Backstage: Studio Theatre's Season Goes Where the Money Is

Studio Theatre Founding Artistic Director Joy Zinoman says she's "trying to address the zeitgeist and elevate the poetic yearnings . . . about how we're feeling right now" in the 2009-10 season. No surprise, then, that three shows take on aspects of American capitalism -- "the money plays," she calls them.

Zinoman will stage David Mamet's "American Buffalo," a 1975 play about bottom-feeders in the capitalist food chain. Studio will also revive "The Solid Gold Cadillac," a 1953 Broadway farce by George S. Kaufman and Howard Teichmann (and a 1956 Judy Holliday movie) in which a minor shareholder gives a corporation major fits. It turns out to be "totally prescient," says Zinoman, about today's anger at corporate America. The third money play will be "Adding Machine: A Musical," based on Elmer Rice's 1923 expressionist play about a man, Mr. Zero, who loses his job to a machine and waxes homicidal.

Studio will continue to showcase the work of Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose "The Brothers Size" was presented there in 2008. "The Brother/Sister Plays: 'In the Red and Brown Water' and 'Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet' " expands his Louisiana bayou tales with, says Zinoman, "that same kind of music and inflamed passion, based on the Yoruba myth" in the first play. The two newest plays will premiere this spring at McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, N.J.

O'Hurley Abounds

Holding court at Old Ebbitt Grill on March 16, actor John O'Hurley talked about playing slick defense lawyer Billy Flynn in "Chicago," which runs March 31-April 12 at the National Theatre. Famous for his J. Peterman character on "Seinfeld" -- he's now part-owner of the real J. Peterman Co. -- O'Hurley says Billy has little in common with TV's Peterman.

Billy has to be a jerk, O'Hurley says, "but he has to be charming and he has to be elegant. . . . You have to understand how he can charm a jury. You have to play him for what he is. You can't play him as a sympathetic character."

O'Hurley says he added a line when the tour was just in Chicago and says he'll keep it for the National run. Billy says to the milquetoast husband of the murderess Roxie Hart, "If Jesus Christ had $5,000 and he lived in Chicago, he'd have a Senate seat." It got a big reaction, needless to say.

The actor played King Arthur in "Spamalot" during an extended Las Vegas run, a role which he's soon to reprise on the road. "I have the two best leading-man roles in musical theater right now," he says. What better way to make an entrance than "between half a dozen women bumping and grinding, chanting 'We want Billy,' " or galloping onstage "to the sound of two coconuts being clapped together" as Arthur? Heaven.

In his post-"Seinfeld" years, O'Hurley did "Chicago" on Broadway for several months, appeared on "Dancing With the Stars," recorded his own songs and instrumental pieces, and wrote books ("It's Okay to Miss the Bed on the First Jump: And Other Life Lessons I Learned From Dogs"). He continues to host "Family Feud" and has become the face and "wallet" of enterprises.

After "Chicago" closes here, O'Hurley opens "Spamalot" in Alaska (where he just sold an airline and is spokesman for a telecom company), then takes it to San Francisco and Los Angeles. His wife, Lisa, and 2-year-old son, Dylan, usually travel with him.

"I believe everybody has two choices," says O'Hurley when asked why he wants to be so busy. "You can have an ordinary life or you can have an extraordinary life. . . . What your imagination tells you to do you should be doing." Whether it's business, books or music -- whatever takes him away from just acting -- O'Hurley says, "I do things because I don't know that I can't."

Follow Spot

Arena Stage has announced that Edgar Dobie will join the company at the end of March as managing director. Dobie was executive director of Trinity Rep in Providence, R.I., and managing director of Canadian Stage Company in Toronto. In the commercial theater world, he has been president of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group, an executive producer of Riverdream (which tours such shows as "Riverdance") and a Broadway producer ("Sunset Boulevard").