It's a Wonderful Life

The Geffen Playhouse held a fun holiday-themed fundraiser last night: a live radio-reading of It’s a Wonderful Life, starring four-time Oscar-nominee Annette Bening.  Tim, Karen and I are big fans of Bening’s stage as well as film work, so bought tickets on her name alone; but were even more thrilled when the rest of the cast was announced: Peter Gallagher, Bryan Cranston, Glenne Headly, Marty Ingels, Gregory Itzin, Shirley Jones, Leslie Jordan, Josh Stamberg, and Lorraine Toussaint.  We also knew there was a good chance Annette’s husband Warren Beatty would be in the audience, making the event doubly exciting.

Tim and I are Geffen season ticket-holders this year, so I called the subscriber hotline to get tickets.  I scored third-row seats!  I called Karen with the good news.

“Maybe we’ll sit next to Warren!” I exclaimed.

The play started at 8PM, but an email from the Geffen encouraged us to arrive early to celebrate the holidays.  Sure enough, 1940s carolers were singing in the lobby when we arrived, as people chatted and milled around.  Tim headed straight for the bar.  A woman walked by holding a plate piled high with cookies.

“They’re serving Christmas cookies!” I whispered to Karen before heading off to the right.  There I found a table displaying an assortment of baked goods, including cookies that we could decorate with four types of frosting.  We had, of course, eaten dinner before leaving for the theater, but that didn’t stop us from loading up.  Everyone else had the same idea, because soon the table was mobbed.  We stepped aside and watched as the locusts descended.  We were also on alert for celebrity sightings.

I knew that Warren Beatty would appear as soon as I went to the restroom and, indeed, the first thing Tim said, when I returned, was, “You just missed Warren Beatty!”

“WHAT!!?” I asked incredulously.

“He was standing two feet away,” Tim insisted.  A woman standing next to us confirmed.

“You and my husband,” she said, shaking her head.  Her husband was also in the bathroom.

“Did Karen see him?” I then asked.

“Nope.  She was at the bar getting a soda.”  

I broke the news to her when she returned and then sent Tim off to find Mr. Beatty.  He came back a few minutes later.

“Warren’s on the other side of the lobby!”  

The ten-minute warning lights were flashing as people started pouring into the theater.  Luckily, Warren Beatty is tall, so we could see him above the crowd.  He looked exactly as he looked the last two times I’d seen him: handsome.  We could now find our seats.

We never did see where Warren Beatty sat, but our seats were very good.  Since the play was a live radio-reading, five old-style microphones were setup at the foot of the stage.  The sound effects station was to the left.  Small bistro tables and chairs were arranged in the center for the actors to sit when they weren’t delivering lines.  The rest of the stage was tastefully decorated with huge one-dimensional Christmas trees.  The actors strolled out one-by-one and quietly took their seats while the audience continued to pour in.  At one point, Bryan Cranston walked to the front of the stage, looked at everybody and thoughtfully said, “What a good-looking crowd,” then sat back down.

Like everyone else, we are completely familiar with the 1946 Jimmy Stewart movie It’s a Wonderful Life and so tried to guess, beforehand, who was going to play which role.  We had even speculated that Annette Bening would play a female version of George Bailey, but then abandoned that idea when we saw the lineup of male actors.  Annette ended up playing Mary to Peter Gallagher’s George.  Leslie Jordan was Clarence and everyone else played all the other characters.  There was no intermission, but the acts were broken-up by vintage-sounding radio commercials read by the various actors.

The show was terrific—great performances and it was lots of fun watching the foley artist creating dozens of different sound effects.  We were hoping for more cookies on the way out, but the table was gone.  So instead we left humming “Auld Lang Syne” and looking forward to Christmas with our families.

Only in L.A.

Karen called a couple weeks ago, saying she could get discount tickets for a one-night benefit performance of "You Can't Take It With You," a play starring Tom Hanks and a stellar cast of friends. I had wanted to go, but the ticket price was prohibitive. I, therefore, jumped at the chance when Karen said she could get me in for a quarter of the price. The only catch: I had to buy at least two tickets. Tim wasn't interested and Karen had to work, so I sold the second ticket to Katie, a student who lives in Northern California when not taking classes at UCLA.

The event was held at UCLA’s Royce Hall, one of the most beautiful buildings on campus. We were, of course, relegated to the balcony with all the other cheapskates. I had foolishly left my binoculars at home, so we had to strain our eyes to see any celebrities in the audience below us. We imagined seeing Ron Howard, whose production company Imagine was one the evening’s sponsors, as well as Francis Ford Coppola, who catered the post-play reception.

The real action was on stage, however. Beside Hanks, the cast included Tom’s wife Rita Wilson, well-known character actress Caroline Aaron, Dave Annable (Justin on the TV show “Brothers and Sisters”), Maria Bamford, brilliant actress Annette Bening, Kevin Chamberlain, former Oscar-nominee James Cromwell, funnyman Ian Gomez, Jon Hamm (“Mad Men’s” hunky leading man), Peter Krause (of “Six Feet Under” and “Dirty, Sexy Money”), Mila Kunis (from “That 70s Show”), William Shatner (Captain Kirk himself!), comic genius Martin Short, Alicia Silverstone (the ingenue in “Clueless”), and Holland Taylor (the annoying mother on “Two and a Half Men”). The director was Nora Ephron, who worked with Hanks on “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.”

The play was wacky. Set during the Great Depression, it featured two lovebirds (Kunis and Hamm) who come from completely different backgrounds. Her family is extremely eccentric; his is reserved and rich. Conflict ensues when the families finally meet.

The event was billed as a “reading,” so everyone read from the script. The acting was good, even though apparently not much rehearsing went on beforehand. Annette Bening was her excellent self and Kunis and Hamm were appropriately attractive. But it was Tom Hanks who really stole the show. Wearing a tall fur cap, he played the Russian dance instructor who has opinions about everything (“IT STINKS!!”). He rarely stuck to the script and, at one point, started madly throwing chairs off the stage.

Not to be outdone, Martin Short, who played Bening’s husband, also veered from the script and several times brought the play to a screeching halt by rushing over to give Bening a long passionate kiss—all while her real-life husband, Warren Beatty, watched from the audience. Everyone screamed in delight. And then there was Bill Shatner, the play’s patriarch, who ad-libbed with the best of them. By the end, my cheeks hurt from laughing so hard!

After the applause, we ran downstairs to see if we could spot any celebrities exiting the theater. Looming above all the rest was Warren Beatty, looking exactly like he does in the movies.

“There’s Warren Beatty,” I whispered to Katie.

“And Faye Dunaway,” she responded, as I struggled to recognize the person standing next to him.

“Hmmm . . . Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty,” I thought to myself. “Why does that sound so familiar? Then suddenly, “Oh my God!” I yelped. “It’s Bonnie and Clyde!” What a thrill!

We followed the crowds to the patio where a champagne and dessert reception was being held. We hoped to rub elbows with some of the bigger name celebrities, but saw only James Cromwell (very tall) and Kevin Chamberlain (I still don’t know who he is!). Then, just as we were about to leave, I noticed flashbulbs going off inside the lobby. We pushed our way over to see what was happening.

I couldn’t see Hanks, Bening or Beatty, but we did have a clear view of Jon Hamm and Martin Short yucking it up about something. Actually, all we could see was the back of Hamm’s head as he laughed at Short’s antics. We stood there for several minutes and were about to give up when Hamm turned our way. We could see his face—well worth the wait!

It couldn’t get any better than that, so we left.