarking, you can see stories like this every night on TV in "Law & Order" and all the rest of the cop-crime dramas.)

In an opening night crowd that boasted Wendi and Rupert Murdoch, Diane von Fürstenberg and Barry Diller, Matthew Broderick, Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld, Jeff Goldblum, Woody Harrelson, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts – it was still interesting and enjoyable to see our two heroes, live and unlike themselves on stage.

Daniel Craig probably scores higher critically, with both his belt-and-suspenders type of unassuming, careful guy. He is all but unrecognizable in his middle-aged manner, complete with unattractive mustache. Hugh Jackman is his sexy self and probably relishes this stage role that lets him be profane and macho. (His last stint on Broadway was as the flamboyant Peter Allen in "The Boy From Oz.") Hugh verges on offensive as a wild man with a gun who acts out before he thinks and then analyzes his actions with self-justification.


Image © Joan Marcus

As I dressed to go to this opening, the male movie fan in my office expressed his delight and envy that I would see both James Bond and the Wolverine onstage in the flesh. Thereby hangs the problem for Craig & Jackman. Here on Broadway they are trying to bury their screen selves and it just isn’t really possible.

But it was and is an interesting thing to be in their audience. I had no idea what playwright Huff had in store, so I enjoyed the mystery of it all as the so-called, rather lurid plot developed.

The two-man drama, long on talk and short on action, is already Broadway’s top-grossing play with no other non-musical topping its potential at $1,167,954 for the week ending September 20. This beats even Billy Crystal’s "700 Sundays" one-man record.

"Rain" opened with a $12 million advance sale. In any case, it will all be over on December 6 so it is nice to have actually been there on opening night.

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Monday at one o’clock PM in Broadway’s Ambassador Theater, we’ll find E. L. Doctorow, John Guare, Sigourney Weaver, Vanessa Redgrave, Nora Ephron and John Kander all speaking to memorialize the famed agent Sam Cohn.

Tippy-top stars who were his clients will be there to pay tribute to the creative Mr. Cohn and, no doubt, there will be many mentions of his paper-eating habits. He was one of the last of the giant characters of showbiz, the inspiration for Dan Aykroyd’s character Arnold Moss in Ephron’s film "This Is My Life."

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You can forget about the ABBA songwriters (Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus) contributing to a "Mamma Mia!" sequel as many had hoped. "There will not be another ABBA ‘Mamma Mia!’ musical," says Benny.

After this enduring epic was made into a film that Meryl Streep’s acting pushed to become the UK’s highest-grossing movie, Meryl started talking about how she’d like to reunite Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Christine Baranski and Colin Firth for a follow-up.


Meryl Streep in "Mamma Mia" © Everett Collection

But the aforesaid Benny says he won’t permit even his back music catalogue to be used in a sequel. Maybe some film producer will find other songwriter music to go with screenwriter Catherine Johnson’s popular story. She’d like to write a sequel.