A few stragglers

There are still a few straggling bits of news and quotes from the Tonys Awards.

• Greensboro's News-Record reports that North Carolinians are happy to bask in Jennifer Ehle's reflected glory:

  The region got to bask in a bit of reflected glory last week when Jennifer Ehle, who was born in Winston-Salem and attended the School of the Arts, won her second Tony award, this one for best performance by a featured actress in "The Coast of Utopia." Bravo!

• New York Magazine has a short Tonys slideshow featuring a picture of Billy Crudup. The caption reads:
  

  Billy Crudup communes with his Tony for The Coast of Utopia, which closed in May. Is he having withdrawal? “It’s depressing! Totally and utterly depressing. You give up this thing that you’ve devoted all your time and creative energy to, and it’s gone. For theater, it’s even worse because it’s in the ether. There’s nothing left anywhere but your experience.”

  Also, the caption under Liev Schreiber's photo informs us that he was given first dibs on doing The Coast of Utopia:
  

  “I love these awards,” he says. “They’re better than the Oscars. At least these people know how to put on a show.” Schreiber, who was up for his performance in Talk Radio, says he was the first person Jack O’Brien approached for Utopia. “I said no. I don’t have the balls those guys do.” Next up, fatherhood and writing a screenplay. “I don’t want to talk about it, because then I can’t change my mind. They’ll be like, ‘Ah, he didn’t win the Tony. And now he’s failed again.’”

  There is also some speculation as to which part Liev Schreiber was asked to play at All That Chat.
• Variety was backstage at the Tony Awards to interview the winners. Here are the relevant bits - From Tom Stoppard:
  

  [...] "I did tell Jack O'Brien that if he wanted to a do a musical of this, I think 'Serfs Up' would be a good title," Tom Stoppard cracked after his win for "The Coast of Utopia," his saga about Russian intellectuals in the 19th century. The play, produced in Gotham by Lincoln Center Theater, is gearing up for a Russian production, and there's interest in a French incarnation as well, Stoppard said. "Coast" was more of a sweeping success Stateside than it was in its U.K. preem at the National. "Well, I had four years to think about it," Stoppard explained. "I made the thing clearer, and I made the narrative swifter." Stoppard's next Rialto project is a transfer of his play "Rock 'n' Roll." His next writing project? "I don't write at all until I get bitten by something, and then I only write," he said. "I was hoping to write something this summer, but I haven't got any ideas. Do you have any?" [...] [Oh, Tooom?]

  From Jack O'Brien:
  

  [...] "The Coast of Utopia" helmer Jack O'Brien recalled the months spent rehearsing and rolling out the three plays one by one over the course of six months. "We were never out of rehearsal," he said. "I said to the actors, 'You're gonna be so sick of the sound of my voice.'" Added the three-time Tony winner, "No one's ever going to do anything like this again. The awards are just frosting on the cake. But I have to tell you, the cake was pretty delicious." [...]

  From Billy Crudup:
  

  [...] Crudup, like fellow nominee Ethan Hawke, gave up many months of film opportunities to appear in the multiplay epic. "I don't have such a high cost of living that I can't be paid an actor's wage for working on a stage," he said. "I just have the one apartment." [...]

  And from Jennifer Ehle:
  

  [...] Jennifer Ehle, who won her second Tony when she nabbed featured actress in a play for "The Coast of Utopia," won the honors for a variety of characters she played over the course of Tom Stoppard's three-play epic. "I didn't have a favorite; I loved all three," she said of the roles. Does she miss performing the show, which ended its long but limited run May 13? Not so much. But she keeps up to date on her castmates. "We email obsessively," she said. "There's never been a cast that's stayed in touch so much." [...]

• Jeff provides us with a BBC press release reporting that several of Tom Stoppard's works will be broadcast on BBC radio stations this summer.
  

  Sir Tom Stoppard is to be celebrated across BBC Radio with a season of his work on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and BBC 7. This includes the radio debut of his most recent play, Rock 'N' Roll, which has been specially adapted by Stoppard with a new final scene. The season also features new Stoppard adaptations of Arcadia, The Fifteen Minute Hamlet and Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, and listeners are given another chance to hear some of the acclaimed playwright's best radio productions. [more]

• What are the Utopians up to this summer? Well, at least three of them are sticking together. TheaterMania informs us that Jason Butler Harner, Amanda Leigh Cobb, and Robert Stanton will be performing in The Front Page at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this July.
• No news about about any upcoming projects for Jennifer Ehle, but an interview with actor Rahul Bose at Express India gives us hope that Before the Rains (aka Road to the Sky) will debut at the Toronto Film Festival.
  

  [...] The actor is also excited about Before The Rains. Directed by Santosh Sivan and set in 1937, it explores the relationship between a British tea planter and a young Malayali villager who constructs roads. “It’s about infidelity, divided loyalties and betrayals. The film is ready and will hopefully premier at Toronto.” [..]

• Finally, TheaterMania has a review of The Coast of Utopia CD, which was released last week.
  

  [...] Another praiseworthy aspect of the Lincoln Center production was Mark Bennett's music, over-amplified in the theater but enjoyable as heard in a new recording on the Ghostlight label. This is the sort of lush, lovingly orchestrated score you'd expect to hear on the soundtrack of an epic film. There are 38 music cues in all, each of them quite short; the CD contains only 35 minutes of material in total. Among the most compelling pieces are "Trilogy Prologue: 500 Souls," "The Telescope," "Birch Trees," and "Curtain Call." Note that the CD isn't completely instrumental; five of the tracks feature vocals by cast members Felicity LaFortune and/or David Pittu. In a brief appreciation in the booklet accompanying the CD, Utopia director Jack O'Brien hails Bennett's score for, among other things, its simplicity. Would that the work it accompanied had exhibited the same virtue. [...]