Flanders screens re-scored Le Bal

ITS A GOOD MORNING back in Hollywood following the Flanders Intl. Film Festival, then a stop in New York. Ghent, the site for the fest screenings, displays a multicultural love for the arts. This year, the 17-year-old Ettore Scola masterpiece Le Bal, which was screened with a magnificently re-recorded score, will come to life again

IT’S A GOOD MORNING back in Hollywood following the Flanders Intl. Film Festival, then a stop in New York. Ghent, the site for the fest screenings, displays a multicultural love for the arts. This year, the 17-year-old Ettore Scola masterpiece “Le Bal,” which was screened with a magnificently re-recorded score, will come to life again — this time as a play — as the movie had originated. But now, the play will have music added, with songs of the ’90s as well … Peter Ustinov, one of the honorees at the festival, goes on to England to play the Walrus for Robert Halmi’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Ustinov also guestars in Halmi’s “Animal Farm” playing Napoleon, “who is my least favorite character in history.” The fest screening of “Billy Budd” also helped raise funds for UNICEF for which Ustinov is an ambassador of goodwill … Festival juror Julia Ormond told me why she hasn’t been talking about new roles for herself. “I’ve been living in New York for three years now,” she smiled, “and enjoying preparing to produce roles for others.”

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IT WAS A WEIRD EXPERIENCE to enter the Criterion Center on 45th and B’way in New York, my next stop, for the premiere of Beth Henley’s play “Impossible Marriage” for the Roundabout Theater Co. in the Laura Pels Theater. My first job, while still attending Townsend Harris High School, was as an usher, working the split shift in the Criterion. In those days, it was the firstrun N.Y. house for MGM’s so-called B pictures, and I escorted many of those players to their loge seats in the now-splintered complex. Ghosts of the past hovered as I watched Henley’s piece, which Daily Variety critic Charles Isherwood described as “a hothouse flower of a play, a comedy about modern marriage that gives off the perfume of another century.” Pulitzer-winner Henley (“Crimes of the Heart”), now home in L.A., laughingly told me she’d love for this play (three acts, no intermission) “to win the Nobel Prize. I love this play more than (my) others.” It is skedded at the Pels only until January. Holly Hunter, in her seventh role for Henley, plays a character who’s pregnant throughout the play. Hunter, who is childless, researched that condition from Henley, who started the play three years ago when she was carrying son Patrick. “Holly is the bravest actress ever,” said Henley. “She is fearless — she took this role to the limit.” Henley said her own mother “told me to write a happy play. And ‘Impossible Marriage’ is as happy as I can be!” She is working on her next (untitled) play, set in New Mexico where an offbeat family visits a mentally ill relative. Henley didn’t say how happy this play would be. She is also working on the rewrite of “Ruby McCallum” for “Beloved” director Jonathan Demme. The 1952-set “McCallum” is the (true) story of a black woman who murdered a white Florida doctor by whom she became pregnant. Henley said, “It’s about racism, greed, money and love — the kind of role Bette Davis or Joan Crawford would have loved to have played!”

HERE’S A PREVIEW of what Studio 54 will look like come Nov. 12, when “Cabaret” opens in its 50%-larger site on 254 W. 54th St. The show from the Roundabout, now at the Kit Kat Klub in the Henry Miller Theater on West 43rd Street, is moving complete with stars Jennifer Jason Leigh (Sally Bowles), Ron Rifkin, Blair Brown and Robert Bella; Sam Mendes directed the show, with Rob Marshall as co-director and choreographer. “54” is now noisily filled with jackhammers and welders tearing out the old, with carpenters putting in new tiers, and painters putting in gilt on the walls and ceiling. Set designer Robert Brill, who did the “Cabaret” set on 43rd street, is doing the revamping of this large hall, with its giant balcony. But he assures the intimacy of “Cabaret” will remain. A small stage juts out from the giant proscenium into three tiers of tables and chairs, backed by a bar. The band plays from above the actors. Plush colored carpeting and, of course, mirrored ceiling balls with special lighting will complete the atmosphere. A souvenir store is added with memorabilia to jibe with the “Cabaret” context. It all adds up to fun theater — and the new presentation of “Cabaret” is already a sellout. The site has a colorful history. The onetime (1927) Gallo Theater opera house became a legit house; then Billy Rose’s theater restaurant, the Casino de Paree; then the Palladium, Federal Music Theater, the New Yorker legit house, CBS’ Radio Playhouse — and then in the ’70s, Studio 54. Workmen were unable to remove the three-ton “54” safes and holes in the basement walls are reminders of the invasion by the gendarmerie … Today in N.Y., Steven Spielberg is on hand at the Lower East Side’s Satel-lite Academy for the Shoah Foundation’s bow of its CD-ROM, “Survivors: Testimonies of the Holocaust” to go (free) into schools, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio and Wynona Ryder. Also on hand, Dr. Hubert Burda, whose Burda Media co-sponsors with Maxell Corp. and will also make a German disk … Gloria Stuart is en route to N.Y. to present Jim Cameron with his GQ magazine Man of the Year award at RCMH Wednesday … Monday in L.A., Michael Viner and wife Deborah Raffin’s New Millennium Publishing Co. got an OK from Superior Court to void the non-competing clause in their sale of Dove, thus enabling the Viners to return to the audio book bizness — with major authors.

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