WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER 3,374,995 VISITS IN ONE YEAR—65,000 VISITS A WEEK BY 985,281 VISITORS

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WPCNR QUARROPAS EAGLE. From The Mayor’s Press Office. March 22, 2004:  White Plains Mayor Joseph Delfino and members of the White Plains Common Council will be meeting with Larry Silverstein, developer of the World Trade Center site, on Thursday, March 25th at 11 am to discuss new environmental initiatives that have been adopted at the World Trade Center construction site and how White Plains might take advantage of some of these ideas for its new downtown construction projects.

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WPCNR ROW K103 CENTRE. Review by John F. Bailey. March 21, 2004 Updated 3 P.M. E.S.T.: Fashion 2004 returned to the White Plains Performing Arts Center stage after a 31-year hiatus from the footlights Saturday evening and impressed a sold-out audience with the very essence of the Broadway leading man, William Michals, foiling to eight talented tasty ladies, Anne Bobby, Michelle Dawson, Carol Halstead, Katie Kozlowski, Monica Meadows, CC Seymour, Lannyl Stephens and Beverly Ward.

FASHION’S STAGE: Awaiting its debut Saturday night. Photo by WPCNR StageCam

The ladies work in ensemble as if touring for months, and not just rehearsing for two weeks. They stood up to Michals’ beguiling baritone, delivered charming star turns of their own and belted out in harmony the intricate, nuanced lyrics of this musical of manners and satire at the WPPAC, with Michals and the ladies earning a 40 second ovation with bravos at the houselights’ dim.

Clever Songs That Tell a Tale

The essence of Fashion is the music by Don Pippin, with lyrics by the late Steve Brown. As befits a score written by Pippin, the man associated with A Chorus Line, Applause, Oliver!  Woman of the Year, Mame, Cabaret, and La Cage Aux Folles, All 15 original songs are entertaining, catchy, toe-tapping, clever and expressive delivering the emotions of the moment, alternating humor and slapstick, with longing and philosophy. 

The beautiful performers and the dark handsome one are equal to the wild flights of phrases in the Pippin/Brown songs demanding great control and precise delivery. Most numbers are rollicking and lilting and involve the audience all the way which spontaneously broke into applause after each musical interlude. Steve Brown’s cleverness in the lyrics approaches Cole Porter finesse.

Forget about what you have read about this show.

It is not William Michals seducing eight ladies, as he rehearses each individually for a show, which preshow publicity would have you believe, instead the audience is witnessing an amateur theatre group.

The Long Island Masque and Wig Society is doing a “run through” of an early American theatre musical that the William Michals character is directing them in. As the Long Island ladies start each scene, Mr. Michals announces each scene .The Society is “devoted to the preservation of early American drama” according to the Setting notes in the slick program.

This is the running joke of Fashion. Fashion is about a group of Long Island divas acting out a musical farce. Costumed in figure hugging, cleavage friendly evening gowns and suits, and smartly negotiating the stage in stilt heels they catch your eye with more than just their singing. The show they are doing requires several of the women to act the parts of men that they carry off well, which is part of the joke.

Humor You Buy Into.

There are not a great number of drop-dead funny lines in Fashion. The music and the situation is the thing.  The humor is reminiscent of those comedies of manners written by Moliere, Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Wing Piniero, combined with a screwball comedy like The Philadelphia Story. The growing absurdity of the situation involves the audience, amuses and fascinates, weaving in elements of Dickens, while taking place in the present time. There is a lot of running across stage, pratfalls, and light slapstick.

To the plot, Watson.

We are introduced to the Long Island ladies in the opening scene, then Mr. Michals whips his feminine cast into action, and we first enjoy Lannyl Stephens who plays Mrs. Tiffany belting out The Rococo Rag, celebrating her marriage to Mr. Tiffany  a super opening number that sends up the Fortunoff mind set of consumer.

It is the first of many show-stoppers that Ms. Stephens delivers with Mermanesque gusto. A natural comic, Ms. Stephens brings a little Imogene Coca and Carol Burnett to the role. She is the funniest talent in the musical and earned an cachaphonous clamor of applause as she took her cast bows. Her My Daughter The Countess number is the running joke reprise number of the musical.

Mr. Michals in the musical within a musical, plays the role of a French Count whom Mrs. Tiffany wants her daughter Seraphina to marry. Seraphina (played by Monica Meadows), handles the comic interplay with Mr. Michals on the very funny putdown song of American culture, Out of Fashion. She interacts with Michals well, delivers a very believable smoulder and is every bit the equal of Mr. Broadway.

Ms. Meadows and Ms. Stephens, Mr. Michals, and C.C. Seymour interplay and choreograph smoothly in one of the more farcical interludes, Take Me.

The Perfect Cad

Mr. Broadway, William Michals, is the perfect French cad, inflecting and running up and down the musical scale impeccably with his mellow and commanding voice. He has good material to work with, delivers comic lyrics clearly (a talent many Broadway leading men do not have in my experience), and is completely in character. Pippin and Brown give him great songs to sing too.

Michals’ rolling French accent, recalling Charles Boyer, commands attention and he plays well off his eight leading ladies. His attempted seduction of Gertrude in the conservatory, his romancing of the maid, and his instant attraction to Seraphina is amusing seduction. I’ve met Frenchmen like Michals’ character, and they do exist. Michals’ does not dominate the stage in this show, but when he is offstage, as he is through the first half of Act II, his presence is missed,  simply because the interplay between him and his actresses, is so naturally intercut.

He shows a deft flare, much like the emcee in Cabaret, for bringing the best in his co-performers and making them shine with a brilliance equal to his own.

Beautiful with Cane.

The statuesque Anne Bobby plays Trueman (in the “run-through”) an old friend of Mr. Tiffany (played in the “runthrough” by the very serious Beverly Ward) who arrives to visit Tiffany in his mansion.  Bobby does a crowd-pleasing number to perk up Tiffany’s spirits, which are down because Mrs. Tiffany has been spending so much money on clothes and jewelry. 

Bobby’s The Good Old American Way is a terrific song as good as Yankee Doodle Dandy, and had the audience moving  their shoulders in the seats. It’s the kind of patriotic song you’ll love.

Beverly Ward as Mr. Tiffany does a feisty duet with Ms. Stephens (Mrs. Tiffany) arguing about money, called It was for Fashion’s Sake. Ward has perhaps the most trouble with carrying off the Mr. Tiffany role, but of course that is part of the humor, women playing men.

For a small stage, the choreography in this show uses it all, incorporates great pratfalls on the leather furniture, and creates mirthful, screwball mayhem. When Ms. Ward spins Ms. Stephens in one of those easy chairs (not an easy thing to do), Stephens mugs it up beautifully.

Bobby has another quite different number, A Life Without Her that shows a completely different side and she touches the audience with the heartbreak she delivers, as she discovers something about another character that shatters her illusion.

Bobby carries the narrative drive of the show, delivering its message as she plays a elderly Midwesterner who walks with a cane and is contemptuous of the airs he finds his old friend Tiffany taking on.

Fresh Comediennes

Part of the joke of Fashion is seeing these women in evening clothes acting out the roles of men and manic slapstick within a mansion.

As Michals juggles his former liaison with the comic French Maid (the perky and leggy Katie Kozlowski), against his plans to marry Seraphina, the First Act ends with two great production numbers.

Michals and Kozlowski duet on the torchy What Do They Know About Paris? evoking the nostalgia of a passionate affair and sizzle with sensual innuendo ending up with the pair executing an amusing sendup of the tango with an hilarious slapping match. I do not know if the adaptor of the musical, Tony Stimac, thought of this, when he incorporated this seen but it satirizes the Boyer-Bergman cafe scene in  Algiers.

C.C.Seymour has to get a good mention here for her hilarious Mr. Snobson. She overplays brilliantly like a female Stubby Kaye in L’il Abner.

Two Show Stoppers

The best production in the show is the ensemble executing a singing sequence using lights in the dark on various corners of the stage where each party is hatching a scheme to marry, entrap, win, or expose the other (I Must Devise a Plan). It is perfectly timed, entertaining, and clever. The audience loved this, and it was a great way to end Act One. It builds great anticipation for the “denewmount” as Mrs. Tiffany would say.

Act II delivers a very satisfying wrapup of the whole evening with surprise, masqueraders being found out, and a narrative that builds on the first act. The Act ends all too soon, because the audience is really enjoying the versatility of the troupe.

The genuine romance in the show between Gertrude and Colonel Howard is well-played by  Michelle Dawson and Carol Halstead,  actually getting you to “buy” the romance between the two ladies playing the mixed couple. Their duet on What Kind of Man Is He?  featuresMs. Dawson with the best voice in the show among the ladies, delivering the best song, and  in crystal clear, mesmerizing Brightman tones.

Now, what does that tell you that your reviewer would write that? Ms. Dawson and Ms. Halstead did their romance so well, I believed it. All these gals are good.

Multi-Levels.  

The troupe delivers an entertaining show that can be seen on several levels: the joke of suburban women attempting to act (but acting well), the musical itself, the great songs unearthed, after being entombed in a vault for 31 years, an interesting exercise in suspension of belief. It is a show that finds every one of its attractive ladies driving the show at some point or another. Though Mr. Michals is the big name in this show, he is not the main focus.  He brings out their best and rivets their attention with his smouldering sexual energy and charm .The women have the best songs, though.

 Ambitious Expensive Production

Fashion is by far the most ambitious staging yet undertaken by the White Plains Performing Arts Center.

The light design of Burke Wilmore creates a series of worlds and effects with reds, blues, baby spots and the light cues are very demanding. It uses every bit of the technical resources of the WPPAC.

The Musical Director, Sande Campbell, on piano, playing by candlelabra at one point in the show, rips through Pippin’s intricacies with aplomb never intruding on her singers.

The high flatted set, believably recreating a Long Island Gold Coast mansion, by Dana Kenn, who associate-designed the sets for The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard is elaborate, even to the point of creating shrubs outside the high windows.

 Put a pit orchestra behind this show on a bigger Broadway stage, and you’ve got Broadway all the way.

As one patron remarked, leaving the show, “Thoroughly enjoyable. A breath of fresh air has come to White Plains.”

Fashion plays the WPPAC again Tuesday at 7, and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday the 24,25,26,27 and 31 at 8; Matinees are March 28, and April 4 at 2; Evening performances April 1,2,3 at 8. The Box office number is 1-888-977-2250.

As Ms. Stephens as Mrs. Tiffany would sing it, Fashion  “puts the ginger in the meat loaf.”

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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. By John F. Bailey.  March 19, 2004: While hanging out at City Limits Friday noon, WPCNR ran into White Plains “Phantom Councilman,” Larry Delgado, who updated us on where his quo warranto action undertaken on his behalf by the Attorney General’s office is at this date.

WPCNR has also learned from Mr. Delgado that Elliot Spitzer, New York State Attorney General, has introduced legislation in the legislature, both houses, reform New York Election Law, to allow judges to make disputed election remedies in general elections, that would prevent any candidate from being victimized by a disputed vote count in the future.

When last WPCNR reported on the historic Delgado-Hockley case, Thomas Abinanti, Glen Hockley’s lawyer had appealed Judge Francis Nicolai’s refusal to appoint another judge to consider the quo warranto action. Mr. Delgado reported today that Abinanti and Hockley were not granted a stay by the Appellate Court in Brooklyn which they had asked for to prevent Judge Nicolai from making a ruling on the Attorney General’s motion for a Summary Judgment in the dispute, while the Appellate Court considered the Abinanti motion calling for a new judge.

Delgado added that Judge Nicolai is now at liberty to make a ruling that could either put Mr. Delgado back on the White Plains Common Council any day now, or call for a new election, or whatever remedy Judge Nicolai deems appropriate. The Attorney General had called for removing Mr. Hockley from the White Plains Common Council forthwith based on 103 sworn affidavitts from persons in District 18 who sworn they voted for Mr. Delgado. The 103 votes effectively wipe out Mr. Hockley’s slim margin of victory, giving Mr. Delgado the election.

Delgado said should Judge Nicolai rule in immediate restoration of Delgado to the Common Council that would most likely be appealed, too. “Their strategy here is maximum delay possible,” Delgado uttered grimly.

Mr. Delgado also revealed that the Attorney General has introduced legislation in the legislature which would give New York State judges the jurisdiction to rule on disputed general elections. Currently judges can rule on primary elections. This hazy jurisdiction was the crux of the New York State Court of Appeals decision for throwing out Judge Francis Nicolai’t original ruling on the case, calling for a new election in District 18, and the Appellate Court amending of Nicolai’s decision expanding the special election to a citywide contest.

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WPCNR TROOPER TRAIL. From Westchester County Department of Communications. March 18, 2004:If you’re like many law-abiding people, you don’t talk on a hand-held cell phone while driving, but you see almost everyone else doing it, in violation of a state law. Or maybe you do flaunt the law, because you don’t expect to be caught.

A word to the wise – Westchester’s police will be watching and chances are they will find you.

Beginning Monday, Police throughout the county are teaming up in a one-week effort to get the message out that hand-held cell phones and drivers do not mix. The Westchester County Department of Public Safety and 27 city/town/village police departments will embark on a joint effort looking for violators and handing out tickets for using hand-held cell phones while driving.

The fine for talking on a cellphone without use of a handsfree device is $100.

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WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. From New York State Education Department Press Office. March 17, 2004 (EDITED): School Report Cards released Wednesday by the State Education Department show 85% of students entering high school in 1999 across the state passed their Regents Exams in 2003. Official conclusions on results across the state, showed:

• More students are taking and passing Regents Exams at 65 each year, even as 5 exams are required.
  
• The number of students graduating each year remains stable even with higher standards.
  
• Achievement is climbing as more students receive Regents Diplomas, requiring a 65 score on 8 exams including 2 math and 2 science exams.
  
• Despite gains, an achievement gap continues in high school.
  
• Elementary school students show continuing progress in English and math, and middle school students show progress in math.

“This school report card shows good news,” State Education Commissioner Richard Mills said, “but New York still faces many challenges. More students are achieving higher standards each year. The number of graduates is staying constant, even with higher standards. But we need to do better. Too many young people historically take longer to graduate, or they drop out. We need to press on and provide more help to students and close the achievement gap.”

Resources Key

“The Board of Regents has made closing the achievement gap a priority,” Regents Chancellor Robert M. Bennett said. “The improvements shown in this report card, combined with the continuing challenges, make the best possible argument for getting enough resources to the children who need them most. That’s why it’s urgent that New York State adopt the Regents’ proposal for reforming State Aid to schools.”