THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Tuesday, March 15, 2016

FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh

PAGES: 13, including this page

March 15, 2016

Yale Rep to Debut Works by Amy Herzog and Sarah Ruhl

By Michael Paulson

Two well-reviewed American playwrights, Amy Herzog and Sarah Ruhl, will debut new works in New Haven

as part of the next season at Yale Repertory Theater.

The theater, which is at the Yale School of Drama, said Friday that its 2016-17 season would include three

world premieres as well as productions of shows by Stephen Sondheim and August Wilson.

The new play by Ms. Ruhl, “Scenes From Court Life, or the Whipping Boy and His Prince,” is about two

political dynasties — the Stuarts of 17th-century Britain, and the Bush family of the contemporary United

States, and will be staged from Sept. 30 to Oct. 22. Ms. Ruhl has twice been a Pulitzer finalist, for “The Clean

House” and “In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play)” and is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation

fellowship.

The new play by Ms. Herzog, “Mary Jane,” is about a woman caring for her ailing son, and will be staged from

April 28 to May 20, 2017. Ms. Herzog was a Pulitzer finalist for “4000 Miles.”

The Yale Rep season will also include the world premiere of “Imogen Says Nothing,” by Aditi Brennan Kapil,

as well as productions of “Seven Guitars,” by Mr. Wilson, and “Assassins,” with music and lyrics by Mr.

Sondheim and a book by John Weidman.

C3

March 15, 2016

C1

March 15, 2016

Review: In ‘Widowers’ Houses,’ Loving a Slumlord’s Daughter

By Laura Collins-Hughes

At the beginning of this play, and at the end, the young Dr. Harry Trench stands alone in shadowy light, while

disembodied voices speak of money or call his name. The effect of these bookends is cinematic, and their aim is

clear enough: to frame George Bernard Shaw’s “Widowers’ Houses” as the story of one man’s moral struggle.

Yet this version of Shaw’s first play, adapted and directed by David Staller at the Beckett Theater at Theater

Row, never convincingly pulls that off. That’s partly because of Shaw: While he dressed up “Widowers’

Houses” (1892) with a love story, some comedy and several villains, his real concern is not an individual but a

pressing social ill — slumlords’ cruel exploitation of poor tenants — and the conditions that allow it to fester.

It’s also because the most interesting character in this curiously static production, presented by the Actors

Company Theater and Mr. Staller’s Shaw-focused Gingold Theatrical Group, is tempestuous Blanche Sartorius,

the woman Harry (Jeremy Beck) wants to marry.

Played by Talene Monahon with such take-no-prisoners ferocity that she awakened the sleeping man in front of

me during a fight scene, Blanche is the daughter of a rich slumlord (Terry Layman), who has raised her in

luxury. The source of that wealth, which Blanche wants to take with her into marriage, is what provokes

Harry’s discomfort and threatens their romance.

Mr. Beck’s Harry is comparatively bland, which puts him at a double disadvantage, because the other notable

performance here is by Jonathan Hadley as Cokane, Harry’s friend and sidekick. Cokane seems, quite

pleasingly, to have wandered in from an Oscar Wilde play, but this welcome liveliness also pulls focus from

Harry.

Shaw intended “Widowers’ Houses” to highlight the complicity, greed and indifference that allow the upper

classes to thrive at the expense of the lower. His third act bogs down in the obscure details of a real estate

scheme, yet it also contains the play’s most cutting line, when Sartorius, Blanche’s father, realizes just how

coldly his pampered daughter regards the poor. “I see I have made a real lady of you, Blanche,” he says.

The play is a novice effort by a fledgling dramatist, but it isn’t helped by Mr. Staller’s additions to the text,

which have none of Shaw’s comic acerbity. I can’t help thinking that the playwright would squirm.

“Widower’s Houses” runs through April 2 at the Beckett Theater, Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street,

Manhattan; 212-239-6200, tactnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour and 55 minutes.

C6

March 15, 2016

Robert Horton, Handsome Scout on ‘Wagon Train,’ Dies at 91

By Daniel E. Slotnik

Robert Horton, a ruggedly handsome actor who found television stardom in 1957 as the scout Flint McCullough

on “Wagon Train” but who resisted being typecast in westerns as he pursued a parallel career as a singer, died

on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

His death was confirmed by his niece, Joan Evans, who said that he was injured in a fall last November and had

recently been placed in hospice care.

Mr. Horton recorded albums and sang at the London Palladium, but he was never entirely successful in

shedding the frontiersman image. In his later years, he appeared at film-western events around the country.

He played Flint from the first episode of “Wagon Train,” in 1957, until the show moved from NBC to ABC in

1962. The series, inspired by the 1950 John Ford film “Wagon Master,” detailed the travails of people aboard a

wagon train journeying from Missouri to California after the Civil War. Mr. Horton was the show’s heartthrob,

often given occasions to remove his shirt.

Starring with Mr. Horton was Ward Bond, who played the grizzled wagon master, Maj. Seth Adams. (Mr. Bond

also appeared in the Ford film.)

Onscreen the two had an almost father-son relationship, though they did not always appear together; episodes

tended to feature one or the other in alternate weeks. But offscreen they often clashed. After one particularly

fierce argument, the two men vowed not to appear together on camera again. (They did weeks later, however,

when the script called for it.)

Mr. Bond died of a heart attack in 1960, and John McIntire became the new wagon master. “Wagon Train”

overtook “Gunsmoke” atop the Nielsen ratings in 1961.

Mr. Horton left the show when it was at the height of its popularity, turning down a lucrative contract because,

he said, he wanted to avoid becoming typecast.

“There is a lot more to this business than just collecting your paycheck,” he told The Saturday Evening Post

shortly afterward. “Getting rich as an actor and then sitting on an island someplace and drinking vodka is not

my idea of how to spend my life. I’m interested in using whatever talent I have.”

Mr. Horton pursued a recording and musical theater career while he worked on “Wagon Train,” making albums

and performing in nightclubs. His appearance at the Palladium in London drew “squeals and shrieks,” one

newspaper reviewer said.

B14

He also played the rainmaker in “110 in the Shade,” a musical version of N. Richard Nash’s play “The

Rainmaker,” on Broadway in 1963. Despite lukewarm reviews, the show ran for nearly a year, after which Mr.

Horton performed in regional theater.

In 1965 he returned to westerns to star in “A Man Called Shenandoah,” an ABC series about a man with

amnesia who roams the West searching for clues to his past. Mr. Horton said he accepted the part because he

saw the show’s story as more interesting than that of a typical western. “Basically it’s a character study of a

man in search of his identity,” he told The Daily News of New York.

He also sang the show’s theme song, and his rendition was included on an album, “The Man Called

Shenandoah.” Though the show lasted one season, the recording remained his most popular.

Meade Howard Horton Jr. was born to a well-off family in Los Angeles on July 29, 1924. He was such an

impetuous child, he said, that he never felt he fit into his proper Mormon household. He overcame operations

for a hernia and an enlarged kidney to play football at a military school in North Hollywood.

He enlisted in the Coast Guard in 1943 but was medically discharged because of the enlarged kidney.

In 1945, a chance encounter with a talent scout led to an uncredited part in Lewis Milestone’s World War II

film “A Walk in the Sun.” Mr. Horton’s parents were not pleased.

“I rushed in and said, ‘Dad, I’ve got a part in this picture!’” Mr. Horton recalled. “And he said, ‘That’s probably

the worst thing that ever happened to you.’”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr. Horton moved

to New York, where he struggled to find work. He returned to California and appeared in the movie “Apache

War Smoke” in 1952. Mr. Horton acted in six more pictures for MGM and appeared on television shows like

“The Lone Ranger” and “The Public Defender” before winning the part on “Wagon Train.”

He married the former Marilynn Bradley in 1960. She is his only immediate survivor.

Mr. Horton threw himself into the “Wagon Train” role. He studied the frontier era, drove the actual route the

fictional wagon train took, and invented a back story for his character. He did most of his own horseback riding

on the show.

He also often fought with the writers.

“I have to rewrite half the scripts,” Mr. Horton told The Saturday Evening Post. “Otherwise I’d get laughed off

the screen.”

March 14, 2016

Timothy Olyphant in Hold On To Me Darling: EW stage review

By Isabella Biedenharn

In description alone, Hold On To Me Darling, a new play by Kenneth Lonergan (This Is Our Youth), sounds like a bummer: Country & western star Strings McCrane returns to his hometown in Tennessee after his mother’s death, distraught and determined to leave the world of celebrity for a more meaningful one back home. But with Timothy Olyphant (Justified) anchoring a pitch-perfect cast, and with Lonergan’s absolutely uproarious script, it’s the farthest thing from tragedy.

Clarence “Strings” McCraine (Olyphant) is, as his brother Duke (C.J. Wilson) tells us, “the third biggest crossover star in the history of country music.” As is the Hollywood way, Strings is blissfully unaware of his own self-absorption, and his fawning assistant, Jimmy (a hilariously eager Keith Nobbs) doesn’t do much to help his case. “I’m-a cut myself for sayin’ that. I’m-a cut myself!” Jimmy cries after carelessly suggesting Strings stay at his late mother’s now-empty house.

Before long, Strings takes up with his massage therapist, Nancy (Jenn Lyon), a sweet Southern lady who skillfully camouflages her shrewd, calculating side with maternal “Honeys” and “Darlings.” “I don’t know anything about this show business. I was raised with dogs and chickens!” she constantly reminds everyone around her — a refrain that comes back in a quite amusing scene toward the play’s end.

While Nancy’s sinking her claws into Strings, his eye wanders to his second cousin twice removed, a sweet widow named Essie (Rectify’s Adelaide Clemens) — it’s not entirely clear how uncomfortable we’re supposed to feel about this tryst, but the fact that she’s usually called “Cousin Essie” is a pretty good hint. Between his lady troubles and his new plan to give up the glitter of music and movies to buy and run the local feed store with his half-brother Duke, Strings is in over his head, following his impulses wherever they may yank him.

Olyphant exudes palpable charisma: It’s not hard to understand how people could be enraptured by Strings even while rolling their eyes at him. Lyon’s sly Nancy is particularly skilled at putting him in his place while still being completely obsessed: “I know you’re sayin’ to yourself, ‘Why me? Why am I responsible? I’m not the President, or a spiritual leader, or even a professional athlete. I’m just a country & western singer with the most beautiful baritone voice in the world,’” she tells him during one impassioned lecture.

Act I carries the audience on such a grand wave of laughter that the momentum slips a little during a slightly too long Act II — and the ending feels a bit anticlimactic, if only because it was inevitable. But the only real downside of this utterly delightful show is that C.J. Wilson’s Duke doesn’t have enough stage time: He’s both a gruff, beer-swilling stereotype and a surprisingly fresh take on the Southern man, going off on well-informed tangents about space exploration and running verbal laps around his superstar kid brother. And if you’re still not convinced to check out Hold On To Me Darling? Olyphant has a lengthy scene in a tiny pair of briefs.

March 14, 2016

Hold on to Me Darling

By David Cote

Among the classic motifs of a country & western song are lost love, patriotic pride, Mama, dogs and loneliness as wide as the prairie. For his sixth play since This Is Our Youth, Kenneth Lonergan omits the pooches but includes the rest—and then some—for a scruffy, shaggy and touchingly earnest portrait of celebrity in free fall. A pilgrim’s progress for a Garth Brooks–like megastar, Hold on to Me Darling is the Lonergan we’ve always loved: poet laureate of verbose losers, this time with a Tennessee drawl. Music icon and film star Strings McCrane (Timothy Olyphant, pure snaky charm and carrying every scene) has just learned that his mother has died, and he’s in meltdown. Grieving and fretting in a Kansas City, Missouri, hotel suite and AWOL from a movie shoot, Strings gets no solace from his servile assistant, Jimmy (Keith Nobbs), or even from a rubdown by nervous masseuse and fan Nancy (Jenn Lyon). A heartfelt conversation with Nancy follows, and before long, the seminude Strings is strumming his guitar and kissing the stranger. His mother’s funeral, more romantic feints and wildly ill-advised career moves follow as Lonergan sends his pampered, discontented hero into a comic labyrinth to make something good out of his life. C.J. Wilson steals his scenes with dry, earthy aplomb, as Strings’s straight-talking, piss-taking brother. And as a distant cousin

who attracts Strings’s attention, Adelaide Clemens mixes primness and passion to touching effect. Running close to three hours, Hold on to Me Darling is almost defiantly overwritten and leisurely in its handling of character and plot. With any other writer, you might tire of these selfish, ethically awkward folks, wobbling between caricature and sudden depth. But even when Lonergan’s not sure of the way, he’s so damn fun to follow. His dialogue is sharp and funny, and his characters slip easy judgment (Nancy is more than a gold digger; Jimmy’s more dangerous than a lapdog). Even when he introduces a major character two-and-a-half hours in, you watch and listen. Neil Pepe’s perfectly balanced production on a revolving set by Walt Spangler makes virtues of the script’s woolier byways, and he gets rich, firmly grounded work from the ensemble. Strung out though you may feel, you won’t want to let go.—David Cote Atlantic Theater Company (Off Broadway). By Kenneth Lonergan. Directed by Neil Pepe. With Adelaide Clemens, Jonathan Hogan, Jenn Lyon, Keith Nobbs, Timothy Olyphant and C.J. Wilson. Running time: 2hrs 50mins. One intermission.

March 14, 2016

‘Hold on to Me Darling’ Theater Review: Timothy Olyphant’s Fake Tears Make for Real Laughs Kenneth Lonergan’s new comedy looks at the Nashville/Hollywood axis

and a monster it has spawned

By Robert Hofler

What a difference an hour and 10 minutes make. Kenneth Lonergan has written a terrific new comedy titled “Hold on to Me Darling,” which opened Monday at the Atlantic Theater, and it runs about two hours and 40 minutes. Whoa! In the current theater world, that’s a “Gotterdammerung”-size play. Anyone who goes to the theater regularly these days knows the experience. Ushers announce that the play is 90 minutes with no intermission, and there’s an immediate sigh of relief from the crowd. In my opinion, do you know what’s even better than a 90-minute play? Staying home and watching cable TV, that’s what.

“Hold on to Me Darling” is great, fun theater because 1) Lonergan has real talent, and 2) he takes that extra hour-plus to develop not only a truly inspired principal character with the delicious name Strings McCrane but surrounds him with five other characters, each of whom exudes enough backstory to spawn five other plays. You will immediately know Strings McCrane, played to perfection by Timothy Olyphant. You’ve either worked with him or interviewed him. Maybe you are him. Strings is a country star who has crossed over to the movies, where he has made it big playing comic-book heroes. He’s pampered, insulated, obscenely rich, self-obsessed, hounded by the paparazzi, and his beloved mama in Tennessee has just passed away. When we first meet Strings, he’s in the process of smashing another priceless guitar because, dammit, his life is just so hard and thankless. No problem. His loyal assistant, Jimmy (Keith Nobbs in another pitch-perfect performance), has a spare top-of-the-line guitar ready to go. Jimmy, as written by Lonergan and played by Nobbs, could be a whole other play. He’s the Uriah Heep of the modern-day entertainment world, and anyone who has worked or covered the biz knows this guy. He’s the shadow who knows more about the star’s life and resume than the star himself. He might be homosexual, but the creepy thing is that he’s probably not. Lust would at least explain his groveling devotion. To calm Strings’ many frustrations, Jimmy orders up a hotel masseuse, and so enters Nancy (Jenn Lyon), who is destined to run through the categories of one-night stand, girlfriend, fiancée, wife, and ex-wife faster than Strings’ country twang allows him to finish one of his endless sentences. Without giving away too much of the story, let’s just say Strings’ family and relatives are played by a superb ensemble that includes C. J. Wilson, Adelaide Clemens, and Jonathan Hogan. What their life in the star’s shadow has been like looms large in every scene they share with Olyphant. In so many 90-minute plays, they would be reduced to mere types who show us a single facet of the lead character’s personality. Here, Lonergan’s supporting characters are filled with many facets of their own. “Hold on to Me Darling” doesn’t ramble so much as it takes its time, and director Neil Pepe keeps all the comic moments percolating, one on top of the other. The minor miracle at the end is that after laughing at Strings’ many indulgences, Lonergan gives us a glimpse beyond the spoiled country boy. Suddenly, it’s almost sad in Johnny Cash sort of way.