Now Running: “The Guttenberg Bible”
Steve Guttenberg is many things. Among them is “nice guy from Massapequa, New York,” “hustler,” and “someone who faked it until he made it.” All of those are on display in his autobiographical play “Tales from the Guttenberg Bible,” now playing at the Bay Street Theater.
The play started life in the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ., where David Saint, the Playhouse’s artistic director, put the show together. It ran there until May 21 with the same cast now on stage in Sag Harbor.
The show has Steve Guttenberg (familiar from movies like “Diner,” “Cocoon,” and “Three Men and a Baby”) onstage at all times, relating how he left home at 17 and made his career.
As the poster says, it’s a comedy.
Accompanying him are three players: Carine Montbertrand, Arnie Burton, and Dan Domingues. They play numerous characters in his life: agent, mother, costars, security guard, Jessica Tandy, Jerry Seinfeld — the list goes on. And on.
Carine Montbertrand in the New Jersey production.
Opening Night was August 5, and of course it was a happy occasion. It was also something of a try-out, we suspect, for the four-hand play to find a home closer to Broadway.
Another director, Will Pomerantz came to see the show.
Will Pomerantz (photo by Barry Gordin)
In the audience were several successful producers including Bill Boggs, a television personality and producer and Riki Kane Larimer. Larimer built her MetroKane business on gadgets like the Rabbit corkscrew. Then she turned her passion toward the theater.
Larimer won a Tony for best revival for the Broadway production of “On the Town.”
Riki Kane Larimer and Bill Boggs (photo Barry Gordin)
Another producer who came to opening night was Jamie Gruber, known professionally as Jamie deRoy. DeRoy has done television shows, film and stage as well as cabaret as a performer. And she is a member of the Friars Club. If you are doing a comedy, you want someone like Jamie deRoy in your audience. She arrived with another theater stalwart, Judy Katz, who is Guttenberg’s publicist.
Jamie deRoy and Judy Katz (photo Barry Gordin)
And what would opening night be without theater critics like Patrick Christiano, who is also an actor, director and producer. Christiano is the publisher of theaterlife.com, which runs reviews, features and interviews.
Steve Guttenberg and Patrick Christiano (photo by Barry Gordin)
Most of Gordin’s photos show how unglamorous life is in the theater. After the show, when the wigs and makeup come off, actors and directors are backstage . Here they are in their last bits of costume, or their own clothes, when friends come to greet them.
The cast: Dan Domingues, Corine Montbertrand, Steve Guttenberg, Arnie Barton (photo Barry Gordin)
Among the visitors was Steve Guttenberg’s wife, Emily Smith. They married in Malibu in 2019. She was a news anchor on CBS2.
Emily Smith, Steve Guttenberg (photo Barry Gordin)
Guttenberg told a television interviewer that “Gutenberg: the Musical,” coming to Broadway in the fall, is, unfortunately, not his show. Meanwhile his show will run through August 27, when the straw hat theater season officially ends.
The entire troupe: The stand-in Stephen DeRosa, the director David Saint (holding Gatsby), Dan Domingues, Carine Montbertrand, Steve Guttenberg, Arnie Burton and Bay Street Theater artistic director Scott Schwartz (photo Barry Gordin)
