One Night Only: a Once in a Lifetime Theatrical Event

The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television's first annual benefit gala, One Night Only...With A Little Help From Our Friends, hosted by Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, filled Royce Hall with laughter Tuesday night.

This inaugural event, a staged reading of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway and film classic "You Can't Take it With You," by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, lived up to its billing, with a once-in-a-lifetime cast of world-class talent that saw seasoned pros William Shatner, Tom Hanks and Martin Short trying to one-one up each other with improvised zingers and relative newcomers such as "Mad Men" heart-throb Jon Hamm romancing "That '70s Show" beauty Mila Kunis.

What director Nora Ephron ("Sleepless in Seattle") described as the "choreographed chaos" of the classic screwball comedy was anchored by theater-legend turned film star Annette Bening, with sterling support from "Clueless" star "Alicia Silverstone, "Babe" and "LA Confidential" Oscar winner James Cromwell, rising stand-up comic Maria Bamford, "Six Feet Under" favorite Peter Krause and such instantly recognizable character actors as Ian Gomez, Kevin Chamberlin and Caroline Aaron.

Three UCLA theater students, Kevin Muster, Mark Krey, Sean Lewellyn, had a priceless opportunity to share the stage with so many distinguished performers. Muster said he was amazed to find himself getting blocking tips from Captain Kirk himself, when William Shatner offered some time-tested techniques for upstaging one's fellow actors.

In addition to offering audiences a chance to see so many acting giants on a single stage, events such as "One Night Only" provide unique glimpses of future stars on the verge of great careers. Asked backstage if any people or moments had surprised her, director Ephron responded that two actors she had never worked with before, Jon Hamm and Mila Kunis, had turned out to be "very, very charming together" as Tony Kirby and Alice Sycamore, the young lovers whose engagement sparks the play's central crisis, when Tony is introduced to Alice's exceedingly eccentric extended family.

And luckily so, Ephron added, "because if that relationship doesn't work, the play doesn't work."

This unprecedented evening of entertainment marked a reunion for Wilson, Hanks and Ephron, who previously worked together on the Oscar-nominated romantic comedy, "Sleepless in Seattle" in 1993. Wilson and Hanks have collaborated on several past fundraising events with friends and colleagues, and as a founding member of the Executive Board, it has been Rita Wilson's long-term goal to host such a gala event to benefit the School and its students.

The fun on Tuesday began before any lines of dialog were spoken. Asked to make a few pre-show announcements to the audience, maestro Hanks made a meal of it, admitted that as a high schooler he "did not have the grades or the transcripts to get into UCLA," and advised theatergoers "not to discount the excellence of the California State and community college systems."

Hanks also warned potential cell phone scoff laws that there were "several large actors" backstage and that if any "Nokia, Sprint, Blackberry, Verizon or Quiznos" went off during the performance they would send Jon Hamm into the audience "to pummel you and send your sorry asses across town to USC."

During the performance, improv comedy veteran Martin Short (of SCTV and SNL fame), who played the father of the family, Paul Sycamore, husband to Annette Bening's Penelope Sycamore, seemed to catch Bening off guard as he continued to give her long passionate kisses throughout the show – with Bening's husband Warren Beatty watching from the audience.

Hanks as Boris Kolenkhov, the eccentric Russian ballet master, seemed to have great fun playing a running game of "top this" with Short and Shatner (as "old grandpa" Martin Vanderhof), dropping a reference at one point to a moose and a flying squirrel. When Shatner questioned his choice, Hanks admitted, in his thick Boris Badanov accent, that it had been a "cheap reference."

Making room for more actors on stage and creating the desired chaos that director Nora Ephron requested of the cast, Hanks and Short had fun throwing chairs from the stage down to the floor near the audience. Later while preparing for the final meal, Hanks jumped from the stage to return the chairs, and then had to get back on stage but there were no stairs nearby, so he took a running leap to remount the stage and continue the show, and the crowd went wild.

"We're thrilled with the incredible response from our friends in the entertainment industry even during this very challenging economic climate," said Robert Rosen, dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "With help from numerous individual and corporate sponsors (see sidebar above right) we raised more than $300,000." He added that "this is an inaugural event intended to continue annually long into the future."

Proceeds from the event will benefit students and academic programs of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

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Keywords

"tom hanks" "rita wilson" "jon hamm" "william shatner" "mila kunis" 

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