Offscript - Meat to please you
Who are Atlanta’s hottest actors?
Morgan Fairchild, a famous actress whose greatest talent may be her striking resemblance to a Barbie doll, will visit the Fox Theater Jan. 28-30 for five performances of The Graduate, the widely panned stage treatment of the classic movie. The touring show of The Graduate will make barely a blip on the city’s artistic radar, but expect Fairchild to get more attention from the Atlanta media than any local performer who plays an Atlanta stage this year.
We are a fame-crazed culture, and like the most voyeuristic paparazzi, we squander countless hours obsessing over celebrity actors and showbiz hangers-on. The pathology is especially chronic during the current film awards season, with cameras panting at red-carpet walks and post-ceremony press conferences.
But let’s take all that as a given. What seems disgracefully wasteful is the idea that the Atlanta media would devote more airtime and column inches to, say, Paris Hilton than such talented Atlanta actors as Carolyn Cook or Chris Kayser. Our TV stations and glossy magazines will show far more interest in a C-list Hollywood actor in town for a 24-hour publicity tour than a local thespian who performs seven shows a week in Atlanta. Even something as skin deep as those “Most Beautiful Atlantans” lists barely acknowledge that attractive, charismatic stage players exist here.
If we’re going to shower such excess attention on anyone, why not share a smidgen of the spotlight with hardworking native sons and daughters, the artists who live in the community, work in the community and enrich the cultural life of the community? (Simply being born in the area doesn’t count: Julia Roberts may hail from Smyrna, but Elton John’s more of a Georgian than she is.)
To put celebrity-watching to work for Atlanta’s theater scene in my own modest way, I suggest the following highly unscientific competition: a poll for Most Handsome Actor and Most Beautiful Actress. Who of Atlanta’s overlooked talents deserve to be a cover girl and guy? Who looks like, in the memorable phrase from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, “a walking streak of sex?” Think Atlanta’s onstage lookers have never gotten their due? Here’s a chance to be heard.
Simply e-mail your votes to this column at curt.holman@creativeloafing.com. If you can give reasons for choices, or identify especially hot performances, so much the better. I’ll announce the results in the Feb. 10 Off Script (which, by an incredible coincidence, happens to be this newspaper’s annual “Lust List” issue).
We can show the Morgan Fairchilds that they haven’t cornered the market on frivolous publicity.
Feeling blueJanuary has been blooming with new plays. But the thrill of the new diminished when Horizon Theatre postponed Blue, Nona Hendryx and Charles Randolph-Wright’s African-American family drama with music, from its scheduled opening in mid-January to July 8. Consequently, Horizon’s two-man musical comedy The Big Bang gets displaced to Sept. 9-Oct. 23 as the opening show of the 2005-06 season.
Co-artistic director Lisa Adler attributes the decision to keep the Horizon stage dark for two months to budgetary shortfalls. “Every play we do costs more money than we bring in with ticket sales,” says Adler. Horizon makes up the difference with donations, but foundation and especially corporate support has dried up in recent years. The playhouse opted to postpone Blue rather than go into debt.
Scare tacticsSpeaking of frightening situations, several local theaters are presenting so many scary works that it feels like Halloween is around the corner more than Valentine’s Day. From Jan. 28-Feb. 12, Whole World Theatre’s 3rd Space Theatre stages Simon Moore’s 1992 adaptation of Stephen King’s thriller Misery, staring John Chatham as a captive novelist and Kristi Deville as his No. 1 fan. New York’s Aquila Theatre Company brings its effects-heavy production of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man to Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts on Feb. 5. The tour of the musical comedy The Little Shop of Horrors, playing the Fox Theatre Feb. 1-6, features a 23-foot carnivorous plant (and incidentally, as part of the play’s doo-wop Greek chorus, singer LaTonya Holmes of Warner Robins, Ga.)