Improper Bostonian – Playhouse 2013 Gala
Island of High Returns
Missives from the Jet Set
BY: JONATHAN SOROFF
If You Adjust for Inflation
It was the perfect combo of party and real estate porn when the Vineyard Playhouse hosted its annual Summer Gala at Blue Heron Farm, the estate where the Obamas used to stay on Martha’s Vineyard, now which belongs to the famous British architect Sir Norman Foster and his fetching Spanish wife, Elena.
Their adorable son Eduardo was there to greet guests, who were rubber-necking for a glimpse of the place before they’d even parked their cars. By the time they’d bellied up to the bar in the horse barn where the band was playing, anyone who wasn’t wowed was either blind or jaded. But while the house and gardens certainly qualify as stunning, the real visual treat was the new pool pavilion that Foster designed. (I offered to move in, to which the charming Elena said, “Mi casa es tu casa.”)
Meanwhile, all the island nabobs swirled around each other in their breeziest finery. Among them: the evening’s co-hosts, New York interior designerFriederike Biggs and her investment guru husband, Jeremy, brunette movie star Brooke Adams, board members Paula Lyons and Linda Comstock with the former’s husband, Arnie Reisman, and the latter’s main squeeze, Scot “The Texan” White, legal eagle Alan Dershowitz, über-intellect Skip Gates, donut mogul Bob Rosenberg and the flawless Mary Wolfson, budding actress Anna Yukevich, Palm Beach arts patron Marilyn Meyerhoff, and numerous equally tanned and attractive others.
There was a blessed minimum of blah-blah-blahing and a wildly entertaining sword-fight exhibition by Playhouse actors, delicious little nibbly things, and that perfect late-afternoon light that made everyone look their best while raising a boatload of money for the construction of a theater to be named after the late Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal.
No island party is complete without endless discussion of real estate (it’s something of a blood sport on both the Vineyard and Nantucket), but this particular evening’s example surely wins in the Missed Opportunity category.
Near the bar, I ran into a man who said, “I looked at this place 20 years ago for $970,000. These people paid almost $22 million.”