11/13/2023 0 Comments Orson bean affairsGenerous and entertaining in his personal exchanges, Bean made it easy to look the other way. But as a critic who judges performers by the work they do and as a human being who has a few conservatives in his own family, I had no interest in digging into these matters. In truth, there were things I didn’t want to know about, such as his columns for his son-in-law Andrew Breitbart’s website. (Did you know he was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in “Subways Are for Sleeping”? Having missed his heyday on Broadway, I found out only a few years ago ago.) Orson Bean of “Match Game” and “The Merv Griffin Show” (my earliest memories of him) produced a show by off-off-Broadway trailblazer Al Carmines? His career, of which I had been ignorant of whole swaths, only seemed to grow more unexpected the longer you knew him. “Eons ago, back in Al Carmines’ day I saw a show of his at Judson called ‘Home Movies.’ I loved it, remounted it and moved it to the Provincetown. “I was afraid a critic might cover it who didn’t get it,” he wrote. Bean not only sent me an email to tell me what my words meant to him, he also kept up a correspondence that lasted until last fall when he wrote a note of appreciation in September for my review of the revival of the Gertrude Stein-Al Carmines musical “In Circles” at the Odyssey Theatre. Occasionally, I’ll hear from an actor I have praised in print. “This is a performance not to be missed,” I wrote, adding at the end of the review that “Trumbull is a scholarly Falstaff who deserves a comedy all his own.” Bean, who died Friday night at age 91 in Los Angeles after being hit by a car, had no trouble supplying the necessary flamboyance and fireworks. I don’t remember much about the play, except that Bean filled the production with the electricity of an old pro given a role that needed as much personality as the stage could possibly hold. Trumbull Sykes, a grandiose English department chairman embroiled in a postmodern academic tussle in Steven Drukman’s “Death of the Author” at the Geffen Playhouse in 2014. As someone who knew Orson Bean mainly as a television personality on talk shows and game shows in the 1970s and ’80s, I have to admit I was surprised to discover as late as a few years ago just how good he could be onstage.Ī seasoned veteran who had perfected the art of holding an audience rapt, he stole the show playing J.
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