Hamilton Is 'Chicago's' Newest Resident

Patrick Pacheco

November 8, 2001

AT 62, George Hamilton, who's famous for being famous, is preparing for the Everest of his career: his Broadway debut as Billy Flynn in the long-running hit "Chicago." He begins performances next Thursday.

"I steam my nasal passages now instead of having a martini," he said with the glibness one might expect from the brilliantined star of the movies "Love at First Bite" and "Zorro, the Gay Blade."

"This has radically changed my life. I haven't sung in 20 years, and now I have a voice coach and I'm on the treadmill for an hour every day. It's like playing center ring in the circus without a net."

Hamilton, a former MGM contract star who's played everyone from stage legend Moss Hart to daredevil Evel Knievel, is no stranger to theater. "I knew what it was like being billed above the roast beef," he said, having toured the dinner theater circuit in such shows as "Funny Girl," opposite Barbara Cook, and taken over Tony Curtis' role in the national tour of Neil Simon's "Star-Spangled Girl."

But the star turned down the offer to play the oleaginous Billy Flynn four times. Then, the events of Sept. 11 convinced him that maybe he shouldn't put things off any longer. "What did actors do during World War II but join the USO?" he said. "I really wanted to support Broadway and lift the bar for myself. I'll either have a breakthrough or a breakdown. I've got everything from a rabbit's foot to an Indian medicine cabinet to get me through this."

Hamilton sees the relationship between Flynn and Roxie Hart as more romantic than has been previously envisioned, and suggests that might be the way to go in the film that is now being made of the musical in Toronto, which stars Richard Gere (as Billy), Catherine Zeta-Jones (as Velma) and Renée Zellweger (as Roxie).

"I think of them as two narcissists who have found each other," he said. "She's definitely met her match."

Hamilton was married to Alana Hamilton, Rod Stewart's ex, whom he describes, in rodeo terms, "as coming out of chute 10 on dynamite," or more than a handful, in other words. "I got a divorce because I wanted to get some sleep," he quips. "I like the single life. I have a wonderful relationship with my older son [Ashley, with Alana] and my younger boy [Georgethomas, with Kimberly Blackford, whom he did not marry], warms my heart. But I think just before I get my wheelchair, I probably will marry again, a nice nurse to pushit around."

'Homebody/Kabul'

Audience members attending a recent Guggenheim Museum lecture series on the process of creating art were treated to excerpts of Tony Kushner's "Homebody/Kabul" and a panel discussion in which the playwright spoke about the turn in global events that has dramatically transformed the context of a play he had written two years ago.

The drama, which begins performances Dec. 5 at the New York Theatre Workshop (79 E. 4th St., Manhattan) is about a middle-class Englishwoman whose fascination for Afghanistan leads to her disappearance into that blighted land and her family's efforts to find her.

Kushner said that the success of "Angels in America" gave him a public forum for his outspoken political beliefs, and that he's since had to deal with the tension between "the business of entertaining and the business of political activism."

He added that the events of Sept. 11 and the United States' bombing campaign against Afghanistan had not influenced changes in the play, but he expressed serious objections to the infliction of yet more suffering through the bombing on a desperate people. He held out the hope that theater might help the community "in some small way" to think "critically, analytically, compassionately, deeply, even while angry, mourning and terrified.

"You can be so clobbered by life that you despair, but if you have any resources left, then despair is not an ethical choice," Kushner said. "You have to struggle to produce a better world."

People Are Talking About ...

The Yankees weren't the only ones KO'd last weekend.

Broadway grosses were clobbered by the tag- team of the World Series and the clocks being set back for the return of Eastern Standard Time. "Noises Off," however, wasn't affected by either event. It's the latest hot ticket on Broadway ... Sheryl Lee Ralph ("Dreamgirls") has been signed to play Muzzy Van Meer in "Thoroughly Modern Millie," starting in March at the Marquis. It's also official that Vanessa L. Williams will be the Witch in the Broadway-bound revival of "Into the Woods." She opens in the Sondheim show this spring at the Broadhurst ... Discount Ticket Alert: Theater-

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Our Favorite Lines

"The man who has patience, has roses; the man who has no patience has no trousers."

- An old Afghan saying as quoted

in Tony Kushner's "Homebody/Kabul"

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