Riedel: Riedel Determined to Kill "Country"

"And believe me when I say that I've got "The Country Girl" in my sights."

Wow... that's a threat...

I'm sorry, I know it's not wise to mess with Riedel, but his outburst this morning was unpardonable.

As I said on another thread, I went to last Saturday's matinee, fully expecting the worst. While the play itself is by no stretch of the imagination one of my favorites, I felt they all did a creditable job. Frances McDormand especially was radiant, giving a controlled performance with all the right shadings -- FAR more effective than Grace Kelly was in the movie. Peter Gallagher was fine -- used a Bronx/Brooklyn action and coveyed the character's ultimate need for Georgie. Freeman did not go up in any of the lines and was creditable throughout. I'm not so sure that he's ideal casting for this particular role, but he in no ways was incompetent. There were no appreciable cuts that I could notice and the Second Act was powerful stuff. I did find the use of the second curtain going back and forth distracting.

I'm assuming that Riedel has some vendetta (personal? professional?) against someone involved in the show. No, he is NOT a critic; he's a glorified gossip columnist with more background that some of his confreres. But a gossip columnist is a gossip columnist is a gossip columnist.

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I think he was just added to the metaphor in the quote before him. I didn't read it as a threat.

They threw out a whole scene? Did they have to get written permission from the author to do that?

From broadways Q&A with Peter Gallagher


There's been talk about the fact that an entire scene in the first act was cut.

Oh, we were just playing with that. That's been back in for a while. This is what you do in previews, and if you have the freedom to do it out of town you don't get killed for it. The first act is largely expository, and Mike was thinking there was no new information imparted in that scene. It's essentially a domestic scene, and he was curious to see if the play would suffer by losing it. But when he took it out, we realized it would mean rejiggering the rest of the play and at the end of the day, we put it back in. He had also moved up the act break. We thought for about five seconds, "Wow, we'll get all of this information in and then we'll just burn through the second act and it will be great and exciting!" It didn't quite work out like that, but you can't know until you try.

The idea was that the scene was removed because Morgan Freeman can't learn his lines.

That's complete and utter bullsh*t. We could all be tarred with that brush, but that's not true. What people don't understand is that we do a tremendous amount of work on the show every day. Up until half an hour before curtain, we're changing the opening, we might cut a word here or shift a word there or change the entire blocking of a scene, and when you have nothing but changes day-in and day-out, the once-familiar landscape can become frighteningly foreign. For a while I likened it to putting on a pair of pants and finding three other people in there and being asked to win a dance contest. But, in fact, I think the show has really turned a corner.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=563997

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So in other words, they have been doing what you do in previews, and getting killed for it by an overzealous reporter, looking for an easy target.

No one complains when scenes are dropped from Shakespeare, and that is done with regularity. Certainly, it is not wrong for Nichols to try things out to try to animate Odets.

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Updated On: 4/23/08 at 11:25 AM

Well, his e-mail address is at the end of the article....

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Well, Baitz is the member from the Odets' state that is supposedly authorizing (and helping with) Nichol's changes to the script.
I just don't get why Riedel is so vicious when it comes to certain shows and people. His coverage of the Peters' GYPSY revival and Donna Murphy's absences in WONDERFUL TOWN are other examples of his poisonous persona. Why can't he stick to reporting gossip? Instead of manipulating the press and people.

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I think they are doing a good job all by themselves.

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Riedel has the luxury of working for a tabloid run by Rupert Merdoch, so he can write virtually anything he wants. As long as it's skewed republican.

Frankly, I am shocked he hasn't taken aim at Cry Baby either. Perhaps too easy of a target? His work is being done for him on the boards! (Not criticism...just an observation!)

I need to buy All About Eve. It's on sale at Virgin for 10 bucks on DVD.

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