The Renovated Madhouse

I first met the actor/playwright/Renaissance Man Jeremy Lawrence when I wrote up his Taper Literary Cabaret production of the Weimar revue Cabaret Verboten for L.A.'s Downtown News nearly two decades ago. I later went on to follow his eclectic work in L.A., including in such memorable sui generis productions as How To Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients (in Jeremy's adaptation of the play by Matei Visneic) at the Open Fist, as did my fiancee. I happened to run into him a few years back at a reading of play about Bruno Schulz, and we discovered happily that we both now live in NY.

Last night, Jeremy definitively performed the role of Bela Lugosi in a BMI presentation of songs for a new musical about B-movie auteur Ed Wood by myself and Justin Warner. It seems that Lawrence has a gift for creating distinctive portraits of larger-than-life real-life figures: Next week he'll do his new show about Tennessee Williams, Everyone Expects Me To Write Another 'Streetcar' at the Abingdon Theatre, which was the occasion for this TDF piece (click for an explanation of this post's enigmatic title).