Today is Saturday, July 8, 2023. I was AWOL yesterday from this space not because of illness, thank God, but because Elliot and I came home late from driving to Rockville Center to have dinner and watched a new film on Netflix starring Sarah Snook from the recently ended series Succession, which I did not watch, in a very different role, that of a tortured Australian mother of a seemingly troubled 7-year-old daughter in Run, Rabbit, Run, in a very unsatisfying psychological horror tale. When the film ended, it was close to midnight, so it was too late to post my review of the day.

As first reported in the news yesterday, special counsel Jack Smith and his team are now conducting an investigation into a raucous Oval Office meeting held on December 18, 2020, which was held at the eleventh hour of Herr Dumpf’s presidency in which the desperate soon-to-be former commander in grief fielded proposals to keep him in office, despite his White House’s counsel’s objections. This new development in Smith’s overarching investigation into Dumpf’s alleged criminality surrounding his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential results is featured in an online Salon article by Tatyana Tandanpolie entitled “Jack Smith is digging into Trump’s bizarre post election Oval Office meeting: report.”

In pursuit of getting to the bottom of what was discussed that day six weeks after Donald Dumpf lost the 2o20 election, investigators have questioned witnesses before the grand jury and during interviews about the meeting. Some witnesses were initially asked about the meeting several months ago, as others, like Rudy Giuliani, Dumpf’s consigliere, were questioned about the meeting more recently. Giuliani, in particular, conferred with investigators for two days last month in a voluntary interview about an array of topics, including the December 18, 2020, meeting he attended.

Sources have added that prosecutors have expressed interest in three external Dumpf advisers who were present at the infamous meeting: former Dumpf lawyer Sidney Powell, ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Two of those attendees, both Powell and Byrne, spoke extensively under oath with the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection. Flynn, if you recall, however, declined to answer the committee’s questions citing the Fifth Amendment.

The main reason for this renewed interest in what transpired during that chaotic meeting for Smith’s team is that it is seemingly ready to be nearing making charging decisions in the investigation, even though investigators are still gathering evidence, reaching out to several new witnesses in recent weeks and working to schedule interviews.

That tense December meeting devolved into chaos as Dumpf’s outside advisers went toe-to-toe with top West Wing lawyers in a heated debate about a plan to have the military seize voting machines in the key states Dumpf had lost in the election. The crazy antics included here involved the consideration of naming Powell as special counsel to investigate alleged voter fraud, as well as Dumpf invoking martial law in an effort to subvert the election results. Can you imagine if this tinpot dictator actually got his way and was able to implement his nefarious scheme to steal the election from Joe Biden? It’s unthinkable! Attendees at the meeting shouted and hurled insults, and Dumpf capped off the night by tweeting that an upcoming protest of the election results on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., “will be wild.”

The emphasis on the events that occurred during the December 18 meeting overlaps with events that transpired on December 14 in which a host of alternate Republican electors in seven battleground states falsely certified that their man had won the election, and a meeting of Electoral College members in every state to officially cast their ballots, ultimately confirming Joe Biden as the winner with 306 electoral votes compared to Dumpf’s 232.

What has become a primary focus for investigators during the probe is the efforts to recruit unlawful electors and have them sign certificates falsely affirming Dumpf’s win and using them to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to stymie the certification of Biden’s electoral college win on January 6.

In recent weeks, at least one witness has told the special counsel’s team that Dumpf’s allies asked Pence to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s electors in the seven battleground states over supposed widespread voter fraud and turn over the decision of certification to the states themselves, one source told CNN.

So there you have an analysis of what went down during a heated meeting held at the Oval Office that featured the presence of four conspiracy theorists holding the ear of the worst president of the United States and the most obtuse. Let us dearly hope that everyone present at that meeting will be held to account for their anti-American, antidemocratic actions.

On a more personal note, today I took in Sean Hayes’ magnificent portrayal of that musical prodigy/ film star, raconteur, and mental illness celebrity of the midcentury, Oscar Levant, in Good Night, Oscar. Elliot preferred to stay home because of the heat. I had wanted to see a play at TKTS for a week or more, but called it off because of the massive humidity of the last several days. Though today wasn’t any better.

I waited in line at the TKTS station about 45 minutes or so, and the humidity was intolerable. A young woman in front of me actually passed out because of the heat and was revived with a bottle of water by one of the TKTS workers onboard. The teen eventually got up and sat down at a ledge, while her father walked up to the booth to buy tickets for the two of them for a Broadway matinee.

A surprise awaited me as I entered the theater at around 1:35 p.m. and almost bumped into a major celebrity, almost taking my breath away, and that person was little Opie from The Andy Griffith Show who is now famed director Ron Howard. I confirmed this sighting with a theater assistant who said that was indeed Mr. Howard who was going up to the ticket booth to pick up his tickets. In actuality, he sat only three rows in front of me with his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, who is quite a raven-haired beauty. There were two other people besides her in the small entourage, but I couldn’t tell if his wife was with him or not. For most of the performance, both father and daughter wore a mask to watch the play. Howard had on his characteristic dark cap to hide his balding head.

Anyway, the play was engrossing from start to finish. It boasts a Tony-award-winning performance by Will & Grace‘s Sean Hayes in a far different role, that of an earlier famed pianist, composer, comedian, and actor, Oscar Levant. I would think that some of the references to 1950s TV and culture were lost on some of our younger theatergoers like the two young women fiddling with their cell phones sitting in front of me.

The story takes place over the filming of a single episode of The Tonight Show with Jack Paar in 1958. Some of those references like Ed Sullivan, Jane Mansfield, Arthur Miller, and, maybe, even Marilyn Monroe might be distant names for our younger set today, but the chaos surrounding the taping of a late-night show, big celebrity appearances, and exploitation in the name of good television would be well known even to these younger viewers.

Through the course of around 100 minutes, we get a full portrait of Levant, who was a gifted interpreter and friend of the late composer George Gershwin. Oscar was noted for his interpretation of Gershwin’s perennial “Rhapsody in Blue” throughout his career. The play is capped, actually, of Hayes playing Gershwin’s work which brings down the house. (I later learned that Hayes himself can play a mean piano, so that is not someone else playing the composition.) Along the way, we learn that Levant was haunted by the legacy of Gershwin who died at the too-young-age of 38, leaving him extremely distraught, and dealing with an addiction to pills, depression, anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and, perhaps, schizophrenia. In sum, Levant was a disheveled mess – but what a funny one.

When he couldn’t perform on stage, Levant used his laser-focused wit that camouflaged his own feelings of failure. Hayes manages to capture the obsessive tics and slouchiness that characterized Levant in all of his motion picture and television appearances.

Thus right before Levant is scheduled to appear on the show, which is making the head of the network very nervous, Bob Sarnoff (Peter Grosz), Oscar’s wife, June (Emily Bergl) informs Paar that she decided to commit Oscar to a psychiatric hospital after he tried to attack her and his three daughters in their Hollywood home. She has secured for him a four-hour furlough, though, to film the episode and this is how we are introduced to the mentally fraught Levant, who is here assisted by an orderly, Alvin (Marchant Davis) who is afraid he is going to lose his job, as the furlough was granted to Levant so that he could attend a daughter’s graduation, not be on television.

Soon as Hayes is onstage, the hilarity doesn’t let up, as Hayes rattles off line after line with rapid ferocity. The play then becomes a showcase for the actor portraying Oscar who is essayed with utter finesse by a rumpled, heavier Hayes. Some of the lines expressed by Hayes as Levant were actual one-liners made famous by Levant during many of his TV appearances. One of them that I can recall here is this exchange between Paar and Levant during that famous interview: Paar: “Oscar, what type of exercise do you do?” or something to that effect. Levant: “I stumble and then I fall into a coma!”

The play is written by Doug Wright and is performed without intermission. I strongly recommend you see it before it closes sometime in August.

Hmmm, do you think then that Ron Howard was seeing the play in order to pitch it as a film as a future project for himself? You didn’t hear it from me then. There could be only one person who can portray Oscar in a film adaptation, and, of course, that’s Broadway’s very own Sean Hayes.

So have a good Sunday.

Say safe and be well.

Here is the playbill from today’s play.