Michael Cerveris Will Be Spending Valentine’s Day With Vampires, His DogLast night, at a benefit for Women’s Expressive Theater, the cool old shul on the Lower East Side that’s the Angel Orensanz cultural center hosted short plays about love or its complications by women playwrights like Brooke Berman and Jenny Lyn Bader. The plays starred folks like Gretchen Mol, Martha Plimpton, Josh Hamilton, and Michael Cerveris. After the shows, we asked Cerveris (star of Broadway masterpieces like Sweeney Todd, The Who’s Tommy, and Titanic) what he’s been up to lately. Apparently, he’s been flying between here and New Orleans a lot to shoot the film Cirque du Freak, based on the popular young-adult Vampire Blood book trilogy (“It’s like Harry Potter with vampires”). He’s co-starring across from Willem Dafoe, Salma Hayek, and John C. Reilly. Since we don’t know much about sucking blood, but we do know a little about sucking chest wounds, we asked him about Valentine’s Day. Has he ever put himself out on a limb for love? “My whole life I’ve been making grand gestures,” he said wearily. “And they meet with intermittent success, but often abject failure.” Oh, no! “In the long-term, I’m still going home to my dog, Gibson.” And his plans for Thursday, the 14th? “I’m flying back from New Orleans. Unless there’s a particularly lonely stewardess, I’m probably looking at me and Gibson that night,” he said. “She appreciates my presence in a consistent way. So maybe I’ll get her a red…bone or something.” —Tim Murphy