Pumping blood into Broadway’s arteries is “Hillary and Clinton.” The political play opens the 18th. John Golden Theatre. Already SRO, HRC might even have trouble nailing a seat.
Set during 2008’s New Hampshire primary. Campaign in trouble. She calls Bill to help. It works. She wins the state. Now from it comes a 90-minute play, which already tested in Chicago. Playwright Lucas Hnath, who also wrote “A Doll’s House, Part 2” — also about a powerful couple — also gets a splashy New Yorker profile in next week’s issue.
John Lithgow plays Him in jogging togs. Tracksuit for Her — Laurie Metcalf. Other characters, in whatever they’re wearing, are Obama and Mark Penn.
Listen, when chiefs of state and chiefettes reach the top of the world, they all live large. Take Schloss Elmau in Bavaria, Germany, top-of-the-line hotel where all world leaders park. It has big-time presidential type suites. But for the G7 summit, Obama had a whole floor. For himself and staff plus a hospital standard operating room — just in case!
Back aways, Ozzy Osbourne said about Betty Ford’s visit to her Betty Ford Center: “She comes in like royalty, has the unit polished, hovers like a blowup doll, swings at one end of the wing then flies out the other. It was, like, 12 Hail Bettys, and she goes home.”
Who knows qué pasa when Russia’s empress wanted two on the aisle for some Chekhov thing trying out in downtown Leningrad. I wasn’t there when Cleopatra and her asp grabbed front row on the Nile.
I only know Hillary remains today’s most glamorous showbiz fan. She enters a theater, the aisles part.
Last week she caught the Temptations musical. Cheers and selfies before the curtain went up. Afterward impromptu dance moves with the cast backstage.
At “King Lear,” she bowed to Glenda Jackson. At Madison Square Garden, she was in whoever’s dressing room. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” she brought her husband, and the audience went nuts.
Opening night’s after-party will be at an undisclosed location.
Also undisclosed is whether America’s most famous lady will show.
Dr. Ruth’s doc is everywhere
Dr. Ruth Westheimer. “My 90-minute documentary premiered at Sundance. At Duke, 1,000 people expecting to laugh not cry gave me three standing ovations. It includes my letters and kept diaries. I took the filmmakers to Jerusalem, where I was a sniper and to the Swiss village where I lived and to WWII’s January 1939 train station in Frankfurt, where I said goodbye to my family. If they hadn’t sent me to Switzerland, I wouldn’t be alive today. This footage is a graveyard for my family. It is loneliness. Like seeing my own grave.
“The Museum of Jewish Heritage on Battery Place will show the cattle car used to transport my mother and father to Auschwitz.”
After the doc does 80 movie houses then Hulu, her next book is out.
Here’s what I’m hearing…
Tom: “Why won’t lefty news anchors climb off DJT’s back long enough just so he can actually run the country? He’s so busy defending himself he barely has time left to run the country.”
John: “Because that’s exactly why. What they want. They don’t care about life, liberty and Facebook’s pursuit of happiness. Because they don’t want him to be able to run the country.”
I read this once, clipped it and for some reason fell across it again.
Back aways, Calvin Coolidge said: “I think the American public wants a solemn ass as a president, and I think I’ll go along with them.”
Only in America, kids, only in America.