Al Pacino

“We have a Shakespearean, Elizabethean temper,” Al Pacino informed a seated crowd Monday evening in Central Park. As part of its 50th Anniversary Gala, the Public Theater was honoring Mr. Pacino with an award, in the form of a prop rapier he had once wielded on stage, “I’m a little nervous,” he laughed. “I wish I had water, but I have a sword,”

While the audience of hundreds listened to Mr. Pacino with rapt attention, a secondary scrum gathered across the fence. What appeared to be backup pitchers on a hapless softball team abandoned their game to listen to the famed thespian. Soon, a quintessentially New York amalgam of dog-walkers, skateboarders and bright-eyed Broadway hopefuls paused their iPods, essaying to hear Mr. Pacino over the Central Park din.

Earlier, as guests arrived, many seemed to materialize suddenly from the Where’s Waldo-esque ether of the park. From the throngs of sunglassed and unknowing denizens, Julianna Margulies and husband Keith Lieberthal appeared, followed by Chelsea Clinton and Mac Mezvinsky, Kathleen Turner, Julia Stiles and Lily Rabe.

The red carpet, positioned on the West side of the theater, was situated atop a blind hill. With clipboard in hand, one unlucky PR staffer was tasked with running up and down the escarpment, alerting her superiors when the VIPS arrived—the Public’s own Paul Revere. (Listen, dear readers, and you will hear, her stage-whispering celebrity arrivals from far and near!)

Returning to the Delacorte theater was a sort of homecoming for Ms. Rabe, who acted alongside Mr. Pacino last year in The Merchant of Venice. “Working with Al Pacino was one of the great privileges of my life,” she told The Observer. “He’s a wonderful human being, and being able to spend a year of my life, a very complicated year of my life, with him through all of that was something that I’m very grateful for.”

She insisted she wasn’t nervous when she first met the actor, however, and made no special preparations for the occasion. “I didn’t do anything. I probably, I don’t know, I rolled out of bed and took a shower,” she laughed. (Such élan!) While meeting her idols does not make her ill at ease, other things certainly do: “You know, snakes. Snakes not for me. People, more for me.”

As Ms. Rabe headed toward dinner, Steve Martin appeared wearing a fedora. He rushed towards his seat, and declined to be interviewed, with an unconvincing half-apology. “But I like The Observer!” he called over his shoulder, “It’s a great paper!” God bless you Mr. Martin! Don’t worry, we’ll talk next time.

Bob Balaban, however, proved perfectly chatty when asked which of the Bard’s characters he most identifies with. “Easily Caliban, because no other Shakespearean character is almost my name. It’s the only one!” he exclaimed gaily. “What could it be, Richard III? No. That doesn’t sound like Balaban.” The actor went on to describe his busy summer, which includes a book tour for his upcoming title The Creature from the Seventh Grade. “Its completely autobiographical,” he said. “But in this case the boy turns into an eight and a half foot reptile, which I didn’t do.” Describing himself as “shortest, skinniest, most-incompetent boy in his class,” Mr. Balaban professed that he has “fabulously good and fabulously horrifying memories of the seventh grade.”

At dinner on the Delacorte’s northeasterly lawn, guests toasted the Public’s half-century of free plays. White lanterns bobbled in the slight breeze as Christine Quinn saluted the organization.

As the main course was being served, Tony Kushner shared his favorite Shakespearean play. “For various reasons, Midsummer, because I think its about theater itself. So it seems like to me it’s sort of at the center of things.” Sadly, we didn’t have the opportunity to press him further, as we were overwhelmed by hundreds of passing chicken breasts.

After the meal, the crowds sought their seats for the evening’s reading of Romeo and Juliet. Attempting to avoid the clogged corridors, full of chatting and meandering guests, many attendees hoofed it across the lawn, only to find they had to mount a thigh-high fence to access the stage. Revelers young and old, spry and not so spry, heaved legs over the railing in an show of theatric acrobatics. Several sets of unmentionables were unwittingly flashed.

Before finding our seat, we ran into Cynthia Nixon, whose fire-red hair is growing back after her stint as a cancer-stricken professor in the Broadway show Wit. The actress, however, doesn’t know if she will keep her tresses short. “People keep asking me that. I’m getting a lot of positive reinforcement about the length,” she said, pulling at the still downy strands.

Inside the theater, guests rose for a standing ovation as the cast took the stage. Meryl Streep larked a lighthearted vision of Juliet, while Kevin Kline read opposite, as Romeo. Christopher Walken earned the most laughs as a sometimes Queens-inflected Mercutio, and Christine Baranski appeared as the nurse. Throughout the reading, flashing, fluorescent underbellies of passing planes reminded viewers they were sitting beneath the midsummer Manhattan sky.

After the performance, we found Ethan Hawke. Asked what he would ask Shakespeare if he had one question, Mr. Hawke thought for several moments, before offering a response. “What happens when we die?” he concluded. Genius or cheeky (or both), we have not yet decided. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

After the reading, guests returned to the Delacorte’s front lawn, and enjoyed dancing, desserts and drinks. “Can I get champagne and wine? Is that bad?” one guest asked her friend guiltily.

The clock neared midnight. The softball team had long since packed its bats (after yet another loss, it seemed), and the Great Lawn was quiet once more. The party at the Delacorte continued, however. With glasses in hand guests danced into night, ill-chosen spike heels sinking into the new summer sod.

editorial@observer.com

Tony Kushner (via Getty Images)

Last night, Pulitzer Prize-winner playwright and  Abe Lincoln screenwriter Tony Kushner was awarded $100,000 as part of a joint  “Creative Citizenship” Award from The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation.

Giving a speech at The Nation Institute’s Annual Gala last night at The Metropolitan Pavilion, Mr. Kushner humbly accepted the prize for his progressive--and somewhat controversial--voice in politics, religion, and theater, noting that he felt a little bit guilty since anytime he heard of anyone winning an award, he always felt a twinge of jealousy. Jokingly, Mr. Kushner gave an example of being aggrieved that Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman won the Nobel Prize this year for the discovery of quasicrystals. "I don't even understand what quasicrystals are," Mr. Kushner said. "But I still thought, 'Aww, why didn't I win?'"

Mr. Kushner's choice to use Mr. Schectman as an example was telling. After all, the Angels in America scribe has a history of inflaming right-wingers and Zionists alike with what some consider anti-Israel rhetoric; a reputation which led to him being temporary blacklisted from an honorary degree at CUNY this year. Back in May the college's board of trustees voted to remove him from the list of John Jay College of Criminal Justice nominees, based on previous statements the author had made regarding Zionism and the state of Israel. Four days later, after a lot of bad press (including three other honorees threatening to give back their degrees, which is something you can apparently do) the board decided to rescind its decision.  Mr. Kushner, who is still waiting on  an apology from the board, has said that he will receive the degree.

Obviously, there's no love lost between Kushner and the CUNY board, which is why his decision to give the entire amount of his prize money to the City University of New York was both incredibly gracious as well as a tad smirky. "I thought of calling it The Jeff Wiesenfeld Fellowship," Mr. Kushner joked on-stage, referring to the CUNY trustee who had been the most vocal critic against playwright for his comment that the creation of a Jewish state was "a mistake." (Mr. Kushner claimed that the quotes used to shelve him were taken out of context...and there must have been something to that as former Mayor Ed Koch, a pro-Israel supporter if there ever was one, called up CUNY during the debacle and demanded that Mr. Wiesenfeld resign from the board for abusing his position.)

But it was not the board of trustees that Mr. Kushner was donating the money to, as he made clear last night, but the students of CUNY. It was they whom he had gotten to know over the past several months, and they who had vehemently supported him during the trial of the trustees. (Ironically, it was standing up to the board and "challenging the status quo" that won him last night's award.)

No matter what your politics, Tony Kushner walked away from the podium last night a winner: proving that if you're a creative enough in your words and worldview, it's possible to turn the other cheek without having to pull your punches.

"Vy are they bothering you?" Mr. Wiesenfeld said on Friday afternoon, channeling her Yiddish. "Vhat they want from you? They don't pay you. You sit there and they give you problems, aggravation, vhat do you need it for? Go home, see your daughter. Vhy are you sitting there until 8:30 and they making trouble for you?"

Mr. Wiesenfeld's most recent trouble began last Monday evening, when at the end of a lengthy City University of New York Board of Trustees meeting, he launched into a diatribe about Israel, the rising tide of anti-Semitism on campus, John Bolton, and finally, Tony Kushner-who was, along with about two dozen other eminences, up for an honorary degree. Mr. Wiesenfeld's fellow board members, a bit taken back by the fervor, quickly voted to table Mr. Kushner's nomination, approved the rest and promptly adjourned.

Sitting in a conference room at the wealth management firm Alliance Bernstein, down the hallway from his 39th floor office-which enjoys sweeping views of Midtown Manhattan and a bumper sticker that uses Barack Obama's iconic "O" logo to spell out "Oy Vey"-Mr. Wiesenfeld chopped the granite tabletop with the side of his open right hand and tried to explain himself.
"I'm not a militant guy. I come across as combative, but I don't gratuitously look to fight with people. If I'm confronted with something that is outrageous, I just can't look the other way. It's a compulsive type of behavior," he said.

At the board meeting, Mr. Wiesenfeld thought he would merely register his objection, the board would overrule him, and the commencement ceremonies at CUNY's 23 colleges would continue on as planned. Instead, however, his fellow board members took what he termed "the maximalist approach" and declined to grant Mr. Kushner his laurels.

What followed was the perfect teapot tempest in late spring in a city that found itself in a sudden news lull. When Mr. Wiesenfeld spoke to The Observer on Friday morning, Google News listed 373 articles devoted to the subject. By the weekend, The New York Times had devoted at least five stories to the imbroglio, including an appreciation of Mr. Kushner's playwriting oeuvre, a front page column in the New York section in which Mr. Wiesenfeld intimated that Palestinians were subhuman, and an editorial titled, "CUNY Shamed Itself." Graduate students started an around-the-clock blog called "Kushner Crisis." The writer Barbara Ehrenreich threatened to return her own honorary degree, jabbing the university by adding, "If I can find it."

An irate Mr. Kushner, angry that the board had distorted his views without giving him a chance for a rebuttal, told The Observer, "I have no intention of accepting an honorary degree from CUNY ... I have lots of honorary degrees and hopefully if my work is good I will get more." Graduation ceremonies planned for later this month looked as if they could careen into a circus.

"What circus?" Mr. Wiesenfeld asked. "There is no circus. They're going to come, they're going to graduate, they're going to get their degrees. They'll have the same cast of characters from the administration and there will be one less honoree. That's it."

Mr. Wiesenfeld is not unfamiliar to controversy. In January he backed the firing of an adjunct professor of Middle Eastern politics who had made an academic study of suicide bombers. (After an outcry, and after the professor said that analysis did not equal commendation, the decision was reversed.) In 2009, he got into a screaming match with City Councilmember Charles Barron, a former Black Panther, at the ceremonial groundbreaking for a CUNY building that been destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. ("It was a provocation," Mr. Wiesenfeld said of the incident, in which he said he was upset that Mr. Barron spoke before his appointed time. "I looked around and saw a problem and no one was doing anything about it.")

Both of Mr. Wiesenfeld's parents were in Europe during World War II-his mother in a concentration camp, his father shipped to Siberia for hard labor. Friends say it remains the animating force in his life.

"Jeff really does feel that his mission in life is to speak up, because so many years ago no one spoke up," said one friend. "He thinks Jews are their own worst enemy, and that liberal Jews care more about other religions and a races than they care about themselves. And that unlike other groups, we have absolutely no ethnic pride or the ability to stand up for ourselves and we let everyone run roughshod all over us. And of course, he hates liberals."

At the end of the war, rather than return to their hometowns and live among the collaborators, Mr. Wiesenfeld's father fled to America, and his mother to Israel. They met in Israel, and moved to the South Bronx, where his father worked in a fiberglass factory, before dying at 57 of lung disease.

"I had a very difficult childhood," Mr. Wiesenfeld said. "We lived in the neighborhood long after anybody we knew lived there.

"Those were the worst years of my life," he continued. "It was crime ridden. I went to terrible, terrible schools ... I had to learn to defend myself and I saw a lot of terrible things. I had to get out of situations with people holding me up with knives, people beating the crap out of me. This is nonsense. I'm not going to stand up to an academic?"

After a stint at Bronx Science and then at Queens College, he worked for a time for the F.B.I. before finding a job with former Queens Borough President Claire Schulman and eventually landing with Ed Koch's Department of Transportation. He became something of a player in Queens Democratic circles, founding the First New York Conservative Democratic Club in his hometown of Forest Hills, for Democrats who leaned right. Longtime friends and associates said he was plotting to run for office.

He did Jewish outreach for Senator Al D'Amato, a former mentor who friends say no longer speaks to him. During his 1998 re-election campaign, Mr. Wiesenfeld insisted that the senator attend a meeting at the developer George Klein's office with some high-powered members of the Jewish community, and it was there that Senator D'Amato referred to his opponent, Chuck Schumer, as a "putzhead" and called the portly Congressman Jerrold Nadler "Jerry Waddler." The slurs leaked to the press, where the story festered for days, and Mr. D'Amato's tenure as one of the most powerful elected officials in New York came to an end when he lost the race by
10 points. (Mr. Wiesenfeld disputes this account).

No matter. Mr. Wiesenfeld was already working for Governor George Pataki in a similar capacity. According to former Pataki administration officials, he is best remembered as someone who was unable to fully accept that his job was to promote his boss and stay out of the press.
There was the time at a Queens Democratic Party event, for example, that he called a close associate of the powerful Hevesi family-the future Assemblywoman and City Councilwoman Melinda Katz-"a cunt." (The slur leaked to the press but Mr. Wiesenfeld denies saying it). There was the time that he took to the press to excoriate Sheldon Silver after the Assembly speaker criticized Governor Pataki at a legislative breakfast, even as administration officials were working to shore up their legislative support. Mr. Wiesenfeld also led the charge to get the British architect Lord Richard Rogers to withdraw from the $1.7 billion Jacob Javits Center expansion after it was revealed that Mr. Rogers was part of a group called Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, who called on Israel to stop building settlements and the security barrier in the West Bank.

"Jeff doesn't have people he serves as his number one priority," a former Pataki official recalled. "He has himself and his persona and his reputation, and sometimes the people he has been hired to serve take the back seat."

At the National Yiddish Theater, whose board he chairs, one trustee said that Mr. Wiesenfeld has been known to distribute AllianceBernstein packets to new trustees. Albany politicos recall him desperately seeking the board appointment at CUNY. According to a New York Times account of his confirmation hearing, Isaac Abraham, a well-known political operative in the Brooklyn Hasidic community, alleged that "Mr. Wiesenfeld had referred to blacks as 'savages,' had called Hasidic Jews 'thieves' and had mocked Mr. Pataki, using a Yiddish word for 'dummy.'" (Mr. Wiesenfeld got his revenge when Mr. Abraham ran for the City Council in 2009, recording a robo-call that labeled Mr. Abraham, "the most wicked of the wicked.")

In 2006, as Mr. Pataki prepared to leave office and his aides frantically searched to fill board vacancies, administration officials recall Mr. Wiesenfeld desperately trying to win re-appointment, touting his credentials to anybody who would listen and launching a smear campaign against the Hispanic activist Fernando Mateo, when rumors started surfacing that he might get the CUNY slot. Mr. Wiesenfeld backed down when Mr. Mateo pointed out that he was ineligible for the spot, since he was not a college graduate.

"When you corner him he will do whatever he needs to do," said one associate. "Bite you, kick you in the balls. When he feels threatened and cornered, he is out of control. He needed that title. He was so frightened that he was going to lose CUNY. If he didn't have CUNY, what would he have? His nightmare in life is that people will no longer know the name Jeff Wiesenfeld."
Longtime Wiesenfeld-watchers suspect that this, as much as any worries about the complacency of the Jewish people, motivates him. They know to look for his name in the papers if they have not seen it for a while, and point to, after a brief lull, his all-out assault on the Kahil Gilbran International Academy, an Arabic-themed school in Brooklyn that he labeled "a madrassa."

"He gets ahead of himself," said one former associate. "Jeff feels that CUNY gives him an opportunity to comment on everything."

The appearance of Mr. Kushner before the CUNY board was the perfect opening. If Mr. Wiesenfeld had actually wanted to derail the nomination, he could have quietly lobbied his fellow board members in the days and weeks leading up to the final vote, convincing them of the righteousness of his cause. Instead, the point was to make a stand, and let the pieces fall where they may.

"Jeff sees himself as a check on the left higher education model you see all over the country, where liberals and Middles Eastern Studies take over," said one friend. "That's what this Kushner thing is all about. He is not interested in what Kushner thinks. This was his moment to stick it right back in the liberal's faces. This is what he sees as his mission."

People who have worked with Mr. Wiesenfeld say that although he can be difficult, it can be refreshing to work with someone who makes clear where he stands. "He is extremely principled," said Matthew Hiltzik, a prominent PR agent who tangled with Mr. Wiesenfeld when he served as the press secretary of the state Democratic Party. "Very few people are willing to stand up for what they believe in."

Last week, Mr. Wiesenfeld said that the next move was Mr. Kushner's. All the playwright would have to do is renounce comments he made that Israel owed its founding to a policy of "ethnic cleansing" and that the Jewish state does not have a right to exist. (Mr. Kushner denied that he asserted such things or said they were taken out of context.)

"I'm not a crazy person. I am just passionate," Mr. Wiesenfeld said. "Tony Kushner is a reasonable man. I say the following to him: He doesn't have to shake my hand. He doesn't have to meet with me. It's not what I'm looking for."

Mr. Kushner wouldn't get the chance. A few hours after he said those words, the president of CUNY's board sent out a statement calling an emergency meeting of the executive committee and acknowledging that the earlier vote had been in error. A small group of protesters gathered outside-"most of the students are away or studying for finals and stuff," one organizer explained-holding up signs that read "Enough is Enough! Abolish the Board of Trustees!"
Inside, the board's executive committee-which does not include Mr. Wiesenfeld-voted unanimously to overturn the board's earlier vote. Matthew Goldstein, the school's chancellor read from a letter which he took all weekend to write (aided, he added, by the fact that his wife was out of town).

"We do not shy away from the difficult, the unpopular, the mysterious; rather, these are the areas that most deserver our careful scholarly attention and our deepest humanity."

Afterward, Chancellor Goldstein explained to the press why Mr. Kushner was worthy of an honorary degree. "I am sure I would not have liked Richard Wagner as a person," he said. "But I adore his music. I have been to many Ring cycles. I think he's extraordinary. But I know that he was deeply anti-Semitic. I don't like that about him, but it doesn't reflect on my interest and my appreciation his musicality."

He dismissed the protesters calling for Mr. Wiesenfeld's resignation, but struggled to explain how one board member could have bent the entire panel to his will and turned the university into a national lightning rod. "A lot of this was being surprised at his passion," Mr. Goldstein said. "Mr. Wiesenfeld has a very strong set of views. And his own background as the child of two Holocaust survivors I think shaped his view of being a Jew and his sense of connection to the state of Israel. And he is a very smart fellow, but he has a view, and I think that view just carried the discussion." He added, "I hope this misstep is not something that will impact all of the good things that we've done."

In the end, Mr. Wiesenfeld said that he just wanted his life to get back to normal. Friends believe he is sincere. "I think he likes attention, but this is way above his pay grade," said one. "Fighting Charles Barron is one thing, but to have the entire media world, the arts world, Ed Koch giving him the back of the hand. I think he realizes he overdid it."

Mr. Wiesenfeld was not present for the vote that undid so much of what he had done. "I don't see any reason to be there," he told The Observer a few hours before the final vote, when it was already clear what would transpire. He had no plans to step down-"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"-and he said the whole incident showed why the board needed to be independent of political pressure.

There were still, he said, "red lines" that he would not cross-Israel, "certain ecological issues," what he called "the soft jihad that is trying to impose Sharia law in this country"-and said he was fighting for those Jews who disagreed with him, whether they appreciated it or not. "Whether the far left Jews think so or not, this has to do with their survival, too. They could end up like the Jews of 70-80 years ago, the Jews of The Gentlemen's Agreement, the film, or they end up like the blacks before their civil rights laws.

"You know why they made me a target?" Mr. Wiesenfeld said. "It's because I'm a known pro-Israel person. So they made me a target. It's the same reason various civil rights leaders throughout their history were made a target. It's because they were out there!"

dfreedlander@observer.com  dduray@observer.com

"I would not ordinarily ask for a reconsideration of a decision so recently taken," said board chairman Benno Schmidt in a statement. "But when the board has made a mistake of principle, and not merely of policy, review is appropriate, and indeed, mandatory."

On Tuesday evening, board member Jeffrey Wiesenfeld raised an objection to granting Kushner an honorary degree over what he said was Mr. Kushner's lack of support for Israel. Mr. Kushner vehemently disagreed with the characterization, and a massive public relations fallout has ensued.

Full letter below:

NOTICE201105-09ExecutiveandBSstatement

NOTICE201105-09ExecutiveandBSstatement

NOTICE201105-09ExecutiveandBSstatement

Kushner passed along a letter that he has sent both to the board of trustees and John Jay College in which he accusses the dissenting trustee, Jeffrey S. Weisenfeld of delivering "a grotesque caricature of my political beliefs regarding the state of Israel, concocted out of three carefully cropped, contextless quotes taken from interviews I've given, the mention of my name on the blog of someone with whom I have no connection whatsoever, and the fact that I serve on the advisory board of a political organization with which Mr. Weisenfeld strongly disagrees."

The organization that Kushner cites, Jewish Voice for Peace, is in Kushner words, a group of "courageous, committed people who work very hard serving the interests of peace and justice and the Jewish people."

He adds that he disagrees with many of the viewpoints of the organizations but says, "I have a capacity Mr. Weisenfeld lacks, namely the ability to tolerate and even value disagreement."

Kushner also objects that he was disparaged in a forum that was broadcast live (and now can be heard over the Internet) but that he did not have an opportunity to defend himself.

The CUNY board did not so much reject John Jay College's decision to award Kushner an honorary degree, but tabled the discussion until the next board meeting. Because the board does not meet again until after the school year, they have effectively denied Kushner the degree.

Kushner told The Observer that he has "no intention of ever accepting an award from CUNY."

Full letter below: 

Letter to CUNY Trustees 05-04-11

Letter to CUNY Trustees 05-04-11(function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();

According to The Jewish Week, board member Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld raised objections about the possibility that Kushner could be given a chance to speak at the graduation ceremony.

Kushner has criticized Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but has also said that  "I want the state of Israel to continue to exist. I've always said that. I've never said anything else. My positions have been lied about and misrepresented in so many ways. People claim that I'm for a one-state solution, which is not true."

Several years ago, Kushner was to be honored with an honorary degree from Brandeis University. In effort to prevent that from occuring was denied.

According to a CUNY spokesman, Kushner was supposed to receive the honorary degree from John Jay College. A majority of the board was in favor of granting Kushner the honor, but nine out of the twelve board members must ultimately voice approval. The spokesman added that this was the first time in the history of the school that the board had tabled an honorary degree that had been chosen by the individual colleges.

The board member who led the effort against  Kushner, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, is no stranger to controversy himself, having once gotten into a shouting match with City Councilman Charles Barron during a ground-breaking at Fiterman Hall.

A recording of the entire board meeting can be heard here.

And those are just the musicals.

Brooklyn-born, Mr. Greif has directed Rent, Grey Gardens and Next to Normal on Broadway, to considerable acclaim--Tony nominations for each--and, in the case of Rent, a robust 13-year run. He's also the director of the current revival at the Signature Theater of Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America, And now Mr. Greif is staging Mr. Kushner's newest play, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures. Performances begin March 22, and it's set to run through June 12 at the Public Theater.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide treats a dark subject, too--it concerns a retired longshoreman in Brooklyn, Gus Marcantonio, who asks his three children, an academic, a labor lawyer and a laborer, and his sister, a nun, to come home (some of their partners in tow) to discuss his decision to end his life. One suicide attempt, in the brownstone's upstairs bath, has already gone awry.

The family fights and roars, negotiates and accuses; all their skeletons, and some cast members, come out of the closet. Suicide is a major theme in the timely show, but so is the sorry state of America, the prospects for continuing social revolution, the institution of marriage, the allure of prostitution, parenthood, sex, the real estate bubble and more.

But Mr. Greif stressed that, as with all of Mr. Kushner's work, it's not gloom and doom. "There's a lot of humor, dark humor, gallows humor, surrounding the subject." It's not a "morose or somber" play. It's also a play that's very much in the American realist tradition, he said, referencing Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Clifford Odets and other great dramatists. (The show's title is a riff on George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and the main character dubs himself a communist.)

"While this is an extremely dark subject matter, there's an extraordinary vitality in these characters," he said. "They're exceedingly intelligent, very articulate, and they take big issues on, throughout the play. So there's a real life force here, certainly foremost in the man who's considering ending his life ... and in that negotiation with his family."

He compared the show in some aspects to Grey Gardens, the musical about the lives of the troubled mother and daughter (and Jacqueline Onassis relatives) Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale ("Big Edie") and Edith Bouvier Beale ("Little Edie"). "Edie's life force is perhaps askew, but what makes her so extraordinarily appealing is that optimism, or that incredible survivor's instinct," Mr. Greif said. "We see her knocked down in that musical, and it's tremendously moving; it's so out of character. It's that intensity, that vitality, that struggle, that excitement, that hunger these plays and musicals all share."

The play premiered at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in the spring of 2009 but is far from set in stone. "We're still getting new pages and changes as we go into our fifth week of rehearsal," said the director. "It's undergoing a real refining process. Tony keeps writing. It's both clarifying, in this draft, [what] didn't quite land before, both in terms of what things mean and how things feel. Some things land with a little more clarity and effect in this draft." Most of the cast is also new in the Public Theater production.

By and large, reviews in Minneapolis were positive. Variety said: "The resulting three-act drama is a success--sprawling, yearning, at times emotionally violent, it is also packed with a level of complexity, sophistication and understanding that distinguishes it as a potentially important new American work." But the show, performed with two intermissions, is still running at about two hours and 40 minutes.

Mr. Greif first came to widespread attention, on this coast at least (he ran the respected La Jolla Playhouse in California for much of the 1990s), with his 1996 production of Rent, a musical that dealt with a variety of struggles among young New Yorkers. A loose adaptation of La Bohème, set in New York among young bohemians, it takes place in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. The show's creator, Jonathan Larson, died just before the premiere Off Broadway, and didn't see what a success the influential show was to become.

His unexpected passing focused attention on the production and "gave us all a real sense of purpose, and joy, in being able to keep his voice alive."

Mr. Greif added: "It was almost unthinkable that Jonathan couldn't share that moment--and see the effect that his work was having on the world. Jonathan wrote the piece in honor of friends of his who were struggling with their own mortality issues, circling with their H.I.V. status at a time when it was merely a death sentence. The irony is in the confluences; they mounted up in tragic ways."

All the works he's directed have something in common, Mr. Greif noted. "I'm drawn to material with theatrical challenges, whether that means we move from reality to fantasy like we do in Angels in America, or a play like this play, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide, which shifts gears and turns so quickly and excitingly."

Just as he's aware of the specific dramatic sense that he wants to find in a musical--treating songs as soliloquies, for example, or duets as scenes--he's aware of the musicality in plays, too. "Certainly, Tony's language is almost written as a score," Mr. Greif said. "The language is very specifically written, and it's important to follow the specifics of his language. It's very telling--in the same way that musical notes can be telling in terms of emotional states. A very thorough investigation and a very thorough commitment to his language is like the commitment to music."

Throughout his career in theater, though, Mr. Greif has found that audiences are looking for the same things. "People like to be surprised, and they also like to be able to believe in the characters they're seeing onstage," he says. "They want to be able to believe in something, and they also want to be completely surprised and taken someplace they'd never imagined they'd go. That was true at the beginning of my career, and it seems true now."

Kushner was also supposed to bring a new play, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism & Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, to Broadway in the spring. But that's being postponed, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The play debuted in Minnesota to mixed reviews, and the revision process "will be more far-reaching than originally anticipated."

The delay is of an undefined nature, ensuring that the playwright "wouldn't face another deadline like he had in Minneapolis."

Kushner would perhaps do well to remember the overdue term paper principle: an extension only feels good for the first few hours, then you realize that the stakes have been irrevocably raised, and no matter what you do you will never be able to produce something commensurate with these new expectations, and you have only prolonged your misery and you are screwed.

The night began with Pulitzer Prize–winning Tony Kushner thanking the NYCLU for its efforts getting the state to recognize his same-sex marriage to writer and editor Mark Harris. Mr. Kushner had other reasons to be grateful: “This year, thanks to the NYCLU, I can pee during a Yankees game when they’re singing the national anthem without being manhandled and forcibly removed from the stadium,” he said. The audience applauded wildly. (It included Bradford Campeau-Laurion, who was famously ejected from Yankee Stadium in April for trying to go to the bathroom during The Star-Spangled Banner.)

Matt Cavenaugh of West Side Story sang “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”; Michael Cerveris of Sweeney Todd covered Wilco; and Michael Emerson, who plays that creepy guy Ben on ABC’s Lost, read poetry from the Freedom of Expression contest, for which New York City kids wrote about civil liberties and civil rights issues affecting their lives. Singer-songwriter Liana Stampur had provided original lyrics for the occasion set to the tune of “Send in the Clowns.” (“Ain’t it a bitch?—this Albany feud/ Our senators just mess around and we all get screwed.”)

It was the fourth consecutive year that actor Todd Buonopane, a.k.a. 30 Rock’s Jeffrey Weinerslav, participated. “I love it,” Mr. Buonopane said. “It’s my favorite event all summer—I schedule my whole life around it.”

The night’s emcee and musical director, Seth Rudetsky, leavened the show tunes and pop ballads with Barbara Streisand, A Chorus Line and (episode-specific) Fame jokes. Mingling with the performers after the show, Mr. Rudetsky said the political landscape has changed but the need for the NYCLU remains as strong as ever. “We were doing this when Bush was president and it was all about ‘fight the power,’” he said. “Now Obama’s president and it’s still about fight the power. We still have to push on so many of these issues because they’re not getting addressed.”

Initiatives highlighted by the organization’s executive director, Donna Lieberman, included the “School to Prison Pipeline Project,” addressing police presence in New York City’s schools, and “Project on Military Recruitment and Students’ Rights,” which advocates against aggressive military recruitment. As Mr. Kushner put it: “Thank God for the NYCLU, which keeps us free to speak, free to vote, free to express ourselves and free to pee.”

 “This whole experience is just a wonderful experience from beginning to end," said.Law and Order’s Sam Waterston, who has performed at the Delacorte in Much Ado about Nothing and in two productions of Hamlet. " To be a member of the audience, to be in the shows, to have the sun go down, to have the whole city concentrated around this 'O' here"--he indicated the round theater--"is just a wonderful experience. Whether you’re up there or out here, it’s just great.”

Actor Liev Schreiber offered a different opinion. “It’s much more fun to be in it. Any time I go to a show that I’m not in, I feel a little bit like I’m intruding. Especially here. And I get envious. To have a night when it’s not raining and it’s not hot, the gala’s going well, you know at 8 oclock, you’re almost positive it’s not going to rain, you’ve got a keyed up audience. There’s nothing quite like the gala night. The audience is completely keyed up. I’m jealous.”

Ms. Parks, who excitedly proclaimed, “It’s a beautiful day! Yay!” said that her favorite part of Shakespeare in the Park is “That it’s free! And they say the best things in life are free, so there you go. This must be one of the best things in life because it’s free.”

Jane Krakowski, meanwhile, recalled her childhood experiences as an audience member, saying “Since I was a little kid--I grew up in New Jersey--I’ve been coming in with my parents and waiting in line all day and having a picnic and finally getting your tickets and watching the show, there’s something so romantic about being out on a New York summer and looking over at the castle and over the pond, and it’s just one of those great New York experiences.”

Mr. Schreiber recalled another aspect of performing at the outdoor Delacorte theater, one that’s been causing the current company a bit of mischief. “I had a raccoon wander up on stage in the middle of a soliloquy in Cymbeline. And he just kind of stared at me as if I was a hack actor. He almost looked like he had his arms folded. He was watching me … totally unimpressed.”

Mr. Kushner says the raccoons are one of his favorite parts of the Shakespeare in the Park experience. “I love the raccoons on the stage! They’re very tough [critics].”

Alas, no raccoons made it on stage during the performance, but Anne Hathaway as a cross-dressed Viola and Raul Esparza as Orsino sizzled next to Audra McDonald, who played one lusty Olivia. 

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