Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Rain of stars


I have no particular beef with movie and TV stars taking the Broadway stage. Julia Roberts, in Three Days of Rain, and Katie Holmes, in All My Sons, weren't exactly revelatory but they didn't disgrace themselves; there were far worse things about the Miller revival than Holmes' earnest but undistinguished acting. I'm used to big stars treading the boards to give "EBU" performances (they get that a lot in reviews, along with a certain amount of cred for trying it) and don't usually comment on the latest news of someone braving the stage. But when I read that Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig are teaming for a play this fall, color me impressed.

The drama in question, a two-hander by Keith Huff called A Steady Rain, has gotten good reviews on its home turf and has a clever website to boot. Jackman and Craig are an unlikely pair of Chicago cops but I didn't really see the former as Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, and the latter as James Bond, and they have the chops to pull this off, too. I can only hope that new producer Barbara Broccoli, of the Bonds, won't mess it up, as she did with the ghastly musical of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (clips of which elicited groans from fellow viewers at my viewing last night of the excellent Sherman Brothers documentary, The Boys.) And if Jackman and Craig hit it off maybe Jackman, a Bond candidate, could be enticed to play a villain in an upcoming entry. That would be cool, too.

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