TheaTalk
It once was said that Los Angles theatre meant road shows and showcases. Even as recently as twenty years ago Dan Sullivan, then theatre critic for The Los Angeles Times, grumbled about actors who thought of Tom Stoppard as a stepping stone to Tom Selleck.
We still have road shows and showcases but the last two decades have seen the blossoming of much, much more all the way down to the Mexican border. But the exceptional Laguna, La Jolla, South Coast Rep and San Diego theatres are a story all in themselves.
The theatre buff arriving in Los Angeles will find more than enough satisfaction. We have the long-awaited road show of "The Producers", starring Nathan Alexander and Martin Short, with full Broadway values at the beautifully restored Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, immortalized in a 1930s ballad as "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams". A colleague who lives in the Pantages home underneath the Hollywood sign tells us the impresario used many of the same materials to build both hillside home and theatre palace. The lobby alone is worth a trip and for those who like Mel Brooks' gargantuan sense of humor and Busby Berkeley-style musical numbers, there's plenty of the sort of thing they like.
The Center Theatre Group downtown includes the Ahmanson Theatre for large musical and theatrical productions, the Mark Taper Forum intended for new work, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion home mostly to opera, and the dazzling new Disney Hall, where the Los Angeles Philharmonic will perform. Designed by Frank Gehry, it's a breataking attraction all itself. CTG, under the longtime direction of Gordon Davidson, is proud of its many outreach and new play programs, some of which will be seen at its new Kirk Douglas Theatre opening this fall in Culver City.
The Geffen Playhouse in Westwood helmed by Oscar producer Gilbert Cates is a small and charming venue aiming to balance homegrown plays, plays which have attracted buzz elsewhere and an annual musical.
LA's little theatres are where adventure lies. The Deaf West Theatre's production of "Big River" with both hearing and signing actors is the first 99-seat theatre production to be transferred to The Mark Taper Forum and has gone from there to Broadway. There's a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard which some would-be wags call "Off Center", housing a host of little theatres such as Tim Robbins' The Actors' Gang, originally designed to work in the manner of the French founder of Theatre du Soleil, Ariane Mnouchkine, with whom Robbins studied when she brought her troupe here for the 1984 Olympics. David Lee Strasberg is Executive Producer of the Strasberg Center which, in addition to classes in the acting techniques originated by his father Lee Strasberg, produces new plays. There are other theatres too numerous to mention, many of which rent spaces to independent productions.
Ron Sossi's Odyssey Theatre on the Westside is one of the oldest but far too avant garde to be called venerable. Although he rents some of his three spaces out, you can see original Sossi in such pieces as one developed from workshop called "Buddha's Big Night."
For true repertory theatre, there's the Pacific Ensemble Theatre in Santa Monica, East West Players in Little Tokyo, the Colony Theatre in Burbank and the Road Company in North Hollywood which also has a burgeoning theatre scene unfortunately known as NoHo. It's a shame to see New York labels cloned. Most New York critics don't like original Los Angeles productions and vice versa. Like French and Italian food, they have different flavors. There's an eagerness, a flagrant openness to writing in LA.
The late Oliver Hailey, a Texas-born playwright who lived and worked here, told me once that each area of the country has its own writing style. The Pacific Rim with its Oriental, Latino and pioneer cultures doesn't seem to be in search of "a" style. They are legion.
For A Review of our last Tour, to the Dublin Theatre Festival, click here.