As it happens, many of these actors have considerable stage experience anyway. Spacey first performed Iceman last fall in London, and the critics collapsed in admiration. Turturro, who estimates he did more than 100 plays before turning to film, gave one of the most thrilling performances of the season -- and got a slew of young people to come see Waiting for Godot. Casting film folk has also kept some really fine shows (Side Man) and productions (Cabaret) and institutions (Classic Stage Company) afloat.
The problem is when the opposite happens. Kidman sold out a play by David Hare that is, in both the literal and the metaphorical sense, only skin-deep. When Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett starred in last spring's Public Theater production of Macbeth, it sold out, too, despite deservedly rotten notices, including a warning from the Daily News that Baldwin sounded like John Gotti and Bassett approached Shakespeare's prose as if she were "trying to eat a live eel." Hunt didn't fare much better in the Lincoln Center Theater production of Twelfth Night; John Simon declared in these pages that her interpretation of Viola was "as bad as it gets."
During our conversation, Sella ruefully noted that Side Man is now known as "the Christian Slater play" -- an irony, given that the subject is artists who work in the shadows of stars. But he also knows that Slater's presence is keeping his colleagues employed, and it's helping bring audiences to a real play about real people, and it may even be encouraging struggling authors to continue writing, because they know that Slater might someday want to do their plays, too.
Emanuel Azenberg, the Broadway stalwart and producer of Iceman, points out that the real trouble often begins when a celebrity leaves a show. I ask what he plans to do after Spacey's departure. "I'm going to cry," he says. "I'm going to ask him to stay a little longer. And then," he concludes, "we're going to close."
Email
Print
Eight Year-End Films Vie for Oscar Contention
Sondheim and Lansbury on a Lifetime in Theater
The Black Keys Release Their Hip-hop Debut 
How the BQE Became an Artistic Muse
On Great Jones Street, Shopping Is Art 
Classic Fare, Old-world Charm at Le Caprice
Buy a Brownstone for Less Than $1 Million
Fifty of the City's Tastiest Soups
Reasons to Love New York 2009
New York Politicians Refuse to Quit
A-Rod Has Babe Ruth in His Sights
McCain Yields to the Party's Pressure
