Preview performances began this Sunday, January 30, for the five-time Tony nominated production of “33 Variations” with Jane Fonda at the Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre. “33 Variations,” written and directed by Moisés Kaufman, opens February 9 and continues through March 6, 2011.

Fonda, who is a two-time Academy Award-winner, was nominated for the Tony Award for her role in the 2009 Broadway run of “33 Variations.” The Tectonic Theater Project production was also nominated for a Tony, as was Zach Grenier who also reprises his role at the Ahmanson for his portrayal of Beethoven, and Derek McLane for scenic design and David Lander for lighting.

Fonda and Grenier are joined by Samantha Mathis, Don Amendolia, Susan Kellermann, Greg Keller, Grant James Varjas, Diane Walsh, Scott Barrow, Caitlin O’Connell and Yvonne Woods Slaten. Additional design credits for “33 Variations” include costumes by Janice Pytel, sound by André J. Pluess and projection design is by Jeff Sugg.

In “33 Variations,” the audience is transported back and forth from present-day New York to 19th century Austria, when a musicologist Fonda is determined to solve the musical mystery of why Beethoven Grenier spent his last years feverishly writing 33 variations of what appeared to be a mediocre waltz.

Tickets, which are priced from $20 — $80, are available by calling Center Theatre Group Audience Services at 213 972-4400, in person at the Center Theatre Group box office or on-line at www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

 Photo Credit: Craig Schwartz

Moises Kaufman, Timothy Koch

Susan Kellermann, Jane Fonda

Caitin O'Connoll, Douglas C. Baker, Jane Fonda, Samantha Mathis, Zach Grenier

Jane Fonda, Moises Kaufman

Zach Grenier, Samantha Mathis, Jane Fonda, Moises Kaufman, Susan Kellermann

Greg Keller, Grant James Varjas, Zach Grenier

click here for complete article on Broadwayworld.com

Don plays Diabelli, the famous music publisher in Vienna in the mid 1800s, who wrote the original waltz that inspired Beethovan to compose the 33 Variations. Don has been on tour all year as the Wizard of Oz in “Wicked” and Diane is the classical pianist who plays the 33 Variations during the play. It is one of the special things about this play–having her accompany us–as we perform.

Don's back!!!!

Michael Winther covers for Beethoven and is a talented singer. It was he who, in Spring of ’09, wrote the skit for our play to perform at the Broadway Cares Easter Bonnet contest. We won best skit, best bonnet and the prize for raising the most money.

That's Michael Winther talking with our music director. Diane Walsh at the piano

We walked across the street this afternoon to the Ahmanson so we could experience that stage. It’s a bigger theatre than the Eugene O’Neil where we were in NY. We’ll be performing for around 400 to 500 more people every night. That will be an interesting challenge.

It was a good rehearsal day, helped by my having run lines for 2 hours yesterday. I pretty much did my scenes today without holding the script which helped me feel myself getting back into Katherine (my character’s) skin.

I am on a gurney when I sing the Kyrie. Tulea isn't usually there though!

Sam and me.

Then, for the final 2 hours we rehearsed singing the kyrie all together. It still moves me deeply.

Here we all are practicing the Kyrie

I’d like to go home and run lines some more tonight then fall into bed but, instead, we’ll stop by a pre-birthday party dinner for Rod Taylor . . . hey, somebody’s gotta do it!! I can still get in my 8 hours. Can’t function on less.

In my last blog post I said I was in love. Maybe I shouldn’t have but it’s so much fun I couldn’t resist. A few days later I discovered what PDA means because someone told me that TMZ had said I was engaging in PDA (public display of affection) in a parking lot with my husband. “Oops!l Said someone on the show, “She’s not married.” Hey, I’m from Atlanta and not used to cameras in every hot spot parking lot outting me. I’ll try to be more careful in the future.

My boyfriend is Richard Perry, a record producer whom I met 35 years ago when he gathered heavy hitters from the music industry to support my then-husband, Tom Hayden’s run for the US Senate. I danced with him in Aspen 25 years ago and didn’t see him again till a week after my knee replacement surgery in June when our mutual friend, Carrie Fisher, acted as a go-between at Richard’s request and set up a dinner.

In May I told friends I’d stop thinking about love and all the other good stuff. “That’s all over for me,” I thought. Oh yeah…wham.

Anyway, between physical therapy and romance there just hasn’t been time to blog or even twitter. And as for those 2 new chapters I was going to write during this time in LA—forget about it! I’ll just have to hole up at my ranch starting week after next and knuckle down. I guess the chapter on love etc in the third act will be more interesting now–and fun to write.

Richard is working on a new musical called “Baby It’s You” about Florence Greenberg,  a jewish housewife in New Jersey who started Scepter Records her own record company (the first woman to do so)  in the 1950s and created a long list of hits with, among other groups, the Shirelles. It’s pretty exciting–the music I grew up with.

Last night I had cocktails with Don Amendolia who played the music publisher, Diabelli, in “33 Variations.” We became good friends and it was great catching up with him before he was whisked off to Lucie Arnaz’s birthday party.

Now, I’m on my way to Troy and Simone’s for a barbecue where Richard will join us after his rehearsals.

Life is good.

See you next time

The owner of Sardi’s, Max Klimavicius, threw a fabulous party for us. I was intending to go home early–after all I was up at 6am yesterday to leave Montreal. But I couldn’t tear myself away. It’s not often that all of us get a chance to chill and share stories.

My dear friend, Robert Osborne, who hosts the Turner Classic Movie channel was there looking dashing. He has lost a good bit of weight and it really becomes him.

My portrait (photo: Bruce Glikas)

Standing in Sardi’s next to Dad’s caricature (photo: Bruce Glikas)

Dick Pollak, Diane Walsh, Me, Cletus Karamon and Melissa Spengler. Cletus is the “Production Electrician” on “33 Variations”. (photo: Bruce Glikas)

That’s my agent, Joe Machota in the middle. Pretty good looking guy, yes? (photo: Bruce Glikas)

Our Producer, David Binder, Don Amendolia with Tulea, Samantha Mathis, Me, Susan Kellerman, Diane Walsh our pianist, and Linda Marvel, our stage manager on either side of my newly inaugurated portrait. (click photo to enlarge. Photo: Bruce Glikas)

My portrait and my dad’s. Hmm. Guess I am happier (Photo: Bruce Glikas)

Don and Tulea (Photo: Bruce Glikas)

Susan Kellerman and Jeff LaHoste, 20 year partner of Moises Kaufman. (Photo: Bruce Glikas)

With Dr. Barry Kohn. He’s is the doctor who treats actors pro bono whom I have blogged about in the past. (Photo: Bruce Glikas)

Michael Winther, Linda and Samantha (Photo: Bruce Glikas)

Sardi’s owner, Max Klimavicius and me with newly unveiled portrait (Photo: Bruce Glikas)

With Michael Winther. He, by the way, is responsible for “33 Variations” winning the Broadway Cares skit and is about the nicest person one could ever meet. Played one of the husbands in “Mama Mia,” fantastic singer. His new CD is “Song’s From An Unmade Bed.” Right now he is understudying Beethoven and Diabelli. (Photo: Bruce Glikas)

We had a good matinee today. Tonight my beloved friend and Zen teacher, Roshi Joan Halifax is coming. I’ve been waiting for this since the beginning. For me, this play is very Zen. Besides, one of the things Joan focuses her attention on (and her writing and teaching) is death and dying. She spends much time with the dying and I have learned a lot about this from her. One of my bloggers asked if in my next book on aging I intend to also focus on death and she sent me some suggested reading. I have read what she recommended and much more and, you bet, I intend to focus on death. I do not like the way we in the United States tend to avoid any discussion of death. We seem to want to deny our mortality or at least not be reminded of it. All cultures are not like this. I think, especially, of Mexico where they seem to include the presence of death even in their festivals. I think our denial robs us of living a meaningful life. Just as noise gives meaning to silence and sadness gives meaning to happiness, so death gives meaning to life. I try to stare death in the face, make it my friend and ally. I envision my dying–sort of like rehearsing for it. I want to be intentional about my dying just as I try to be intentional about my living. The dead and the living are woven together in this play and, for me, the final minuet says to me that no one really dies. We live on in other’s hearts and prayers and imaginations. Just as the cells that make up our bodies are composed of cells that have existed for eons, part of the stars, so, for me, we maintain a presence after our death–an energetic, cellular presence. Moises has called this up in this play and it speaks deeply to me just as, I think, it will to Joan.

Joan Halifax (photo: Michael Rudd)

After the play, Joan and I and another friend of hers will go to dinner. We have a lot of catching up to do. I will dedicate my performance tonight to her.

Now for my between-shows nap.

See you next time

So, I said that today I’d write about my fellow actors. I have come to really love and appreciate actors from doing this play with these seasoned performers. They’re not in it for fame or money. It’s in their blood and bones. They are totally reliable, steadfast, loving, funny and sooooo talented. I know this is one of the things that drew my Dad to theatre.

I have the great pleasure of standing next to Don Amendolia every night before the show starts. Both of us are usually in our places in the wings before places are even called. I am dressed in a sharp contemporary suit and he, as a rising music publisher in the mid-1800s, is dressed in a snappy, velvet jacket and ruffled shirt. Two different centuries side by side about to appear on stage together. It is his character, Anton Diabelli, who wrote the original waltz that inspired Beethoven to write his 33 variations. For 200 years Diabelli’s waltz was considered mediocre and my character, the musicologist Dr Katherine Brandt, is obsessed to find out and write a monograph about why Beethoven did this at the end of his life when he was going deaf and was ill and writing his most famous, important works-the Ninth Symphony and the Mass-why devote 3 years to all those variations on a mediocre waltz.

Don’s home is in New Jersey but right now, for this run, he’s here in the city. He can sing (beautifully), dance and do many styles of acting. In this play he is wonderfully over-the-top as he pantomimes his frustrations to Beethoven who is going deaf. I am often in the wings waiting for an entrance, watching the scenes and Don always makes me laugh. On top of all that, Don is also a director.

But being able to stand next to him every night before the show starts is a real pleasure-and reassuring. He’s a glass-half-full kind of guy, a perfect antidote to my tendency to fret about how the house (audience) looks, etc. He seems to almost chomp at the bit so eager is he to get out on stage. “Oh, I’m going to have such a good time tonight!” Like me, he likes to know who’s in the audience and as I can’t see as well as he can and am always complaining that I can’t find a particular friend or celebrity, he gave me some opera glasses last night and I had a ball scanning the crowd. (This totally shocked Sally who doesn’t like knowing who is out there.)

Right before the house lights go down, we look across the stage and there, regular as clockwork, silhouetted against a blueish light, is Colin Hanks, waving overhead to us. Sometimes Samantha is there to. But always Colin. And right before we go on, Don and I whisper “En bocca del Luppo” to each other: “In the mouth of the wolf.” The opera’s equilvalent to “Break a leg. We haven’t missed this little routine once in the 2 months we’ve been performing.

At the top of the second act, I make an entrance from back stage center and walk slowly down to the footlights. I’m usually in my place early and so most of the other actors cross behind me to get into their positions. First Don with an upbeat comment about how great the audience is or what a fun time he’s having. I tell you, I kvell at the sheer joy he derives from his profession. It’s contagious. Then comes Colin, squeezing behind me (it’s a narrow space) who usually whispers, “See you in Bonn,” because in the second act that’s where he has come so he can be of help to my daughter (Samantha Mathis). Colin plays a male nurse. Last, comes Susan Kellerman who plays Gertie, the keeper of Beethoven’s archives in Bonn. She gently pats my shoulder as she passes and says “Give ‘em hell” or “You go girl.” (Usually in her character’s German accent)

There are some scenes that I’m not in but that I get to watch from off-stage while I wait to make an entrance. I try to get there early so I can watch most of the scene and see the different audience responses. It’s amazing how very different they can be and how that doesn’t necessarily predict what the curtain call will be like-on their feet cheering or more subdued. There are some scenes that make me laugh so hard I’m afraid the audience can hear me.

Like when Samantha and Colin bump into each other early in the play while they’re waiting to get their computers repairs. Or the scene in the second act when Susan tells Samantha she wants to find me a male prostitute, “I think he should be a Turkish man, zey are very gut with women. Zay take zere time.”

That’s all for now. I’m going to nap with Tulea. Oh yes, turns out I lent “Man on Wire” to Don and he forgot to return it so today the kids and I watched “Himalayas”, an award winning movie that showed the terrain I will trekking through in a year and a half. I dropped the kids back off with their mother who is in a media training session at the Women’s Media Center. When we left, my apartment looked like a cyclone hit it due to the grandkid’s fondness for making forts using every pillow, bolster and blanket in the place. “Man on Wire” will have to wait till Sunday.

See you next time

So—I had breakfast in Atlanta in the beginning of January with my friend, Matt Arnett. Matt really wanted me to meet a friend of his whose kids go to the same school as my grandchildren because he thought this tech-savy friend might be able to help my Georgia-based Non-profit, The Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention improve its website. (More about that another time). Actually, we never even got around to G-CAPP because I got so inspired to start my own blog. Matt, James (that’s his name—James Andrews) and James’s wife Sherrelle Kirkland-Andrews, pointed out to me that there’s such malarkey floating around the net about me. Why not begin to tell my own story, my thoughts, and activities (past, present and future) rather than letting others—sometimes hostile others—try to put out their own spin on me. That’s part of it. But the idea also occurred to me that I was about to launch into a new adventure in this third act of mine and that it might be interesting to bring people along with me.

The adventure is that I am returning to Broadway for the first time in 45 years. Why not try, with this blog, to convey what it’s like… day by day…the excitement, scariness, the highs and lows.

So, although I’ve just gone online today, I have, in fact, been blogging for three weeks now and you can follow all the posts from the beginning by clicking here.

Today, during lunch break, I took my dog, Tulea, for a walk and it really hit me how much I miss my dad. When he returned from his stint in the Navy after WWII he went straight to Broadway to star in “Mr. Roberts.” He played that role every day for four years, never missing a performance! It was not customary in those days—the 40s and 50s—for movie stars to go back and forth from Hollywood to Broadway. But theatre was Dad’s great love. My brother and I grew up knowing and respecting this about him. He loved the immediacy of playing before a live audience. The instant feedback. He was meticulous, always doing exactly the same things, the same moves, the same inflections, every night. I have heard this from so many of his fellow actors.

Now that I am doing theater again after a huge absence, I can’t help but wish he was still here with me–to see. Not that he would give me advice. That wasn’t his style. But I wish he knew that I’ve come back to his place of love.

There have been days during these weeks of rehearsals when I seem incapable of doing the same thing over and over…even twice, never mind for 4 years! I wonder how he was able to do it. I want to please him…still. Do we ever get over this need to please the parent we were closest to?

* * * * * * * *

Moises Kaufman, the writer and director, has us doing run throughs more frequently now and it helps so much to experience the sweep of the play. We begin tech rehearsals in the actual theatre—the Eugene O’Neill–next week (gulp!) so we are starting to fine tune and lock in the blocking.

I love watching the other actors in their scenes. So funny, so touching, so outrageous! I like how we are melding together as a unit, all watching out for each other. Colin (Hanks) has had a cold for several days and last night he had to fly to Las Vegas to perform a scene he did with the actors in the TV series “Mad Men.” We’re all worried about him and he left with all of us bombarding him with special remedies for stopping colds.

I couldn’t resist taking this picture of Don Amendolia who plays Diabelli, the music publisher whose small waltz is the inspiration for Beethoven’s great opus, 33 Variations. That’s him behind the paper, sleeping with Tulea during a break.

Susan Kellerman, who plays the librarian in charge of the Beethoven archive, is insisting that I grant them all visiting rights with Tulea when the play is over. “Over”! What a concept.

Tomorrow I have an early costume fitting so I’m off to bed.

See you next time.