No small parts

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The Brothers Arkin get swallowed by 'whales' • by Cristofer Gross

Larger-than-life characters, from Achilles and Lysistrata to FDR and Harriett Tubman, are literature's meat-and-potatoes. How the everyman reaches greatness, or how the mighty fall, fuels both inspirational stories and cautionary tales that share what it means to be human. In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, it's not the beast that brings us back but the outsized obsession of Captain Ahab.

Oversized characters, on the other hand, are a harder fit. Whether in theater, literature, film, or TV, once a body crosses the 600-lb mark, as the Duke put it, "they don't get around much anymore." As a result it's very rare to have one of these tragic figures rise in the ranks of fiction. John Kennedy Toole added one in his 1980 novel, Confederacy of Dunces, and won a posthumous Pulitzer for his efforts. But we're still waiting for someone to get around to getting his slothful sleuth, Ignatius J. Reilly, up on the screen.

Anyone who has leafed through the Guinness Book for Records has likely stopped at the sad story of Robert Hughes, the one-time "World's Heaviest Human," who died at 32 weighing half a ton. He was buried in a coffin the size of a piano case.

In the past decade, these cases have inspired two fictional characters. A decade ago, in the first season of the long-running television mystery "Monk," we met Dale "the Whale" Beiderbeck, an 800-pound, bed-bound financial wizard prone to crime. This weekend, we meet Charlie, the central character in Playwright Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, opening at South Coast Repertory and running through the end of the month.

By strange coincidence, the 2002 TV whale and the 2013 theater whale are played by brothers Adam and Matthew Arkin, respectively.

Adam, 56, was first to notice what surely qualifies for its own page in the record book.

"I didn't even think about the coincidence until Adam mentioned it to me," said Matthew, who turns 53 next week. "I actually never caught that episode of 'Monk.' I knew he had played that character, but I didn't really know much about it."

"I expect that our experiences in the process have been drastically different," he added. "Because of the innate differences between doing something like that for film, where you can cut, take care of problems, and so on, and the challenges of doing it on stage, where the illusion has to last, and logistical problems have to be solved, with no possibility of a break."

Both Arkins, sons of actor Alan, are veterans of stage and film. Adam preceded his brother at SCR, starring in the premiere of Donald Margulies' Brooklyn Boy, and returning for the readings of Richard Greenberg's Our Mother's Brief Affair and Steven Drukman's The Prince of Atlantis, in which Matthew played his brother. Matthew, who was in the New York cast of Margulies' Dinner with Friends when it won the Pulitzer Prize, made his SCR debut in the full production of Brief Affair, [review] and went on to co-star in Prince [review] with John Kapelos.

Either would be quick to point out that the stage, with its preference for promoting use of the imagination, is less fond than film of elaborate makeup and prosthetic devices to create character. However, when the physical condition is either the cause, or manifestation, of one's behavior, the drama demands it be front and center. And so, the younger Arkin is embarking on an eight-show-a-week regimen of serious weight-gain. To do it, SCR brought in Kevin Haney, an expert whose collaboration on makeup for Driving Miss Daisy earned him the Academy Award in 1990.

Haney's Broadway work includes turning Bernadette Peters into a witch and Robert Westenberg into a wolf for Into the Woods, turning Robert Morse into Harry Truman for Tru, and helping with Mandy Patinkin's nightly sex-change for David Hare's obscure musical The Knife. He agrees that stage and cinema are different animals.

"Film is a series of moments often shot out of context of the whole," he said. "There is usually time to touch up the makeup to make sure it looks good for that shot. Theater is a whole slice of time. We can't walk on stage and do a touch up, so it has to be glued in really well." Regarding the costume portion of the transformation, he credits SCR's Costume Department for doing "an amazing job creating a lightweight but realistic fat suit – one of the best I have encountered. We are using new techniques, to have the bulk built up with a reinforced, extremely lightweight and soft cast polyfoam, similar to what I used on the Wolf makeup in 1989, combined with a reinforced silicone skin." The costume and make up takes an hour and a half to put on, and another hour to remove. Add in the two-hour run time and that's four hours in which Arkin cannot use the men's room – assuming he gets through the door.

"First the neck and facial prosthetic is applied to my face with adhesive," he explained. "The edges have to be meticulously glued down and then blended carefully around my eyes with makeup. Additional tiny wig pieces are applied around the edges of my goatee, my sideburns and the nape of the neck to cover the sides of the pieces. When that is done, it is time to put on the suit.

"The first layer is a baseball player's athletic support with a cup, so that the straps of the suit don't cause damage to sensitive parts. Then a thermal undershirt and a cotton onesie to prevent the ice packs that are worn to keep me from overheating from having the opposite effect and giving me ice burns. Those are the layers that can be washed between each show, and it's a good thing, 'cause even with the cooling system, I'm pretty soaked with sweat by the end.

"Over the onesie goes a neoprene vest with two huge pockets front and back to hold the ice packs. Then the bottom half of the suit goes on, and is stretched tight and hooked into a series of fasteners on the vest to stop it from sagging. It is so heavy that, throughout the show, I have to resist it pulling me down into a crouch. Then I put on neoprene cuffs, which also contain ice packs for my wrists, and the top half, which also stretches and is fastened to the vest to keep it from riding up when I sit. That adds to the crouch effect. All of these layers are fairly tight as well, so that they don't shift around too much, but it makes normal breathing a conscious effort. The neck line of the top half then has to be tucked carefully under the neck line of the prosthetic, and then I can get into my sweat pants, shaking the various layers down and tucking them in. Then I put on the shirt, two pairs of socks, and my slippers. All done: Piece of cake."

Of course, then it's time for the real work to begin, and Arkin waddles on stage to act. While we can debate whether there are any small parts for actors, there are relatively few like those assumed Adam and Matthew Arkin.


A review of the production was posted on March 21, 2013.


The Whale opens March 15 and runs through March 31. Martin Benson directs Arkin, Jennifer Christopher, Wyatt Fenner, Blake Lindsley, Helen Sadler Tickets and info.


Photos: Top, Matthew with co-star Jennifer Christopher (credit: Ben Horak); middle and bottom, Adam in "Monk."

Birds-Eye View

Two veteran flight attendants and boosters of San Diego's Old Globe
Recall the 'high-flying days that inspired the comedy 'Boeing Boeing'
by Cristofer Gross

Wikipedia has a list of 36 occurrences of “Flight Attendants in Pop-Culture.” The first is Marc Camoletti’s Boeing-Boeing.

In the 1960s, when a stewardess appeared in a play or film, it was shorthand for a single, attractive woman with even odds to be spending the night in a hotel. Even Stephen Sondheim, in his breakout 1970 musical, Company, gave Bobby-baby a stewardess girlfriend. As Joanne Gordan observes in Stephen Sondheim: A Casebook, the "conquest of a ‘stewardess’ is, for audiences who would remember the era, a depiction of a particularly ‘60s kind of fantasy – the suave bachelor seducing a hot ‘stew.’"

Two women who spent the era inside a United Airlines stewardess uniform are Globe Guilders Nancy Brock and Randy Tidmore.

Both trained in Chicago and eventually ended their stewardess careers flying out of Los Angeles. Iowan Tidmore flew for United Airlines from 1947 to 1962, but also worked in the office during the last half of those years. She became a supervisor, handling hiring, customer complaints and inquiries from the media. Brock flew for 35 years, many of them between LA and Honolulu, beginning in 1955.

When they started, stewardesses (they still stumble on the term "flight attendant") had to weigh in, keep their hair short, and remain unmarried.

"They had to be 21 by the time they went on the line," said Tidmore. "They had to wear hose, and the seams had to be straight, and wear girdles and high heels all the time. They had to be ladies. If any received three complaints from passengers, they were out."

There was an upside, though.

"We used to be celebrities," Brock said. "We were looked up to. There weren’t very many of us – or many airplanes either. I can remember sitting at the coffee shop in Chicago and having Ed Sullivan, who was sitting at the horseshoe counter, pay for our breakfast. People did that. Women passengers came on with their heels, hats and gloves, and men always wore a suit. The whole atmosphere was first class and we were treated that way, too."

"You couldn’t be married, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t have an affair with a pilot," Tidmore smiled.

"A lot of my friends were married, but I didn’t know it. One couple – a pilot and stewardess – were married and nobody knew it. They lived in the same apartment building. She lived downstairs and he lived upstairs, with a telephone he could hear from downstairs."

"Newspapers used to interview me about what stewardesses did," she continued. "’Tell us some stories,’ they would say. ‘Are the stewardesses marrying passengers? Are they going out with passengers on every trip?’ Absolutely not! I’d tell them. Our girls don’t do that, you know. And they didn’t. They were not marrying any more than non-flight attendants."

All that started changing around the time the play is set, with the advances in jets, and unionization.

"When the unions came in, the airline couldn’t say how we wore our hair, or make us wear a girdle or high heels," said Tidmore.

"That’s true," agreed Brock.

"Although it was still pretty strict. We were still under weight controls. I was still getting weighed in during the 1970s, long after the unions became involved."

The public image of flight attendants changed, they feel, to something closer to service personnel than celebrities. But, they both feel the profession is finally getting more respect.

"I think the public does think they are service people," Brock said. "But I think that, more and more since 9/11 and events like the recent landing in the Hudson River, people realize that in-flight people also have a safety responsibility and we’re there to save lives. The perception has gone back up."

Both remain active in "Clipped Wings," a social organization for flight attendants that they co-chaired four years ago. The name recalls the days when, "if you got married, your wings were clipped," Brock said.

This blog post is one of three program notes written by Cristofer Gross for the 2009 Old Globe production of Marc Camoletti's Boeing-Boeing. Used with permission.

The apple of his eye

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The boy, legs dangling, made his wooden restaurant chair seem an impossibly large throne, while beside him, in a rumbling sleep, the very large man made his seat appear small and fragile.

There was a half-empty cup of coffee in front of the slumbering adult, and a few coins of change on a tray beside it.

In front of the boy was a small plate where a slice of pie had once stood. He now was mashing the butt of his fork into the few remaining crumbs, then raising it over his upturned mouth and shaking them loose.

A waitress, not old and not young, knew that the longer she ignored them and let them sit there, the longer they could stay out of the swirling snowstorm that had brushed over Baltimore.

She also knew this meant delaying another paying customer, which she desperately needed. Yet something about the boy – the way he seemed to understand that his vulnerability served as protection for the man – gave him an air of maturity.

The waitress watched them over her order pad as she listened to an old couple engage in their nightly debate over what to eat. After signaling they were ready to order they had asked to hear the specials again, then huddled together to weigh the respective merits of chicken fried steak amd pan-seared trout. She was familiar with the performance and knew she did not have to listen. They worked their way through the benefits of each, the option of sharing, then thought about something on the regular menu that they hadn't tried, and then agreed to, again, "avoid the fats, deny the flavor." With a sigh of resignation, the wife said we’ll split the chef salad and each have a vanilla milk shake. Thank you, dear.

Until she heard Thank you, dear, the waitress had been watching the boy to see how he looked at the man. Even a fleeting glance, a fraction of a peek, she felt would reveal the nature of their relationship. The eyes carry so much, she thought as the couple negotiated before her. A droplet of eye contact could condense volumes of meaning about the relationship between these strangers. Understanding. Love. Fear. Indifference. Were they father and son? Unrelated? A kidnapper and his strange, consenting ward? Was the boy concerned for the older fellow? Was he ill, dying, so tired he couldn’t stay awake – not that the diner's diluted coffee could perk anyone up. Were they there to meet someone who was late?

But he never looked over. He revealed no emotion towards the man. Maybe it was just that he was tired of their plight, of finding new restaurants in which to have a treat before going out and eating whatever they could scrounge. Although they weren’t dirty or disheveled, there was a lived in feeling about their clothes and their silence was that of those who spend every moment of every day together.

"Thank you, dear."

There it was. She looked down at her pad, wrote “chef, splt; van. shakes.” And went to the kitchen to place the order.

When she returned to the dining room it was to take orders of hamburgers and fries tp a happy young family in another section, setting three plates onto place mats covered with their crayon drawings of clowns flying kites. When she turned around, the man and boy were gone. She quickly moved to their table, where through the large diner window she saw their dark forms walking into the blowing snow. Above them in the distance, a glowing red circle indicated a traffic light. And as the swirling white enveloped them, without either a word or look between them, the red glow turned green as the boy slipped his tiny gloved hand into the man’s freezing bare fist.

THE BELLS ARE RINGING

'Tis the single ticket season

The willful suspensions of both our beliefs and our budgeting concerns are what make the holidays a time of wonder – and mystery!

Theaters from Burbank to Balboa Park are doing their part to add magic to the season with special single-ticket productions. Actors and playwrights are telling stories about the transformative powers of love, forgiveness, and, in more than one case, a well-stocked liquor trolley.

Dominating the landscape are adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, from the faithfully followed to the irreverent and fun-filled. They range from a Second City world premiere to a modern-day update starring Fred Willard to one that turns L.A's first Water Czar William Mulholland into Scrooge!
But there are lots of laughs for the whole family. Our daft Troubies are back with a rock-infused retelling of Rudolph's tale, helpless "Bob" has scheduled another hapless Holiday Office Party, the Pasadena Playhouse mounts a glittering Snow White adaptation, Capra's Wonderful Life gives Clarence his angel wings, and two of our favorite grounded angels – Crissy Guerrero and Claudia Dolph – pour their saucy cabaret at Hollywood Studio Bar and Grill.

Here's a quick overview complete with links, dates, and addresses. Got a review, endorsement, or addition – email us and Theatertimes will post.

A Christmas Carol: Twist Your Dickens!

Kirk Douglas Theatre
9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City

Culver City's Cultural Citadel is world preeming Second City's take on A Christmas Carol: Twist Your Dickens! The famed improv-comedy troupe collaborates with CTG to ratchet up the traditional tale. A "host of anachronistic characters and hilarious improvs" will strip the script from Scrooge, kick the Cratchit crutch, and blow the dust off those spirits of present, past, and future. And if that weren't enough to start you slouching toward bedlam, the regular cast (including voice-of-Homer Dan Castellaneta) will be joined by an ever-changing stable of starry, drop-in special guests." Holy shit! You'll have to go every day! Guided by past and present spirits of "The Colbert Report" writing team, Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort, irrespectively.

Run: 11/29-12/30 (Previews begin 11/24)

Tickets and information: 213-628-2772 or online.

A Mulholland Christmas Carol

Theatre of NOTE
1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood
Best known for inspiring Chinatown's Hollis Mulwray – and least known as the namesake of my middling Middle School – L.A.'s powerful first Water & Power chief William H. Mulholland rises from the run-off channels and storm drains that are his legacy for A Mulholland Christmas Carol. Now in its 10th year, the Bill Robens script turns WHM into a Scrooge for a water-hungry basin at war with Owens Valley and adds harmonies, history, humor, and "an acoustical, bluegrass take on the music."
Run: 11/30-12/23 (Previews begin 11/27) Thurs-Sat 8 p.m., Sun 7 p.m.; 12/24 2 p.m.
Tickets $30 (Students, seniors $25)
Tickets and information: 323-856-8611 or online.

Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol

SIX01 Studio
601 S. Anderson Street, Downtown Los Angeles
Tom Mula's four-actor version of Dickens' classic takes Marley's point-of-view. Scrooge's business partner, whose death is confirmed in the book's opening line, must take an active role in seeing that his friend redeems his soul, or he will be damned to the hellish eternity where he has been cast –made worse by an officious hell-sprite "who thoroughly enjoys his work,"
Run: 12/14-29 (Previews begin 11/30Thu, Fri & Sat at 8 p.m.; Sun at 3 p.m.)
Tickets: $34 ($20 previews)
Tickets and information: 800-838-3006 or online.

A Really, Really Good Time, Holly Jolly Christmas Carol

Grove Theatre (Upland)
276 E. 9th Street Upland
A new, modern-day version of Dickens' tale casts the lovable Fred Willard as the director of the United States Superstar Show. And, with days to its Christmas Eve opening, it needs a miracle. Naturally, all the blame goes to the cast and crew, especially right hand man Bobby Cratchit. Scrooge's rants end when the ghost of Johnny Carson arrives to launch him on a holiday journey that will make him a better man.
Tickets and information: 909-920-4343 or online

A Christmas Carol

Grove Theater Center
1111-b West Olive Ave., Burbank
David Allen Jones, Frank Simons, and Kate Danley guide audiences through the story - sometimes as narrators, sometimes as storytellers, and sometimes as characters – in the Grove Theater Center's original adaptation.
Run: 11/30-12/16 (Previews begin 11/28 Thu, Fri & Sat at 8 p.m.; Sun at 3 p.m.)
Tickets: $15 - $30 (Previews $10)
Tickets and information: 818-528-6622 or online

A Christmas Carol

A Noise Within
3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena
A Noise Within has flirted with Dickens' holy-holiday grail for several years, producing an excellent Oliver Twist and then Great Expectations. Now they go whole gosling with their own adaptation of the grand Christmas prize. Adapted and directed by co-founders Geoff and Julia Rodriguez Elliott, it stars Geoff as Eb, Robertson Dean as the narrator, and Stephen Rockwell, Jill Hill, Mitchell Edmonds, Deborah Strang, and Alan Blumenfeld in key roles. A "Fezziwig's Festive Holiday Tea" fundraiser will be held December 16 at noon, turtle-dovetailing into admission to the matinee performance.
Run: 12/8-23 (Previews begin 12/1)
Tickets: $40 - $52 (Discounts for groups and students)
Tickets and information: 626-356-3100 or online

A Christmas Carol

South Coast Repertory
655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa
The granddaddy of regional Christmas Carols is this Orange County mainstay, now plowing into its fourth decade. In fact, it's tireless Scrooge, Hal Landon Jr. began his run in 1981 childless and is now himself a granddaddy! It's a sumptuous feast of period costumes, whirling set changes, and a finale of redemption sure to replace a miser's last lump of coal with a lump in his throat.
Run: 11/30-12/24, previews begin 11/24
Ticket prices $20-63, with discounts for children and groups
Tickets and information: 714-708-5555 or online.

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

The Old Globe
1363 Old Globe Way, in San Diego’s Balboa Park
The Old Globe has its own tradition based on the classic by the late, but longtime La Jolla resident, Theodore (Dr. Seuss) Geisel. This is the 15th Annual How the Grinch Stole Christmas for the Balboa Parkers, who again transform their mainstage into the snow-covered Whoville – right down to the last can of Who-hash. Familiar songs include "Santa for a Day," "You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and "Welcome, Christmas (Fah Who Doraze), " from the popular animated version.
Run: 11/23-12/30 (Previews begin 11/17)
Ticket prices start at $37 for adults and $24 for children (17 years and under).
Tickets and information: 619-23-GLOBE or online.

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Rein-DOORS

Troubadour Theater Company
Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Dr., in Burbank
Plenty of rockers have created great theater – from Little Richard to Peter Gabriel to the Great Lizardo himself, Jim Morrison. But few theaters have returned the favor the way the Troubies do. Their musical chops are surpassed only by their acting skills and disdain for fourth walls. Of their several seasonal stagings, they have chosen to remount Rudolph The Red-nosed Rein-DOORS, in which the bands catalogue creates strange days indeed for Santa. Sure to sell out, so get stirring!
Run: 12/7-1/6/13, Previews 11/28 (Wed-Sat at 8 p.m., Sun at 4 p.m.)
Tickets $34.50-42; Previews $29.50-$32; Opening night $52-57 (Student, group discounts)
Tickets and information: 818-955-8101 or online.

Footprints in the Snow / Dark Carols

Bootleg Theater
2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles
A couple of presents: Dark Carols, A song cycle from Philip Litell and Peter Golub and Footprints In The Snow from Golub and the Amphigorey of Edward Gorey. Two from the darker side of the season start spreading the cheer November 28 through December 8 only – Black Thursdays through Black Saturdays.
Run: 11/29-12/8 (Thurs–Sat 7:30 p.m.)
Ticket prices $15 for adults and $24 for children (17 years and under).
Tickets and information: 213-389-3856 or online.

Bob's Holiday Office Party

The Pico Playhouse Theater
10508 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
Co-writers Joe Keyes and Rob Elk provide a peek at insurance agent Bob Finhead and his whacked-out friends and clients as they stop by his small-town Iowa office for their annual holiday – and head– bashing. The town mayor, the sheriff, the twin farmer sisters, the stoner, the town floozy, and the pastor's wife have already RSVP'd for this year's event. But Bob has dreams of a bigger life and wants to escape their narrow-minded thinking. Will he be able to fulfill his dream of becoming a professional inventor and move to the big city, or will he come to realize how much he is the heart and soul of the town?
Run:12/6-22 (Thurs-Sat 8 p.m.; Sun 7 p.m.)
Tickets $20-25
Tickets and information: 800-838-3006 or online.

The Eight: Reindeer Monologues

Chance Theatre
5552 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim Hills
Get "backstage" at Santa's famous toy-making facility, where it's not all tinsel and cookies. The reindeer are revolting, and shedding angst along with their antlers as they set the record straight about Santa. "When a doe says 'No,' she means 'No Way, Sucka!'"
Run: 11/26–12/22 (Mon-Wed 8 p.m. Fri-Sat 11 p.m.)
Tickets $22-35 (Student, Senior and group discounts
Tickets and information: 714-777-3033 or online.

Santaland Diaries

Blank Theatre
Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd.
Blank Theatre brings back David Sedaris' The Santaland Diaries for its 4th year, starring Paolo Andino under Michael Matthews' direction. NPR’s humorist wrote the one-man show about his experiences as an unemployed writer who takes a job as a Christmas elf at Macy’s in New York City. At first, the job is simply humiliating, but once thousands of visitors start pouring through Santa's workshop, David (or, as his alter ego is known, Crumpet the Elf) becomes battle weary and bitter, occasionally taking out his frustrations on the parents and children alike.
Run: Now running. (Thurs-Sat 8 p.m.; Sun 2 p.m.)
Tickets $30
Tickets and information: 323-661-9827 or online.

A Snow White Christmas

Pasadena Playhouse
39 South El Molino Avenue, Pasadena
Ariana Grande from Nickelodeon’s "Victorious" stars as Snow White, with an on-screen appearance by Neil Patrick Harris as The Magic Mirror and "Dallas'" Charlene Tilton as The Wicked Queen. Bonnie Lythgoe of "So You Think You Can Dance" directs, with choreography by Spencer Liff of the same show. A Snow White Christmas features family-friendly magic, with a comedic twist, dancing, a live miniature pony, and contemporary pop music. Families can come early for a Winter Wonderland in the courtyard that includes holiday music, crafts, activities, games and photo opportunities.
Run: 12/13-30, Previews 12/12 (Tues-Fri 7 p.m.; Sat 11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m.; and Sun at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.)
Ticket prices $32–$100 with discounts for children and groups
Tickets and information: 626-356-7529 or online.

C & C's Christmas
With a Twist

Crissy Guerrero/Claudia Dolph
Hollywood Studio Bar and Grill, 6122 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood
Long a bright fixture of La Posada Magica journey, singer/performer Crissy Guerrero un-dons her posadera togs and takes the well-trodden path to this popular Hollywood watering hole. No vela-lighting required when Guerrero and fellow "Elvette" Claudia Dolph light the stage with C & C's Christmas With a Twist, their twisted take on Christmas cheer. It's the humorous side of the holidays with song, dance, puppets, theremin, and even a little magic! Their helpers include pianist Ron Snyder, Jack McGee as Santa, Alina Foley, and The Hot Toddy Tipsies Dancers! Says CG, "We did our best to find songs that aren't heard very often -- or, at all, ranging from Tom Waits to John Denver. And, those that are more traditional, we are fucking...er...messing with in some way." Plenty of free parking. Parental guidance recommended.
Run: One performance only – December 2 at 7 p.m. (Doors open at 6:45
Tickets $18 ($10 in advance; 2 item [food or drink] min/person)
Tickets and information: online.

Plaid Tidings

Laguna Playhouse
606 Laguna Canyon Road in Laguna Beach
The spirits of Past, Present and Future team as the late doo-wop group from 1964 back together again – with no idea why they're in Laguna Beach for the holidays! Christmas classics include "It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas," "Let It Snow," and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. " Audiences are encouraged to help the Plaids find their way once again to the spirit of joy and community that sustains them and all of us during the holiday season.
Run: 12/1-23 Previews 11/27-30 (Tues-Sat 8 p.m., Sat-Sun 2 p.m.)
Ticket prices $40 - $70
Tickets and information: 949-497-2787 or online.

It's a Wonderful Life

Theatre Unleashed
The Missing Piece Theatre, 2811 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank
Theatre Unleashed brings back its staged radio play version of Frank Capra’s It's A Wonderful Life. The play within a play takes place at KAWL, a struggling 1940s radio station that good-hearted owner Michael Anderson is barely keeping alive. He calls on some old friends (with big personalities) and some less-than-professional station employees to offer up the touching masterpiece in what might sadly be the station’s last live show. But it is the holidays, a time when miracles can happen….
Run: 11/30-12/15 (Fri/Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 2 p.m.)
Tickets $25
Tickets and information: 818-849-4039 or online.

And, everytime Clarence gets his wings, or Scrooge has his change of heart, an angel in the wings breathes a sigh of relief, because the holidays are the single-ticket season when theaters can fill their seats and reduce the amount they need to raise from donors.
Happy Holidays indeed!

Don't hand me that line.

The following story was submitted to the Write On! January 2011 contest to write a 200-400 word story about excuses writers come up with to put off doing their work. While it was a fun distraction, and earned second place, it nevertheless became a wonderful excuse for putting off more urgent writing demands.

I speed-walked around the corner with my briefcase in one hand, my coffee and donut balanced in the other, and plowed into the back of a large man blocking the sidewalk. Ahead of him, a line of people stretched to the front door of First Trust, where I was a loan officer.

"Wasn't watching where I was going," I apologized as I brushed glaze smudges from his coat.

“No excuse,” he grumbled without turning around. “You can’t miss me.”

"I didn’t miss you,” I quipped, trying to change the mood.

He turned with a glare, which quickly softened.

“Hey! You're the procrastination guy . . . with the book!" he exclaimed, drawing others around us.

"What book?" I asked.

“There’s No Time Like Next Time,” he said.

“It's online," a woman said.

“Another Time?” I asked.

“No," they said. "Today!”

“The title," I explained. "It's Another Time, not Next Time. Anyway, it's not a book. It's a fake essay I wrote in college. Someone's kid must have found it and made that Youtube video. It's a joke."

The group of moms with their kids, anxious businesspeople, and students just stared at me. "It's no joke," someone said threateningly.

"My son needs something for school," the woman said hugging an embarrassed child. "I'll pay you."

The others nodded. "Yes, we'll gladly pay."

"Let me get to my desk," I said.

For the rest of the morning, I worked my way through the line, handing out excuses I'd used in my years as an editor, publicist, and freelance writer. Some were unassailable: debilitating heartbreak, hospitalized children, visits from dangerous relatives, temporary blindness, even a homework-eating dog. The more outlandish they were, the more people paid: clearing earthquake rubble, a lottery win, an exploding washing machine, being attacked by crows, starring in a reality show.

When I reached the large man at the end of the line, he sat down, made sure the others had left, and stopped me from writing.

"Mine isn't for a writing assignment," he whispered, hanging his head.

I looked up and saw that he was actually eyeing my donut.

"You want to put off your diet?"

He nodded.

"How about telling yourself you spent a stressful morning in a loan office?"

He looked up, smiled, and reached for his wallet.

"No charge," I said, as I slid the donut towards him.

Universal soldier

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On the battlefield, with proper training, a soldier can defuse any explosive device. But the stress, frustration, and unfocused anger that same soldier carries home could be so powerful and well hidden that it goes undetected until it detonates without warning.

Actor-storyteller and Vietnam Veteran Troy Evans told the Los Angeles Times, "It never occurred to me that my government would send me 13,000 miles to kill people if there wasn't a very good reason. . . . An experience like that is incredibly damaging. When I got back, I was completely out of my mind – and I didn't know it. I was so hurt, so angry, so ashamed. I was also incredibly violent."

Evans' "Montana Tales and other Bad-Ass Business" incorporates stories about his youth in Montana that ended with 16 months in the 25th Infantry Division. His time in Vietnam left him with a Bronze Star, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, Gallantry Cross, and a hair-trigger temper that earned him a prison term for aggravated assault. It's unforgettable theater and a look at how one man finally found a way to disarm and channel his rage into storytelling.

He will perform "Montana Tales" on August 11, 2012 at the Audubon Center's Deb Park (4700 North Griffin Ave.) in a performance to benefit the Southwest Museum of the American Indian.

I met Evans in 1985 when he appeared in a play called Bing and Walker. Evans' backstory was unknown to me then, but as Arthur Walker, he created a character that has been indelible. Evans' thick-necked, hulking figure and agreeable disposition were well-suited for Walker, whose powerful body, and the childlike mind that kept it in check, were reminiscent of Steinbeck's Lenny. Walker's ambition was simply to be honestly loved by someone and treated as an equal by the others.

Diane, played by Ann Hearn, was a 15-year-old runaway who allows the lonely man-child to become infatuated with her without making it clear that she is only passing through. When her time to move on arrives, it breaks his over-sized heart and prompts a surprisingly articulate rush of raw emotion and wounded dignity that touched every audience member. If he was not deserving of her love, he still deserved her honesty.

Hearn remembered those climactic scenes with Evans.

"Troy was always amazing as an actor. But it's funny that my biggest, strongest impression was hearing him tell his stories at a small venue. Never had I heard anything of such power and fascination," she told me. "And, even being married to an incredible storyteller like Stephen [Tobolowsky], Troy still remains a high bar with those talents."

I first heard Evans tell his stories in 1989. Walker was gone, but the wonder, the hurt, and the emotional heft were very much on display. In his one man-show, just as on stage or in his 50 film and 400 TV appearances that have made him a familiar face (from "China Beach" to "ER" to Phenomenon), he always taps a universal.

For a Theatertimes story on the upcoming benefit, I Evans asked where his storytelling skills and material come from.

"In 2010, my father, Leo B. Evans, was invited to Iwo Jima for the 65th anniversary of the Army Air Corp landing there to begin the air assault on Japan. He was in a Veterans Administration hospital at the time suffering from advanced dementia. I went in his place," he told me.

"In the spring of 1945, 30,000 men died there in 30 days," he continued. "One third of all Marines killed in WWII died on Iwo. My dad flew 33 missions including the first air attack on Tokyo, the Nagasaki mission, and the last air attack of the War. In addition to his air awards he earned flying the P-51 Mustang, he was awarded a Bronze Star for ground combat on Iwo. I will never forget being on that tiny island trying to picture the epic horror that occurred there.

"About this time I started reading about the history of the early days in Montana at the time of the big Gold and Silver strikes of the 1860s. In 1860, there were less than 300 Europeans in the area we now call Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. Within weeks of gold being discovered on Grasshopper Creek in Bannack, Montana territory in 1862, 10,000 rough cases descended on the area. Murders were taking place every day, and the miners chose Henry Plummer to be sheriff.

"A reign of terror consumed the next year with miners continually being killed for their gold, and the gold shipments being stolen by road agents every time until a citizens committee determined that Plummer was in fact the head of the outlaw gang "The Innocents." The Vigilance Committee hung Plummer and about 75 of his closest associates. Things became much more peaceful. In a couple of years the gold petered out and Bannack and Virginia City became quiet little towns. A muleskinner who ran a small freight line became Sheriff. His name was John Troy Evans, my great-grandfather.

"These two groups of information inspired me to revisit my stories, with these stories as the underlying origin of what I am."

The Audubon show will be a great setting for an evening ramble alongside one of America's great character-actors, characters, and storytellers. Tickets for are only $25. More information here.

Photos: Troy Evans with a lithograph of Montana, circa 1860 (top); Evans, seated right on his dad's lap, with his grandfather Troy, and, seated, his Great-grandfather John Troy in Butte, Montana, 1948 (inset).

News spill: All that we can do?

Though not yet making its way to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, or the Washington Post . .. a refitted Taiwanese tanker is waiting for approval to test skimming potential of, according to owner Nobu Su, 500,000 barrels of oil a day. The owner believes the tanker, “ten stories tall and three football-fields long,” will ingest the oil-water mixture, put it into its bays, where it will separate. Reports are, however, that a 1920 maritime law demands that ships operating in U.S. waters fly a U.S. flag. (The tanker, dubbed the “A-Whale,” flies a Liberian flag.)

The story was mentioned on NPR Friday, June 25, and appeared here in the Daily Press. While there’s probably a “too-good-to-be-true” aspect to this, the question of why it isn’t part of the “we’re doing everything we can do” conversation seems odd. Could it be “ownership of the oil” that is the real concern?

Art, Artists and Outtakes.

In Tracy Letts’ ‘August: Osage County,’ the writer has inserted many sly references to things outside the mechanics of the action. Nevertheless, they are a big part of what makes the play exciting to a critic. Unfortunately, doing justice to this invisible dimension would throw the review out of balance and deprive readers of the rewards of their own discovery.

Fortunately, citing such connections – whether vertent or inad – falls perfectly within the odd parameters of this column. There is nothing inadvertent about Letts’ efforts, however. (Though some of these sightings likely ripple beyond his intentions.)

The fun begins with the first scene, in which blocked poet Beverly Weston conducts a one-sided interview of the Native American woman he hires as his housekeeper. It continues through the last tearful lines, wept by his widow into the lap of this housekeeper. The first scene ends with“Here we go ‘round the prickly pear,” which begins the fifth and final section of T.S. Eliot’s poem, ‘The Hollow Men.’ The last scene, and with it the play, ends with “This is the way it ends,” a slight alteration of the last lines of 'Hollow Men.' The actual line is “This is the way the world ends," and continues with the oft-quoted “not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

This bookending underscores some of Letts' key points: the importance of poetry as a vehicle to embrace and encapsulate; the concept of hollow men, who seem to populate the play exclusively; encouragement to the audience to project the Westons' situation onto the larger social canvas; and certain parallels between the Westons and the Eliots.

Parallel lines. Letts chose to name Beverly's wife Violet, and abbreviate it as Vi, to invoke T.S. Eliot’s wife. Vivien, Viv. suffered from mental illness, tormenting "Tom" to the point that he "disappeared." He first went to America but eventually returned to London, never telling Viv he was alive. Eventually she made contact at a public engagement, but they never reconnected and she died in a sanitorium. That is the reason Letts chose "Vi." But that prompts the question, did Bev choose to marry a woman with such a name because his adoration of Eliot was turning to emulation? And, in that case, was Violet’s downward psychological spiral, shall we say, not discouraged by a man seeking the trappings of the timeless poet?

For art’s sake, forsake the artist. In the first scene Bev makes a passing reference to differentiating art from the person behind it."Gapping" the creative process this way, between source and product, is something alluded to in that same fifth section of 'The Hollow Men': "Between the conception / And the creation / Between the emotion / And the response / Falls the Shadow." (While this is not quoted, the line that follows it, "Life is very long," is.)

This important distinction is not a new concept. The first time I heard it was about 30 years ago. The reference was to Ezra Pound, from a friend old enough to have been his contemporary. Pound the artist was a seminal poet, an indispensable part of 20th Century literature. As a man, however, he made statements supporting anti-semitism and fascism. My friend, who was both an intellectual and a Jew, had to separate his awe of Pound’s poetry from his revulsion at his public person. Not an easy thing to do.

Though Pound – as I recall – is not mentioned in the play, it is safe to conjure him up when reflecting on Weston’s opening remark. Not only was he very important to Eliot, Pound was descended from the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow through his mother’s family – the Westons.

Writer’s Block is a Fatal Dis-ease. Two other poets are alluded to in 'Osage County': John Berryman and Conrad Aiken. Aiken is there in the family name of Violet’s brother-in-law, Charlie Aiken. Berryman is discussed at length in the opening speeches. These are also signposts to Letts’ core concerns.

Berryman’s father shot himself, as did Aiken’s. The latter, however, did so after murdering his wife. Aiken, a lifelong friend of Eliot’s, attempted suicide, but survived to die naturally at 83. Berryman killed himself by jumping off a Minnesota bridge at age 57. Eliot died peacefully in 1965. There is much more to savor what Letts has written, and what he has let lie between the lines. What the character of Johnna, the Cheyenne housekeeper, represents is enormous. But a final note here regarding that year 1965. It may be a coincidence, but the year Eliot died was the year Beverly Weston stopped writing. It was also the year Tracy Letts was born.

There is much more, of course. Any other ideas?

Above – Robert J. Saferstein's photo of Jon DeVries and DeLanna Studi, with portraits of Berryman, Eliot and Pound

Brimming with Pride

Crowns
by Regina Taylor, directed by Israel Hicks
Pasadena Playhouse • July 10-August 16, 2009 (Opened, rev'd 7/12)

Regina Taylor’s 2002 play ‘Crowns,’ a loving tribute to African-American women based on the Michael Cunningham-Craig Marberry book of the same name, is now rattling the Pasadena Playhouse rafters in a spirited staging by Israel Hicks, artistic director of L.A.’s new Ebony Repertory Theater, which is co-producer. Taylor conveys the emotional essence of the book, subtitled “Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats,” which is that the self-bestowed “crowns” of these “hat queens” sent a message: we are fashionable, we are devout, we are united, and we have arrived.

Taylor incorporates many direct quotes from the book’s 50 subjects into the play, which is further enlivened with a couple dozen church songs delivered with soaring, take-me-now-Jesus conviction by the six-woman, one-man cast.

“Crowns” has been a huge success in its many mountings and inspired one of its past directors, Charles Randolph-Wright, to adapt another Marberry book for the stage. ‘Cuttin’ Up,’ the book of interviews with African-American men that looked at their lives through the communal setting of neighborhood barbershops, became ‘Cuttin’ Up’ the play, staged here in March 2007. Coincidentally, Randolph-Wright’s 2008 play ‘The Night is a Child’ will follow ‘Crowns’ at the Playhouse.

We can now see that the imitator substantially improved on its inspiration. Where “Crowns” puts us on a pew for a two-hour revival meeting filled with great singing and personalities, “Cuttin’ Up” lets us sit against the barbershop wall to eavesdrop on serious stories with a deep weave and darker resonance. Which is not to say that men inherently have more to say.

Wearing hats to church is a subject rich with dramatic potential. As a character points out early in the play, it carries on an African tradition as it celebrates the only place slaves and freed slaves were allowed to assemble. Taylor has come up with a thin storyline, of a teen awakening to her heritage, upon which to hang her hats, but it isn’t developed enough to shake off the source material’s intrinsic gallery feeling. While the program indicates that the actresses all have single characters, with two exceptions they do not become clear and consistent individuals. Instead, the show works its way through a half-dozen chapters based on church functions (baptism, funeral, etc.) into which characters pop with the randomness of a breeze rifling the pages of a book.

Taylor has given her story another important wrinkle, that traditions such as these (hat-wearing, church-going, community-embracing) persist for a reason, and the resistant younger generation would do well to get on board. The new generation is represented by Yolanda (Angela Wildflower Polk), a nascent Nuyorican Poetess displaced to South Carolina to live with her grandmother, Mother Shaw (the great Paula Kelly in a triumphant return from retirement), following the death of a brother. Although passing the hat tradition to Yolanda seems unlikely to succeed, the writing is on the wall, given the way she proudly clings to an oversized baseball cap.

That Taylor’s script skips over potential dramatic treasure is revealed in a couple of exchanges that briefly offer passage to deeper worlds. Early on, Mother Shaw sings directly to her grandchild. It’s a rare opportunity for eye contact between actors and Hicks, Polk and Kelly make the most of it. Later, Yolanda is caught up in an especially exuberant gospel choir. When she stumbles free from the seething circle of singing she seems imbued with insight, questions, and answers. Rather than plumbing that moment, however, the opportunity to delve into what’s going on with these characters is dropped in favor of continuing the parade of anecdotes from the women in the book, with Polk relegated to watching it like a kid on a curb.

But it’s a helluva a parade, and it’s easy to see why it’s so popular. This cast – all making their Playhouse debuts – is excellent. In addition to Polk and Kelly, the other women are Sharon Catherine Blanks, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Suzzanne Douglas and Ann Weldon, with Clinton Derricks-Carroll playing all the men. Derricks-Carroll has a slight advantage, since his characters are recognizable by their function: fathers, husbands and preachers. It seems as though all his numbers are stand outs, with “That’s All Right” being the first one to raise the Playhouse roof. By the end of the two-hour, intermissionless production, the ceiling will settle back down. But, through August 16, it will stay at a rakish angle, giving the California landmark's roofline the dip of a flirtatious fedora over a come-hither smile.

WITH Sharon Catherine Blanks, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Clinton Derricks-Carroll, Suzzanne Douglas, Paula Kelly, Angela Wildflower Polk, Ann Weldon MUSICIANS Eric Scott Reed (piano); Derf Reklaw (percussion), Trevor Ware (bass) PRODUCTION Edward E. Haynes, Jr., set; Dana Rebecca Woods, costumes; Lap Chi Chu, lights; Cricket S. Myers, sound; Linda Twine/David Pleasant, arrangements; Eric Scott Reed, musical direction/additional arrangements; Keith Young, choreography; Gwendolyn M. Gilliam/Lea Chazin, stage management

Adapted from the book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, co-produced with Ebony Repertory Theatre


PHOTO: Vanessa Bell Calloway, Ann Weldon, Angela Wildflower Polk, Paula Kelly, Suzzanne Douglas, Sharon Catherine Blanks and Clinton Derricks-Carroll, foreground. (Craig Schwartz)

Let’s Play Hardball

‘Farragut North' by Beau Willimon, directed by Doug Hughes
Geffen Playhouse • June 16–July 26 (Opened 6/24, rev’d 6/25)

Among the intrigues in Beau Willimon’s Farragut North, a winning backroom drama about high-stakes political campaigns and the operatives who play them, is whether an upbeat “love of the game” or a weary cynicism will ultimately own the play’s tone.

Giving buoyancy to the more optimistic option is last year’s Presidential contest. For many, certainly the majority watching the Geffen Playhouse staging (through July 26), the election of Obama was an episode of mold-breaking that promised a new era of integrity at the top. That backdrop provides subliminal updraft to an early confession by communications manager Steve Bellamy (Chris Pine). This time, he says, he really believes in his candidate's potential for good. Though Farragut is not about Obama, his election has leavened the playing field enough to allow that Steve may be expressing inner insights and not self-delusion, and not just blowing smoke.

Farragut North arrives in Westwood as an intact import from New York’s Atlantic Theater, except for four new cast members, including Pine. Pine not only adds huge marquee value – he's Captain Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ universally praised new Star Trek series prequel – he is a solid lead returning to the Geffen after appearing in the first casting round of the West Coast premiere of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig.

The arena for Willimon’s five political operatives – who include wannabes, wunderkindern, interns and hardened vets – is Des Moines, Iowa before the Presidential Caucuses. What were, in the earlier eras Farragut recalls, smoky backrooms and arm-twisting contests, are now, thanks to wireless communications, anywhere and everywhere. David Korins creates the restrained unit set of lounge booths, bar tables and hotel beds, shifting to a barrage of projected video collage by Joshua White & Bec Stupak. Those oppressive clips of TV reporters remind us that what we're seeing is not what we get: the public is at the end of the information food chain.

Willimon keeps us guessing about these characters throughout act one. That a solid 70 minutes of talking heads kept a full house coughless and riveted attests both to his skill at dialogue and suspense and director Doug Hughes' sure hand with pacing and tone. That the stage proscenium’s aspect ratio seems destined to be one-upped by the big screen is confirmed in his bio. He is currently adapting Farragut to film.

Part of the magic of the rising arc of act one is Willimon’s ability to make every character equally suspect without making them seem the same. Whether it is New York Times reporter Ida (Mia Barron), lowly staffer-on-the-make Molly (Olivia Thirlby), campaign manager Paul (Chris Noth), opposition campaign manager Tom (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), spokesman Steve, or press director-in-waiting Ben (Dan Bittner), all are utterly contemporary, but with a touch of the Bard's big-theme flaws to give the play even deeper resonance. Steve’s travails amount to over-ambition undermined by over-confidence, up-ending the adage that “you can’t shit a shitter.” It seems more likely that he who lives by the spin may not realize someone has him in full pirouette until he lands flat on his ass.

To close the play, a communications representative addresses the audience with a prepared statement that puts a public face on the outcome of all the wrangling we’ve just witnessed. We suddenly realize that these are the first words of the play that would have reached the public. It's Willimon's final word on the matter: We do not know what's really going on and how complicit the media is in the packaging process. The spokesperson's statement is, in a word, crap.

Set, match. Cynicism wins.

WITH Mia Barron, Dan Bittner, Chris Noth, Chris Pine, Olivia Thirlby, Isiah Whitlock, Jr. (u/s – Troian Bellisario, Robyn Cohen, Thomas Fiscella, Peter Swander) PRODUCTION David Korins, set; Catherine Zuber, costumes; Paul Gallo, lights; David Van Tiegham/Walter Trarbach, sound; Van Tiegham, music; Joshua White/Bec Stupac, video; James T. McDermott/Jennifer Brienen, stage management An Atlantic Theater production.
Photo: Chris Noth, Chris Pine, Olivia Thirlby, Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Michael Lamont)

'Touch the Water' (Cornerstone Theater Company)

For the fourth play in its four-year, six-production cycle of original work exploring how laws impact contemporary American life, Cornerstone Theater Company is premiering Julie Hébert’s Touch the Water, a river play (through June 21). After plays on immigration, reproductive rights and penal retribution, the “Justice Cycle” turns to law and the environment.

Touch the Water delivers its environmental message in an environmental staging by Director Julliette Carrillo. The audience bleachers face a found-art set by Darcy Scanlin sitting beside a rare stretch of Los Angeles River where water and vegetation have reclaimed it from the concrete. The “River,” a 50-mile channel that travels from the western San Fernando Valley through the Glendale Narrows and L.A. Basin to Long Beach, serves as the central flood control system for (and punch line for jokes about) metropolitan L.A.'s unnatural landscape.

The overarching tone of Hébert’s script is one of loss, with the concrete trough as a symbol of man's break with nature and lack of vision for an urban landmark that would bring L.A. beauty, recreation, and civic pride in the way the Seine serves Paris. However, the play is itself a lost opportunity. While Carrillo’s design and technical team have given the play a wondrous world for its premiere, with a compliant moon joining Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz’s award-worthy lighting design on opening-night, Touch the Water, like a walk along the broken channel floor, proves an uneven ramble.

According to the playbill, the Justice Cycle explores “how justice functions in society.” But there’s more of ‘cycles’ than ‘justice’ to Touch the Water: natural cycles of rain, run off, and reclamation; human cycles of spiritual rebirth and social responsibility; a real meandering subplot about cycles of violence; and, most importantly, the life-cycle of cement: “Snakes shed their skin and are reborn,” one character says. “Rivers are snakes.”

Although the play's heavy nativist tone and anthropomorphizing may undercut the aspects that are factual, a redevelopment plan exists to make the L.A. River a real waterway that retains its flood-control functions while returning it to a natural habitat and adding recreation benefits.

Admirably, Carrillo dives in after Hébert, investing the proceedings with sincerity and reverence. These Cornerstone plays are the product of careful real-world participation, going to the community members for their expertise, and in some cases to draft cast members. While nice on paper – particularly grant applications – from a purely theatrical standpoint, non-actors can compromise the impact. While Someday (reproductive rights) and For All Time (retribution) did not suffer from their expanded cast, the drop off in Touch is more noticeable.

Cornerstone's mission is a two-way street: giving voice to urgent issues and unheard communities through theater, and promoting back to those communities and their extended publics renewed appreciation for the power of this art form. Touch the Water's dual responsibility is to inspire its audiences to appreciate the majesty of nature and the magic of theater. Real actors are alchemists who need protection, too. Fortunately, two of Cornerstone's real magicians – Shishir Kurup and Page Leong – are here to share their considerable talents, and break up the non-actor speeches that recall the skit portion of a seminar.

While Hébert's script may be trying to satisfy too many constituencies, her lyrics – co-written with composer Kurup – are a solid contribution, delivered on a sound system that, despite mic'ing all the actors, never draws attention to itself. Costumer Soojin Lee creates a fantastic menagerie of river wildlife by recycling everything from flattened aluminum cans to coat hangers. And, without benefit of spot operators. Alcaraz employs a warm palette that always bathes its actors with pinpoint, flattering light – even when they are on the opposite bank of the river. Quite an achievement. Kudos, too, to stage manager Marisa Fritzemeier and her board operator.

Touch the Water, a river play, by Julie Hebert, directed by Juliette Carrillo; music by Shishir Kurup; lyrics by Kurup & Hébert; Cornerstone Theater Company • May 28-June 21, 2009 (Opened, rev’d 6/4) World Premiere

WITH Neetu S. Badham, Lane Barden, Matt Borel, Ceci Dominguez, Ricky Dominguez, Ben Fitch, Richard Fultineer, Rachel Garcia, Liebe Gray, Ubaldo Hernandez, Joel Jimenez, Shishir Kurup, Page Leong, Joe Linton, Lewis MacAdams, Laural Meade, Pat Payne, Gezel Remy, Jennifer Villalobos, Terry Young, and Laural Meade & Rachel Garcia, puppeteers MUSICIANS Danny Moynahan, Ben Fitch, Richard Fultineer, Marcos Nájera, Shishir Kurup, Neetu S. Badhan PRODUCTION Darcy Scanlin, set; Soojin Lee, costumes; Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz, lights; Benajah Cobb, sound; Danny Moynahan, music direction; Marisa Fritzemeier, stage management

Photo Illustration: Against L.A. River backdrop, Lewis MacAdams (Roger Vadim), Page Leong (Isa Pino, Shishir Kurup (Luis Otcho-o Authermont), Rachel Garcia (Ardea, a Great Blue Heron). Show photos by John Luker; L.A. River by Timo Elliott (Wikipedia)

Hunger Signs?

The kind of serial coincidences that are recalled in this column's head may not connect or be meaningful, but the experience of stumbling upon them is always fun. So, in that spirit, her's the most recent.

This week, within a 24-hour period, a synchronistic triptych occurred. On Thursday morning, I was watching a Layers Magazine video podcast about the Adobe website design product, Dreamweaver. Perhaps because I had not eaten breakfast, when Rafael “RC” Concepcion tossed off an aside of ‘bacon and eggs,’ it slid across the pate, then back again. “You can name your site anything you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Name it ‘bacon and egss,’ if you want.”

My mind made a substitution, as I preferred ‘chorizo and eggs,’ a favorite I had not subjected myself to in quite some time. By the time I returned my attention to the podcast, I needed to scroll back to where I derailed.

Ten hours later I was sitting in bleachers along an Atwater Village section of the Los Angeles River for opening night of Cornerstone Theater Company’s ‘Touch the Water,’ a play about the Rio de Los Angeles State Park Bowtie Parcel. I was reading through the bios when I heard the four musicians begin to take the stage. Apparently one was lagging behind and, after being chided by the others, made his way out, providing the first lines from the stage, an adlib’d “I needed to get my bacon and eggs scarf!” I looked up to see Marcos Najera carrying a long scarf with a couple of attached circles of fabric that looked like sunny-side-up eggs.

I smiled thinking it odd to have these first words of the evening touch back on the most memorable words of the morning.

On Friday morning, making my way back to the mountains from where I’d spent the night in West L.A., I stopped at a Trader Joe’s in Rancho Cucamonga. It was the first time I’d found this location; the first time I’d been off the 210 at this exit. But the nice clean TJ was comfortingly familiar. I joined several other morning shoppers, silently navigating our carts around the aisles. We all seemed to be shaking off drowsiness. I thought I’d see about a cup of coffee from the testing station at the rear of the store, where I'd seen columns of insulated paper cups. As I headed over, another shopper came out of another aisle. Breaking the store silence, the woman behind the counter asked the approaching shopper is she “would like to sample some chorizo and eggs?”

That was sufficient to wake me up, and I dispensed with the search for coffee and turned my cart for the check-out islands.

Anybody listening?

The old stumper about whether or not a tree makes noise when it falls unheard by people gained new applications for me while watching Robert Redford’s ‘Lions for Lambs.’ Commercially, this Socratic-method look at personal responsibility in the era of Bush’s War on Terror, had fallen on deaf ears. Despite above-the-title stars Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise and Redford (acting and directing) – audiences quickly cooled to the November 2007 release, leaving it with $15 million in domestic business. Fortunately, foreign sales were triple that and the film brought in nearly double its $36 million production budget.

More damning was the response. Websites Yahoo and boxofficemojo averaged the grade from movie critics at C+ and the audience’s at D+.

I found the dialectics gave the Hollywood film a rare stage intimacy. The isometrics of muscular intellects going at each other from opposing views requires precision and power. Unfortunately, film critics were as disinterested in these onscreen dramatic face-offs as society is of their theatrical counterparts. Los Angeles Times Critic Carina Chocano put it clearly, "...looks like a stage play and plays like a policy debate."

Interestingly, buried within Redford’s quiet message was a tribute to the silent sacrifices of Americans who fall out of earshot on the battlefield. In the climatic scene, two GIs are cut down on a frozen Afghan peak. They are alone after Taliban fighters ambushed a U.S. helicopter before it could drop off the first platoon of a new, smaller-unit invasion. The shot-up chopper gets away, but not before one soldier is jostled out an open door, followed by his enlistment partner, who jumps to help him. As the enemy circle tightens around them, the men appear to the military personnel watching a satellite transmission, as little more than blackened rice kernels on the snowy screen. Unprotected and unheard, the soldiers gather their strength to stand and face their executioners. Their final words of commitment, like their futures, are lost.

The hour of Afghan night in which this happens is the late-morning hour in Washington when Cruise’s hawkish Senator announces the campaign to Streep’s Cable News reporter. It is also the morning hour in Los Angeles that Redford’s university professor tries to re-ignite the passion for political science a gifted young student has lost.

As their hour winds down, the student, played by Andrew Garfield, confounds his mentor by asking what the difference is between the lack of political involvement of a soldier killed at 19 and a student who does not participate.

Redford’s character is speechless, but his film answers osmotically. The difference lies beneath the surface, beyond sight or sound, in purpose. The soldiers – former students of Redford’s character – had had a political and social agenda that began with Afghanistan. Their lives had purpose, even if no one was listening. Like them, the film has purpose, even if the majority of audiences turn a deaf ear. Finally, the art form of theater that is recalled here in its truest, most articulate form, survives despite continuing to slide under America’s popular culture radar. Because it has a passionate purpose, it succeeds, whether people listen, and whether those listening actually hear it for what it is.

Photo: Michael Peña, Derek Luke take the fall in 'Lions for Lambs'

Entertaining Notions on the Borders

My preparation for a March interview with playwright Theresa Rebeck came the morning after a dramatic prime time news show about Narco violence. Something about the CNN Special Report, which covered the murder of a Texas lawman by Mexican drug traffickers, resonated as I learned of Rebeck’s ‘Our House,' opening at Playwrights Horizons on June 9.

The subject at hand was ‘Mauritius,’ her most popular play to date, at the Pasadena Playhouse. But reading that ‘Our House,’ which premiered in January 2008 at Denver Center Theatre, asks, “Are news and entertainment interchangeable?” recalled my reaction to the Anderson Cooper program. Not being a regular viewer, I had been surprised by the level to which he and his team wrapped their coverage with a clear, though muted, sensationalism. While this kind of 'news' is not news, the preference for the language and imagery of violence – shrouded corpses, shadowy identity-protected interviewees – and disinterest in reasoned discussion of the issues behind it, was stunning. Brief, perfunctory moments of talking head stats were allotted to how America's voracious appetite for drugs fuels the international drug economy. That message would fall to Secretary Clinton the following week, and President Obama this month, to make.

Entertainment is a useful addition to any communication. Try plowing through academic writing if you disagree. In reporting, however, it’s best kept as sweetener. Junk journalism on television is as dangerous to American health as junk food in school cafeterias.

Much of Rebeck's work aims to strike the right balance: “I’m trying to create art that entertains.” While finding that dividing line is up to each artist and viewer, the breaking point between the two lies somewhere along the stretch where meaning is lost in fluff. It isn't that art has to be true. Far from it. Novelist John Barth suggested art can be truer than fact. He once had a character describe his stories as “too important to be lies. Fictions, maybe – but truer than fact.”

The popularity of theater and journalism are both being tested in the current economy. Television, where a majority of people get both their entertainment and their news, offers entertainment masquerading as "reality," and real news blurred by theatricality. The preference for this altered state may have more to do with the rising death count of newspapers than the free home delivery offered by the Internet. The Internet, which offers more opinion that anything, is just picking up where television started.

And, that, getting back to Rebeck's concerns in 'Our House,' rewards reporters who are showmen rather than ‘regulators.’ The defanging of financial regulators is much more reversable than will be the grind of keeping City Halls, school boards, and legislators in check through regular news coverage. The current ‘Atlantic’ suggests that “the Internet trains readers to consume news in ever-smaller bites. This is a disaster for newspapers and magazines. If you're not covering your state delegation in D.C., or the state legislature back home, or the city council, bad things are going to happen, undiscovered.”

But as Cooper's tone and Rebeck's play reveal, these things have already happened. News is entertainment. Want something more insidious? Try news as religion. We can already see this creeping in at the borders of TV's reporter-punditry. FOX news, which Charlie Brooker jokes “generally leans more to the right than a man who’s just had his right leg blown off,” has a number of these "news anchors" putting both bully and pulpit in their nightly “bully pulpit.” TIME Magazine's James Poniewozik cited Glenn Beck as a key voice in the shouting match.

“Beck embraces fear," he wrote of Beck's appeal. "Fear of what? Take your pick. . . . That fat cats and bureaucratic 'bloodsuckers' are plundering your future. That Mexico will collapse and chaos will pour over the border. That America believes too little in God and too much in global warming.”

Here's to keeping our house in order: leave the news to journalists, the drama to dramatists, and the fire and brimstone to the preachers.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION. Molly Ward, center, as Jennifer in the Denver Center Theatre Company world premiere production of Our House (Terry Shapiro), surrounded by Anderson Cooper, Julie Chen on 'Big Brother,' Final front page in Denver, Glenn Beck.

A Cold Case of Frostbite

The year after the Bicentennial commemorated America’s declaration to fight off British monarchy, another historic Anglo-American face-off took place. This time, a single Brit would confront the American who had attempted to reign as ‘Imperial President.’

British television interviewer David Frost had paid Richard Nixon $1 million for a dozen interview sessions that would be broadcast over a week in shows sure to be heard around the world. While some clarification of history was inevitable, both men were primarily concerned with improving public sentiment towards them.

As we have seen in subsequent Presidential over-stepping such as the Iran-Contra Affair and the misuse of intelligence gathering to deceive the public about the urgency of invading Iraq, a sense of supreme self-righteousness permeated the Nixon Presidency. It was not seen as criminal for government employees to leak damaging lies about the other party’s front-runners in order to have them withdraw in disgrace and make way for less viable candidates. Or, for them to attempt electronic surveillance of the Democratic National Committee leadership so they could learn the opposition's tactics in time to sabotage them. These activities were not seen as illegal because they were sanctioned by a President who, in their eyes, was as sovereign as King George III.

The surveillance of the DNC never happened because the men sent to break in to its Watergate Hotel offices in June 1972 were caught by the night watchman. From then on, the former President continued to barricade himself behind executive privilege and fallen bodies of sacrificed staffers. He held his ground through his landslide re-election, but by August 1974, with impeachment a certainty, he handed the reign to Gerald Ford.

CONTINUATION FROM 'NOTEBOOK' BEGINS HERE: In August 2006 Peter Morgan's dramatization of Frost’s interviews with Nixon premiered at London’s Donmar Warehouse. Frost/Nixon came to America in 2007 and within a year was a film version was on its way to several Academy Award nominations including best picture, director, and actor for Frank Langella as Nixon. This week the play opens its West Coast premiere (with Stacy Keach as Nixon) at the Ahmanson Theatre.

For most theater reviews, rather than enter a play with preconceptions affected by inevitably interpretative marketing and publicity materials, I prefer to listen to what the play has to say for itself. However, in the case of semi-documentaries, preparation is necessary. Here, the work of the playwright and actors is not rooted in the realm of imagination but in the real world. To gauge how their artistry enhances the recreation, we must freshly re-gather as accurate as possible a picture of what happened.

A short cut to this is provided by the recollections of Frost and two research assistants: reporters James Reston Jr. and Robert Zelnick (both of whom are also characterized in the play).

"It is a curious feeling to go to the theater and watch yourself onstage," Frost writes in Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes. "I attended a preview of Frost/Nixon two or three nights before the play opened in August 2006. I thought it was brilliantly written, directed and acted. There were more fictionalizations than I would have preferred, although one such piece of fictionalization – Nixon's phone call to me on the eve of Watergate – was, I thought, a masterpiece.”

Last year, prompted by the film, an enterprising reporter at Boston University's student paper, interviewed Zelnick, who said he had not seen the film, “but I’ve seen the play."

“It was great theater,” he said, “and the overall account is reasonably accurate. But there was poetic license taken for the stage that was somewhat in excess of what I was comfortable with.

"The character of Frost as portrayed on stage presents him as the kind of guy who rose to the occasion one time in his life. I don’t think that’s true. . . . [Whether it was once in his lifetime or more] he should be applauded for doing that. A lot of people have the opportunity and don’t rise to the occasion."

“I was not so sure about some of the other fictionalizations," Frost continues. "Why was Watergate now the twelfth of twelve sessions and not – as actually happened – two sessions in the middle? Why did James Reston's discoveries from the Watergate tapes only reach me on the morning of the Watergate session and not eight months earlier, as had actually been the case? Why did the early sessions, which contained a lot of good material, have to be depicted so negatively?. . . . Whenever I made these points to Peter [Morgan], he would simply sigh and say, 'David, you've got to remember this is a play, not a documentary.' However, aware of my concern, he thoughtfully added an author's note to the program, making the point that he had sometimes found it irresistible to let his imagination take over."

That note has not made it to the Ahmanson program. (Ironically, the description of this as "a new play" has survived from the original Donmar production.) However, the folks at Center Theater Group have honored Morgan's promise by incorporating the caveat in a question asked of director Michael Grandage in a program Q&A entitled "The Fact and Fiction of Frost/Nixon."

Ahmanson audiences will now weigh how theater has used language to balance reality and myth in depicting how one fallen leader used language to navigate around fact and fiction. It should be a fascinating battle between the imaginative and the impeachable, in the state whose only native son to become President was the only one to resign.

Spring Forward

Of the many pleasures in the Geffen Playhouse world premiere of Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still (through March 15) one is finally having due cause to write about Anna Gunn. She plays the play’s lead, a photographer named Sarah. I had seen her onstage once before in the first reading of David Lindsey-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole, during the 2005 Pacific Playwrights Festival at my alma mater, South Coast Repertory.

Gunn made an indelible impression in the lead role of Becca, half a couple dealing with the death of their little boy. Late in the play, the poor teenage driver who had hit the child seeks some healing by dedicating a curious science fiction story about time travel, rabbit and worm holes, and parallel universes with Becca. Though I would see three subsequent productions, something set Gunn’s reading of the part – with Kevin Kilner, Sarah Rafferty, Lynn Milgrim and Philip Vaden – apart.

I touched on the phenomenon in "One Degree of Separation," a blog prompted by Amy Ryan's excellent performance in the Geffen's West Coast premiere. The title hints at how an incident can create a huge, undetectable gulf within a person. It also refers to how one undetectable element in a performance can distinguish it from all others.

When I diplomatically asked the playwright if my impressions had any merit, Lindsey-Abaire diplomatically responded, “Yes, I was blessed by those PPF actors who understood the material implicitly and got it across to that audience so wonderfully.”

Jump from NOTEBOOK begins here . . . I had worked with Alastair Duncan, Gunn’s husband, when he, Lynnda Ferguson, Cindy Katz and François Giroday were in SCR’s production of Private Lives, winner of five L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards including one for Duncan. I had met her with Alastair at a Gregg Henry concert at L.A.'s Genghis Cohen. (Henry, a great singer, rarely has time to perform his music, though coincidentally he had a show shortly after we saw Time Stands Still last Saturday.)

In my review I interpreted Margulies’ title as ironic. He wants us – I presumed – to take the phrase at face value when the play begins, and apply it to the ability of photography to capture an event for our understanding. But two hours later we are to question that acceptance. Reality is beyond the grasp of cameras, reporters, and even playwrights. What we get is something else: the mirror, according to Shakespeare. Our reliance on these as more than mere representations is dangerously self-deluding. Not only will time not stand still for a photo, it’s constantly changing our lives and relationships as it carries us in its floodwater.

A few days after posting the review I received a press release that on Saturday L.A. TheaterWorks would air its recording of Margulies’ Sight Unseen – with Gunn in the cast, along with Randy Oglesby from SCR's world premiere, Adam Arkin and Jordan Baker). That was the final prompt to write something about Gunn and the Rabbit Hole that did not make sense in Monday’s review. Anyway, it was raining all that day in Lake Arrowhead.

First, however, I decided to hit the treadmill. Before I could get started the doorbell rang. A dark wet shroud filled the doorway. Within the over-sized cowl my neighbor was smiling as the DVD he had offered to loan me earlier in the week emerged from the slit in his slicker.

I had seen bits of What the Bleep do We Know? on cable a year or so ago and had been keen to watch the whole thing. I started the film and the jog together. A handful of experts explain quantum physics while a photographer played by Marlee Matlin goes bumping and bruising through life in anecdotal applications of the theory.

According to the scientists, with quantum physics – or mechanics – time can just as easily move backwards as forward. Hmmm, I thought as I jogged (my bounding in place now feeling suspiciously like time standing still), maybe this is what Margulies’ title was on about.

Roughly 19 minutes into the film, I was stopped in my tracks – or would have been if my track hadn’t been moving of its own accord – by a statement by Dr. David Albert, Director of Columbia University's Philosophical Foundations of Physics and a specialist in how quantum mechanics impacts the “philosophy of space and time.”

“There’s a great mystery called the mystery of the direction of time," said the author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience and Time and Chance. "There’s a certain sense in which the fundamental laws of physics that we have don’t make any interesting distinction, say, between past and future. For example, it’s a puzzle from the standpoint of the fundamental laws of physics why we should be able to remember the past and not have the same kind of epistemic access to the future. It’s a puzzle from the standpoint of these laws why we should think something like by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. These things – that we have a different kind of epistemic access to the past than the future; that we have kind of control by acting out over the future than we do over the past – are so fundamental to the way that we experience the world that it seems to me, not to be curious about them, is to be three-quarters of the way to being dead.”

Once off the treadmill, I went online to find out more about the film and discovered a wonderland of additional information, including news that a 3-DVD Director’s Cut, called Down the Rabbit Hole, was now available.

'Time Stands Still’ continues at the Geffen Playhouse through March 15, and there are tickets still available. Saturday's radio broadcast of 'Sight Unseen' will also be available online for the following week following the March 7 broadcast. For more information on "What the Bleep Do We Know," visit its website.

Photo Illustration: Anna Gunn in 'Time' (Michael Lamont), Marlee Matlin on the ‘Bleep’ dust jacket; the wild hare himself by John Tenniel