Miracle on 48th Street

NEW YORK - A young woman stands at the window and waves goodbye. The stage rotates. The young woman faces the audience for the first time this evening. The Cort Theater on 48th Street fills with murmurs and rumblings in dozens of different accents all united by a single mantra. The motto, the magic word, the secret password, the only reason we've all gathered here, no matter what else anyone may say. Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett ...

The name has a lovely ring to it in any language, and is whispered with awe and in a questioning tone. Is it she, or isn't it? Because there is no trace of the blond forelock of the Girl with a Pearl Earring. This woman's hair is black. Is she wearing a wig or not? Apparently yes. This girl is really who we think she is. (On one of the red-carpet broadcasts from some awards ceremony Isaac Mizrahi groped Scarlett's breasts and asked her if they were real. Wonder why he's not working there anymore?)

Then she opens her mouth, and there can be no mistake. The voice is the voice of Scarlett. Deep, smoky, velvety, Scarletty. Now we can begin.

The deal is quite simple and brutal, when you think about it: The rare animal, in this case a star of movies/posters/ads/gossip columns/male fantasies of every kind, is isolated for a limited time (three months) from her natural surroundings, put in a cage and displayed to the public, life-size. Reach out and touch her, if you only dare.

This is happening right now in London, where Keira Knightley is starring in a new adaptation of Moliere's "The Misanthrope" and in New York, with Scarlett Johansson in a new (but not the least bit innovative) production of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge." Two baptisms of fire on the stage (not counting the off-Broadway play Scarlett acted in as a child) for two 25-year-old screen goddesses in their prime and at the height of red-hot careers - not cooling or faded like that of someone like Catherine Zeta Jones, for instance, who is appearing down the street in a ragged production of "A Little Night Music."

Knightley plays a movie star - gosh, it makes you wonder how she ever managed to prepare for the part - while Johansson, in a role that the late Brittany Murphy also once played on Broadway, plays a good girl, a 17-year-old virgin from Brooklyn. A bit more challenging, one must admit.

Sour thoughts

Back to the zoo. Most of the French, Norwegian and Spanish tourists who sat near me in the balcony couldn't have cared less what Scarlett was doing on stage, just as long as she was there. When all sorts of folks who aren't Scarlett push their way into the picture at her expense, the tourists shift uncomfortably and impatiently in their seats. They feel cheated. Excuse me, but why are other actors getting in the way of Scarlett? What did we pay for?

The play is just as much a brand as Scarlett is, having been the subject of countless literature classes and matriculation exams all over the world. Maybe this is the reason why most of the audience is so indifferent and seems to take no interest in it. The plot keeps rolling along somehow, but the only view most of the audience wants to see from the bridge is that blond girl in the black wig. Let the glamorous pet animal play while we watch, and then we'll toss her some peanuts.

The actual lead role of Eddie Carbone is played by Liev Schreiber. Some of you may have heard of him. He is a respected actor who has already been Hamlet and Macbeth and Henry V on stage (and is the husband of another Hollywood blonde, Naomi Watts). He is fine (though Yossi Banai was better in the role), as is the entire production. Everything's fine, everybody's fine. Yes, Scarlett, too.

Those who like their caged animals scared or even terrified, as in Julia Roberts' Broadway mishap and Madonna's West End disaster, are in for a disappointment. Scarlett does not get lost in translation. She does all that is expected of her, and with effectiveness and confidence. She doesn't shake or stutter and she also controls her hands, unlike Madonna and, according to the reviews, Knightley, whose hands have developed a life of their own alongside a whole collection of involuntary physical twitches.

Scarlett gets by okay. She doesn't wreck the evening, nor does she manage to soar to any special heights. Bottom line, the whole affair is underwhelming. Not bad, but not so great either, leaving one with sour thoughts like: "Is that it?" and: "We came out of the house on a freezing cold night for this?"

I attended one of the first previews. Perhaps the show will yet find its wings, but even then that won't be saying much. We've seen and are sure to see better, more important, meaningful and certainly more exciting productions than this one. Still, there are worse ways to start off 2010, and one mustn't be too greedy.

At least the producers will be celebrating. Hollywood's "Giving Tree" has once again bestowed one of its choice fruits on Broadway. The local critics, who aren't known for warm hospitality, have yet to say their piece, but the box office is humming. Scarlett was asked in an interview with Time Out New York if she was nervous about what the reviews would be. She replied honestly that of course she was scared and of course it would hurt if she gets panned, "But what's the alternative? To do nothing?" she asked rhetorically.

What does the bird really care in the end? After all, she's Scarlett Johansson and we're not. She has a line in the play about people who belong in the sewer with the rats, and one can imagine that if the critics are mean to her she'll dedicate those words to them wholeheartedly.

In dealing with "A Steady Rain," the critics were justifiably scathing toward Hugh Jackman (whose Chicago accent at best sounded South African) and Daniel Craig, who displayed all the charisma of a run-over cat and wore a mustache that no self-respecting '70s porn star would have been caught dead with. The only interesting thing about the play (a box-office hit, of course) was the charity fund-raiser that took place after the final bows the evening I attended, in which they auctioned off the undershirts they were wearing for $3,000. But with this show, at least there was no attempt to pretend there was any other reason for mounting the project apart from the pair's consent to act in it, and the audience was not burdened with the presence of other actors who might disturb the habitat of the glamorous creatures in the golden cage.

The ultimate humiliation is surrounding Hollywood stars with less famous and more talented cast mates. Which is why poor Zeta Jones's performance fails to outshine that of the actor in the smallest bit part, let alone that of Angela Lansbury, the stage legend who plays her mother and eats the Oscar winner for breakfast without leaving so much as a crumb.

Great she's not

Eleven years ago, in the same theater where Scarlett Johansson is currently appearing fully clothed, Nicole Kidman appeared nude in the two-person play "The Blue Room" (of course no one remembers the name of the second actor, Iain Glen.) Nicole showed everything, and I mean everything. She was still married at the time to Tom Cruise and not as big a star as she became later, and I remember building a whole theory on the idea that seeing Kidman like this was the closest we would ever get to seeing Cruise.

The choice of Scarlett for the role of the pure teenager whose aging uncle (in this production, not aging enough, which dulls the needed pedophilic aspect) harbors impure thoughts about her, is at least as interesting as the rumor that made the rounds about two years ago to the effect that she was being considered for the role of Nellie Forbush in the new Broadway production of "South Pacific." Forbush, you will recall, falls in love with an older man with a shadowy past, until she threatens in one song to "wash that man right out of my hair."

It all corresponds perfectly with Scarlett's definitive role in "Lost in Translation," and with her roles in films like "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "The Other Boleyn Girl," which depicted her as a creature who somehow, by her very nature, messes with the minds of powerful men - not necessarily through any fault of her own. And it all surely harmonizes with that "Ah, what we'd do to Scarlett if she'd only let us" upon which her career and image have been built.

Since she was already going with Arthur Miller, a more courageous, bold and intriguing choice would have been the suicidal Maggie in "After the Fall," who is basically Marilyn Monroe, thinly veiled.

And yet, when on the next block Laura Linney, Scarlett's co-star in "The Nanny Diaries" (the city is filled these days with posters advertising the sequel to the book), who may be less of a star than Scarlett but is more of an actress, is revving up for a new play, then artistic satisfaction has a different address.

The audience, for its part, is very grateful. After the play, hundreds crowded around the stage entrance and pretty much took over the entire street. Police had to be called in to impose order, as if they had no terrorists to catch or any other slightly more pressing matters to attend to. Everyone waited for half an hour with exemplary patience in the bitter cold, barely glancing at Alec Baldwin, who came to greet the actors. They behaved with perfect manners when Scarlett finally came out the door, looking tiny ("She's a midget," someone whispered in horror. How rude!), bundled up and almost embarrassed in a huge blue wool hat that hid half her face, and childish boots, giving out autographs with that famous Scarlett smile (She smiled at me, too, even though I stood there like an idiot and didn't hand her anything to sign), murmured "Thank you" nonstop, took pictures with a bunch of happy people and was swallowed up in a van with tinted windows. All with the protection of a lone doorman, seeming utterly exposed in this city where John Lennon was shot, but at least without any excuses of "Sorry, but I have to get back to the children" like Zeta Jones offered so coldly after her performance.

Scarlett won't save the starving in Africa, she won't bring world peace; and her dazzling blondeness notwithstanding, she won't restore sight to the blind or cause the paralyzed to get up and run. But for one innocent and pathetic and ridiculous moment, there was a small miracle on 48th Street, not inside the theater but outside it, and everything suddenly seemed a little nicer and brighter and happier and more optimistic, thanks to her. This is what real movie stars can do. And Scarlett does it better than any of them. W