Our 25th Wedding Anniversary (part 2)

Sharon and I had married 25 years ago while working together on The Trials of Rosie O'Neill. We had begun our romance  on that show's predecessor, Cagney & Lacey. If you are one of those readers who always skips ahead to the sexy parts, I commend you to Chapter 40 in my book, Cagney & Lacey... and Me. The chapter is entitled "If you can paint, I can walk" and if you don't get that reference then you are not nearly as romantic as you may think.

As referenced in the previous blog, Sharon and I had decided to share our 25th anniversary with friends in England. Why not? We hadn't seen most of them since Sharon was over there for her third time on the West End boards with A Round-Heeled Woman and blowing a whole bunch of money at the beautiful Connaught Hotel (plus all those frequent flyer miles for airfare) seemed like a proper way to acknowledge the accomplishment of actually remaining together for a quarter century. Who woulda thunk it? Certainly very few back in tinsel town, USA.

During the week we were in England, Sharon had tea with some of her UK fans (now friends), breakfasted with cagneyandlacey.com's Jacqueline Danson, and dined with playwright Dan Thurman and his American partner Adriann.  Dan had worked with Sharon when she was starring in A Round-Heeled Woman at the Aldwych Theatre and was a great help to me as well during my many visits during that time. 

Sharon and some of her UK fans at afternoon tea in London, May 2016 - L to R Angie, Rosie, Helen, Sharon, Ann and Linda

Photo credit:  Daniel Thurman

© cagneyandlacey.com 2016  - please do not reproduce without written permission

Playwright Daniel Thurman with Barney and Sharon, London, May 2016
Photo credit:  Adriann Ramirez

© cagneyandlacey.com 2016  - please do not reproduce without written permission

Next was a lovely lunch, complete with many laughs with Jane Prowse over the pretentious French menu we were presented at the Connaught.  Jane, who wrote and directed Round-Heeled, could do the same for a comedy based on that lunch. We later dined with Bill Paterson, Sharon's co-star from her West End debut in Stephen King's Misery. Bill's fabulous wife, Hildegard complimented the evening beautifully as always.  Tom and Kara Conti  are another fantastic couple with whom we dined.  Tom Conti starred with Sharon (again in the West End) in Neil Simon's Chapter Two.  

Long time pal, Maureen Lipman regaled us at dinner following her performance in the four generation play My Mother Said I Never Should by giving us our own private  performance of the play's final act which, unfortunately, could not be performed on stage the night we went to the play as an audience member had fallen and could not be moved until an ambulance arrived. Since that took approximately an hour, the remainder of the play was canceled for the night.

This cancelation thing was becoming a pattern for us since the night before, Sharon and I were in the audience of the revival of Funny Girl when, less than 15 minutes in, the fire curtain was rung down with an announcement made that "due to technical difficulties" the show was being terminated for the rest of the performance. 

There is no truth to the rumor that Sharon and I were in the theatre only nights before when Glenn Close had to leave that West End production of Sunset Boulevard in order to be hospitalized for the better part of a week. Too bad, though. We might have set a record... or at least started some serious gossip to the effect that either someone had better quickly cast Sharon in something... anything... before she single-handedly wrecked the entire West End theatrical season.

Back to Funny Girl. I have never been more relieved to prematurely leave a theatre in my life. As stated, it was about 15 minutes into the show when it was brought to a stop. Twelve minutes earlier I leaned over to Sharon and said "this is going to be a very long night." My comment was based on the performance by the "actress" in the lead role of Fanny Brice... one of America's great stars who was made even more famous by an even greater star, Barbra Streisand.  50 years ago, in what I believe was the second or third night after the opening, I sat in a fourth row aisle seat to witness one of the great theatrical events of my lifetime. Did I write "sat"? Mostly I was on my feet, cheering an unbelievable performance by a contemporary of mine who would go on to become one of the great icons of her time.

Half a century later I was now watching, on one of London's most venerable stages, a veritable plethora of bad acting choices, all being made by one individual, whose only connection to Fanny Brice or Barbra Streisand, other than gender, would have to be chutzpah. There have been rumors that "star" (Sheridan Smith) was in one way or another incapacitated by emotional exhaustion, or drink, or ???? I know nothing about that. Drunk or sober, overwrought or just plain tired... none of that was the issue for me. This kewpie doll cutie was making choices... acting choices... that were so off-base, so far from what the Funny Girl complexities call for, that I found it offensive.  Sharon and I were both happy to get out of that theatre early.

For a "relief" we were off to see People, Places and Things with an Olivier winner, Denise Gough in the lead. A pal of ours calls it "People, Places and Shouting" and that is what it basically is. The thing starts out  at a rehab center on such a high intensity note that there is no place to go... nothing to build toward... modulation is not attempted,  nor is it achieved. Broadway... particularly Hamilton... has nothing to fear from these West Enders.

Now, back in the States there is some news of a positive nature... The Trials of Rosie O'Neill is going to be reissued as sort of the caboose being pulled by the very powerful train known as The Good Wife.  In the not so old days, we used to say "Before Thelma & Louise there was Cagney & Lacey and before The Good Wife there was The Trials of Rosie O'Neill." Now the four C&L movies we call The Menopause Years are coming out again along with... for the very first time since the initial exposure in 1990/'91... the highest rated and best reviewed series of that Freshman season... The Trials of Rosie O'Neill. 

It has been too long coming and, if you can stand to watch a show where the lead doesn't grab for a cell phone every few minutes, I promise you will be entertained and happily surprised at just how current it all is. Besides that... my wife looks (and is) brilliant in it.

No apologies.

Barney Rosenzweig