![CHANGES? OH NO!]( "CHANGES? OH NO!")
CHANGES? OH NO!
August 10, 2005 -- Broadway Matinee
WHO needs the critics to destroy your show when you've got Yoko Ono?
The widow Lennon is up to her old tricks, undermining last-ditch efforts to save the seriously flawed bio musical about her late husband at every turn.
Her latest antic: Driving director David Leveaux ("Nine," "Fiddler on the Roof"), who came on board last week as a show doctor, out the door.
Leveaux lasted just two days on "Lennon." He walked off after Ono objected to changes he wanted to make to the staging and the script, both the handiwork of Don Scardino, an Ono acolyte with a growing reputation as Broadway's leading bottom-drawer director.
"David didn't pull his punches about the show's problems," a production source says. "Yoko didn't want to hear it. She thought David was the devil."
The show's producers are said to be deeply frustrated by Leveaux's departure. They spent days trying to convince Ono that the show needed a fresh director. She finally agreed to Leveaux because he insisted on joining the show as "a friend of the production" and not as her beloved Scardino's replacement.
At first, Ono seemed to accept Leveaux's tough and, production sources say, accurate criticisms of the show. But as soon as he started to make changes, she turned on him.
Her fickleness has been a problem all along.
She agrees to something in the morning, and reverses herself by the afternoon, sources say.
She has enormous influence over the show because she controls the rights to Lennon's songs.
One day, she gives the producers permission to use the famous "Imagine" video in the show. The next day, for no apparent reason, she says they can't.
Changes are made that everyone agrees are an improvement and then, as soon as the producers aren't looking, Ono and Scardino put everything that wasn't working back in the show.
Or they come up with wacky new ideas — such as starting and ending the show with the image of the space shuttle because Ono once heard that the astronauts on one of the flights began each day listening to John Lennon songs.
A person involved in the show says Ono and Scardino "are like a roomful of school children — you turn your back on them for one minute and they make a mess of the whole place."
Another problem is that, when it comes to musicals, Ono has no idea what works and what doesn't (neither, apparently, does Scardino).
A veteran theater person working on "Lennon" says some of the scenes — and especially the dances — are painfully bad, but Ono thinks they're wonderful.
Company members, drowning their sorrows in beer across the street at the restaurant Angus McIndoe, are baffled by her complete lack of taste when it comes to the theater.
There are also complaints that the show, under Ono's tight rein, has become nothing but a Lennon whitewash job, turning one of the 20th century's most complex cultural icons into a bland, peace-loving hippie.
His drug use is just hinted at; his bisexuality ignored; and his serial philandering only dealt with head-on in one scene.
Backstage, the mood at "Lennon" is grim. Nearly everyone thinks the show, which, after several delays, finally opens Sunday at the Broadhurst, is doomed.
Cold turkey, indeed.
THERE is plenty of intrigue surrounding the abrupt cancellation of Conor McPherson's acclaimed Irish play "Shining City," which was to have begun rehearsals next week for a November opening on Broadway.
The official line, as reported last week by The New York Times, is that "certain critical production schedules could not be resolved in time to meet the current schedule."
That's so vague, it must be a cover for something else, and, according to several theater people, there is indeed blood in the water.
McPherson, the sources say, yanked his play after several heated disagreements with one of the producers, Barry Weissler.
McPherson wanted a bigger set, while Weissler, his eye always trained on the bottom line, did not want to spend the extra money.
Among other budgetary issues, the two are also said to have clashed over McPheron's housing allowance. One source says Weissler treated McPherson as if he were some Broadway hack instead of one of Ireland's leading playwrights.
But Weissler, who's butted heads with dozens of directors, writers and stars over the years, says that is not so.
"I love Conor — he's a fantastic guy. We made a mutual agreement not to go forward with the play at this time," he said.
As for fights about sets and hotel rooms, Weissler, who just got back from a safari in Africa, says: "I haven't even been around for two weeks. I was in the bush."
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/51587.htmJulie Danao-Salkin (front) and Terrence Mann in a scene from "Lennon."
