By Carol Toscano
For all of Daryl Roth’s talents and accomplishments, what you most take away from a meeting with her is a sense of the respect and affection she has for the great creative minds of our times and times past. And although she’s best known as a theatre producer, her own breadth of work, as well as the admiration she shows for the creative accomplishments of others, seems to extend far beyond the world of theatre to include the written word, film and television, dogs, grandchildren—the list goes on.
Daryl Roth came to the theatre later in her life after a successful career as an interior designer. “I started as an enthusiastic audience member from the time I was a young girl,” she explains. “My parents loved musical theatre so they would bring us— my sister and me—as young kids into New York City to see a show, have lunch, and it just became part of my life. I loved it and I continued going to the theatre all through my life.”
Daryl loved the theatre but never had a desire to be on-stage. “I didn’t even figure out a way that I might fit into the world of theatre until later in my life,” she says. “It was out of a love of theatre and of a way to try to find myself a wonderful career that would be fulfilling for me—I just felt somehow driven to find a way to have a life in the theatre.”
At the time Daryl was pondering a career change, she was living in New Jersey where she had raised her two children, a son and a daughter. “I’m very happy to have raised my children in New Jersey,” she says, “Because we had the best of both worlds. But, I was a grown lady and finally said to myself, ‘What would you like to do more than anything else?’ I’ve been doing this now for almost 23 years.”
In those 23 years (and counting), Daryl Roth has produced some of the greatest talent and some of the greatest works including six Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, Proof by David Auburn, Wit by Margaret Edson, How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel, Three Tall Women by Edward Albee and Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz. She also produced the legendary Bea Arthur in her final Broadway engagement in Bea Arthur on Broadway: Just Between Friends in 2002. Today, she is the producer of A Little Night Music starring Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Fela!, The Temperamentals and Love Loss and What I Wore written by Nora Ephron—one of the most influential female writers of the day—with her sister, Delia Ephron. “There’s nothing like New York theatre,” she says. “And by theatre, I don’t mean just Broadway, I mean the greater landscape of off-Broadway.”
In 1996, Daryl Roth converted the Union Square Savings Bank on 15th Street into a multi-use theatre, which currently houses two performance spaces. The original idea was to create a single 399-seat theatre but when Daryl realized the potential the space had with its high ceilings and raw, unobstructed space, she took a different approach. The Daryl Roth Theatre once housed the long-running hit De La Guarda but has also been home to everything else from musical concerts and award-winning plays in various seating configurations to the current production, Fuerzabruta. Since 2002, a smaller, more intimate 99-seat performance space, called the DR2, was added where new works are introduced to the public in a warmer and safer environment. Zero Hour, the critically acclaimed play about Zero Mostel’s life, begins performances in the DR2 this month.
“Truthfully, I adore off-Broadway because new writers are discovered and some interesting, edgier plays are produced,” she says. “I can’t wait to get into the next project. I’ll do anything for a show,” she admits. “I’ve been known to insert flyers into newspapers waiting to be picked up on doorsteps while I’m out walking my dogs in the morning. I love doing what I do in a way that’s not a job for me—I feel compelled to do it.”
On January 13, Daryl was the recipient of a Sardi’s portrait for her extensive achievements in theatre. The event was hosted by Daryl’s son, producer Jordan Roth (on right in photo above) and actors Charles Busch (left) and David Hyde Pierce, with an audience of friends and colleagues that included Kathleen Turner and Michele Lee (in photo at top), Judith Light, Bob Balaban, David Pittu and many, many other friends and admirers of Daryl’s work.
In 2001, Daryl put her hand to the screen as an executive producer for the highly successful HBO Film, Dinner with Friends, starring Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell, Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette. The film was nominated for two Primetime Emmys. This year, Daryl completed a documentary entitled My Dog: An Unconditional Love Story in which she recruited 14 of her friends (celebrities and notable people) who share her love of dogs. They agreed to be filmed with their pets either in their homes or in their dog parks for a discussion on what the human/animal bond has meant to each. The documentary features Edie Falco, Richard Gere, Glenn Close, Didi Conn and 10 others and will premiere with the ASPCA in May 2010. Daryl owns two Lowchens named Leo and Lucy.
In all of Daryl’s combined work, there’s an exceptional quality to what she chooses to produce. “I really care about the projects I choose,” she says. “I have a fearless tenacity about what I produce and I’m a hard-working producer.” Daryl says she’s attracted to stories that show people overcoming odds or who are in a position of not being believed in by others. And recently, she produced Dear Edwina, a children’s musical in the DR2, that is, in Daryl’s words “a Dear Abby for kids.” Now that she has grandchildren, she has a particular interest in producing good quality children’s programming. “The sooner you get them in, the sooner they grow up loving the theatre. It’s about creating new audiences, ” she says. “Plus, it’s become a family affair for me. My son has loved theatre from an early age and now makes his career as a producer and the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, my daughter enjoys my taking her children to theatre and my husband has also come into the fold. He feels that his life has been greatly enriched by meeting people he never would have, otherwise. It has made me feel very fulfilled.”
Woman Around Town’s Six Questions
Favorite Place to Eat: Circo
Favorite Place to Shop: Bloomingdale’s
Favorite New York Sight: Central Park
Favorite New York Moment: Opening Night!
What You Love About New York: The energy!
What You Hate About New York: The garbage
Photo of Daryl Roth with friends at Sardi’s by Jenny Anderson.
Housewives (Teri Hatcher doll, left, although Eva Longoria sells the best), from animated Disney characters to those inspired by beloved storybooks, art, history, geography, and fashion as well as baby dolls, TV shows, Broadway musical stars, and the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, The Madame Alexander Doll Company has always created an extraordinarily wide range of friends and collectibles. (See The Addams Family, above). One set can be accrued by eating Happy Meals.
First stop is a Showroom housing the broadest variety of current Alexander dolls you can view anywhere—every size, shape, historical period, and nationality. My nine-year-old guests ran from shelf to shelf calling out names of recognized characters. From Angelina Ballerina and Fancy Nancy to Christopher Robin and friends, from high fashion to baby dolls.
In other words, if you build it, Dave will come.
Barbara (Tina Benko,) is a wired, whippet thin, antisocial, intellectual nihilist so ambitious she comes to work on Christmas Day. With the fervor of an evangelist, she intends to complete an animated sequence inserting base, dark reality and “ironic doubt” into a film about cartoon coffee beans for which “Randy Newman is writing songs in Spanglish and there’s already a Happy Meal.” Barbara thinks Disney did the imagining for us. She speaks in stone-faced baritone monotone whether describing her own primal sexual impulses or scientific rationalization.
Sondheim gave Stritch a gift, her signature song, “The Ladies Who Lunch,” from Company. She first sang it on Broadway in 1970 and she sings it again at the Carlyle (along with another song from Company, “The Little Things You Do Together”) to the great delight of her audience. Stritch, who turns 85 on February 2, has unlimited energy and enthusiasm. Resplendent in a sparkling black dress, her light hair forming a halo around her head, she’s constantly moving around on the small stage. When she finally sits on a stool for one song, she doesn’t remain seated for long. She stays in motion—needs to stay in motion—whether she’s singing Sondheim or talking about him. After her show, she doesn’t dash off to rest; she holds court in the rear of the Café, talking and laughing with several celebrities who have attended her show, and graciously accepting the compliments from her fans.
And what a show it was! She began with a tongue in cheek rendition of “I Feel Pretty,” from West Side Story, lyrics by Sondheim. Although most people think of Sondheim’s musical compositions, he also penned memorable words. Stritch allowed the audience to truly appreciate this side of Sondheim when she recited, without music, “Every Day a Little Death,” from A Little Night Music, the revival now playing on Broadway. “Every day a little death, in the parlor in the bed…” Even the waiters in the Café stood stock still.
Ernest in Love, the musical adaptation currently featured at The Irish Repertory Theater, had a prime source from which to cull winning dialogue between what turn out to be seamlessly embedded songs. Anne Croswell (who co-wrote, among other things, the original Vivian Leigh Tovarich) and Lee Pockriss (composer of pop songs, film scores and Broadway shows) have a full page of Playbill credits between them. They know the score. The songs are charming, effective and well paced. Rhymes are solid and comfortably old fashioned (not a criticism). The wit, if somewhat less sharp than Wilde’s repartee, is clever and character appropriate. Like The New York Times, I especially appreciated the operetta-like “A Handbag is Not a Proper Mother.” I also liked “You Can’t Make Love”—”one can have an escapade with dairy maids and marmalade”—and “My Very First Impression,” during which emotions radically swing from correctly polite to refined cat fight. The duets in particular are arranged with craft and good musical direction by Mart Hartman. An excellent four piece orchestra (including a rarely seen harp) ably carries us along.
Of the cast, only Tony nominee, Beth Flowler (Lady Bracknell), comes close to spitting Wilde’s lines as intended. The playwright’s women are purveyors of his intent. Fowler clearly understands this. Her presence on the stage is weighty and representative. Additionally, her accent was more believable/accurate, casting an inadvertent shadow on the others.
In a season resplendent with stars, Catherine Zeta-Jones is the one who tops the theatrical Christmas tree. If anyone doubts her chops, just watch her bring down the house with her dramatic interpretation of the oh-so-familiar “Send in The Clowns.” We’ve heard it done a million times, but never quite like this. Anguish, wry humor, yearning and hope are all intermingled with her strong, sure vocal delivery. There are other actresses who can and have played this role, but it’s impossible to imagine anyone who could be so well cast. Yes, she won an Oscar for her killer (literally) turn in Chicago, but it’s the warmth and intelligence she brings to Desiree that make her so much more than a great song and dance gal. Her status as one of the most beautiful women in the world is guaranteed, but her carriage, poise, and the ability to connect with the audience make her a potent stage actress, too. This is, to put it mildly, a rare and precious combination.
