Feature

Assassin

As Riedel quickly skims over his autobiography, what comes through is that he seems untouched by life. Inflicting pain, for him, is a jokey thing. “Michael has this cruel streak and a lack of empathy,” says Susan Haskins, his close friend and co-host of his TV show, Theater Talk. “He hasn’t struggled, he hasn’t known failure. He’s always been mean and funny, and there have been no consequences for being that way.”

Given Riedel’s hammy showman’s style of speaking, it’s not surprising to learn that he acted in high-school and college productions. Upon graduating from Columbia as a history major in 1989, he landed a job as managing editor at a now-defunct magazine, TheaterWeek. He was terrified the first time he wrote a review, of Larry Gelbart’s play Mastergate. “I threw up. I called my father and said, ‘I’ve got myself in the wrong profession.’ ”

To make the magazine more literary, Riedel asked well-known theater figures to write articles, including Eric Bentley, the distinguished Brecht translator and former theater critic for The New Republic. Not only did Bentley do stories, but he befriended Riedel, renting him a spare room in his Riverside Drive apartment. “It was the best two years of my life,” Riedel says. “It was like having a private tutorial with one of the great intellects of our time. He had this incredible library, and I could just read through the stuff he talked about.” Today, Bentley recalls Riedel fondly, but says he never reads his protégé’s column: “I can’t stand tabloid newspapers.”

“He hasn’t struggled, he hasn’t known failure,” says Susan Haskins, his close friend and co-host. “He’s always been mean and funny, and there have been no consequences for being that way.”

What transformed Riedel from an obscure scribe into a name to be reckoned with was his decision to go after that influential New York Times twosome—Frank Rich, then the theater critic, and his girlfriend (now wife), Alex Witchel, then the theater columnist. Riedel is shameless about his motive, saying, “Walter Winchell once said, ‘If you’re a nobody in this town, the fastest way to become a somebody is to throw a brick at someone.’ ” After producer David Merrick took out a heart-shaped ad in the Times mocking the Rich-Witchel romance, Riedel launched his own attack—arguing that the pair had used their power irresponsibly (ironically enough, given that abusing power is precisely the charge Riedel’s critics level at him). The resulting attention was irresistible. “I thought, I can ride this for a while,” he says. A theater insider who is on friendly terms with all three journalists says, “Michael is an opportunist. He went after Frank and Alex with total disregard for reality. It was grotesque.” Both Rich and Witchel declined to comment.

The gimmick worked; he was hired at the Daily News in 1993 by gossip columnist Charlotte Hays. Riedel subsequently switched to theater features, and was hired by the Post in 1998. Eager to expand his influence, Riedel began his TV show more than a decade ago (it airs Fridays at midnight on PBS).

Riedel has no qualms about trashing productions put on by his friends. The theater publicist John Barlow has represented some of Riedel’s favorite targets. “On rare occasions, if you ask Michael to kill something, he will, if it’s someone with whom he does business,” says the publicist. “But I’ve had times where he’s been incredibly unfair, sanity-eroding.” Scott Rudin, also a Riedel friend (he lives with Barlow), is one of the producers of Caroline, or Change. Lately Riedel has been slamming the show—primarily, it seems, because Rich liked it. Rudin wrote to Riedel in January asking him to back off. “Your feelings about Frank Rich are known to everyone,” Rudin wrote, “but they are not germane to your writing about this production.” Judging by Riedel’s subsequent columns, the letter had no impact.

But no drama intrigues him more than the scoop. At the opening of Sondheim’s Assassins—praised by most critics with guns blazing—Riedel looked offended during the show, whispering repeatedly to me, “This is sick.” Afterward, heading for the party at the China Club, he was in high spirits, insisting that he was rooting for the show to be nominated for a Tony (it got the nod for Best Revival) because it would lend such agita to the awards race. Animatedly gaming the Tony sweepstakes, he pauses on Eighth Avenue to say, grinning, “There’s going to be this great big boiling pot. And I’m going to be there stirring it.”

His remark conjures up Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson’s famous self-description: “I’m the straw that stirs the drink.” No, they’ll never name a candy bar after Riedel, nor is his workaday uniform likely to be retired by the New York Post. But that won’t stop him from stirring his cauldron. Too bad if his efforts sometimes resemble those of one of the witches from Macbeth.