‘Wall Street” meets “Good-fellas” — that’s how they’re describing Chazz Palminteri’s new play “Human,” which is slated to open on Broadway in the spring.
Palminteri, who got his start with “A Bronx Tale” (both off- and on Broadway and on-screen), knows a thing or two about — what shall we call it? — “The Neighborhood.” This time around he’s blended “the neighborhood” with a white-glove kind of corruption: banking.
A source who’s read the play describes it this way: “a morality tale in the Wall Street era in which a chance encounter between two men in Central Park before dawn leads to the unraveling of lives, guns, mayhem, colorful language and goodfellas.”
Can’t wait for the movie: Marty Scorsese, you may have found your next project!
Palminteri will play a Wall Street banker, who winds up on a bench in Central Park in the wee hours. A jogger comes by — to be played by Jeremy Shamos (a Tony nominee for “Clybourne Park”) — and stops to talk. A tangled plot ensues, the details of which I can’t reveal here, but which brings in two women, one to be played by Oscar winner Mira Sorvino and the other by Australian pop singer Sophie Monk.
I like that “Human” is set in Central Park. It evokes the best play set in the park ever written, Edward Albee’s “The Zoo Story.” Like Palminteri’s play, it begins with a man sitting on a bench. He’s minding his own business when a stranger comes up to him and announces, “I’ve been to the zoo.” Then all hell breaks loose.
And then there was Herb Gardner’s Tony-winning “I’m Not Rappaport,” with Judd Hirsch and Cleavon Little kibitzing about old age. That, too, ends with an act of violence, though with happier results than those of “The Zoo Story.”
If Palminteri blended the two, he’d be both avant-garde (Albee) and syrupy (Gardner).
Jerry Zaks, who directed “A Bronx Tale” on Broadway, is helming “Human”; there’ll be an invitation-only reading here the first week of September. The producers are the father-and-son team of Scott and Brian
Zeilinger. They’ve been swinging their money around New York in the past few years, investing in Pee-wee Herman’s show and the Tony-winning revival of “Death of a Salesman.”
They’re from Cleveland, and their money comes from plumbing and health-care products. No wonder they want to lose some of it on Broadway. It’s so much more glamorous than plumbing.
Everybody knows Phyllis Diller, who died this week at 95, as one of the first great comediennes. But at The Post, we know her as “The Wingo Girl.” Back in the ’70s, when Rupert Murdoch took over this great newspaper, he instituted a game called Wingo. To promote it, The Post featured photos of celebs playing the game. And Diller was The Post’s go-to celeb. She posed for photos in Times Square, Central Park and on the ledge of her hotel room, filling out her Wingo card. She even made a TV commercial for it, which you can see on YouTube.
“She knew, better than anyone else, the value of publicity,” says her longtime publicist, Pete Sanders.
Here’s what else you may not have known:
* She made wonderful tuna salad, and would serve it to Tommy Hilfiger whenever he visited her house in Brentwood, Calif.
* She called her guest bathroom “Edith Head,” in honor of the Hollywood costume designer. It was painted red and featured Head’s original costume sketches.
* She was an accomplished painter whose works were shown in SoHo galleries in the ’70s and ’80s.
So long, Wingo Girl. We at The Post salute you!