2 RESTAURANTS REPLACE SINGERS

Two Orange County restaurants are replacing a long-running musical revue staged by the nationally known Young Americans organization with their own troupe because of a dispute over production control.

“It (the dispute) is a matter of improving quality and finding a fresher, more successful format,” said Terry Wells, a supervisor for Restaurant Enterprises Group Inc., which operates Tibbie’s Music Hall in Huntington Beach and Baxter’s Street in Newport Beach. The Irvine-based firm also owns the Reuben’s and Coco’s restaurant chains.

But Milton Anderson, founder of the Diamond Bar-based Young Americans organization, said his troupe was a victim of the “bottom-line corporate mentality.”

“They want more control, to make more money--that’s what it all comes down to,” said Anderson, who had been producing the Orange County restaurant revues for six years. “By cutting us out but keeping the same (show) style, they hope to make a bigger profit for themselves.”

However, Young Americans leaders say their Song and Dance Company troupe will stay in business after June 30, their last scheduled performance date at both Tibbie’s and Baxter’s Street.

On July 1, the troupe plans to open a dine-and-show facility offering its rousing, family-oriented, all-American revue only a few doors away from Tibbie’s in the same Peter’s Landing shopping and restaurant development, leaders said.

Restaurant Enterprises officials said they will continue the Tibbie’s and Baxter’s revues, but under its own auspices. The firm has already hired its own show producer, Tim Lutz, and 41 new revue performers.

While the firm intends to maintain a similar format of old-time pop tunes and youthful exuberance, it plans to remount the revues with new costumes and other staging “updating,” Wells said.

So far, 10 of the Young Americans current roster of 52 performers have signed on with the new Restaurant Enterprises production, according to Bill Brawley, director of the Young Americans revue troupe. The remaining performers, he said, will be the nucleus of the Young Americans’ new group at a 240-seat restaurant in Peter’s Landing that was formerly Josephina’s.

Anderson formed the Young Americans’ own Song and Dance Company nine years ago to provide employment to “graduates” of the main organization’s international touring groups.

The troupe’s first restaurant revue, Anderson said, was in 1980 as a summer-only attraction at a 300-seat facility in northern Michigan’s Boyne Heights resort area. Troupe members acted as waiters as well as on-stage singers, dancers and musicians who performed Broadway favorites and other pop classics.

In 1981, this same evening-show format opened on a year-round basis at Tibbie’s Music Hall and two years later was extended to Baxter’s Street (both restaurants were then run by Far West Services Inc.).

At each Orange County restaurant, the troupe has provided 20 singer-dancers and six musicians. Wells said each performer is paid $3.35 an hour, so including tips, the average earning is $300 to $400 a week. The Young Americans organization also receives a production fee, which totaled more than $300,000 last year, Wells said.

Although he would not give any figures, Wells said attendance at the 225-seat Tibbie’s has remained “strong” but the 230-seat Baxter’s Street has suffered “lapses.” (Similar Young Americans’ revues at the Reuben E. Lee in Newport Beach and a restaurant in Atlanta were attempted in the early 1980s but folded because of sparse attendance, Wells said.)

Brawley said the Young Americans troupe was notified of the “agreement cancellation” in February, shortly after Restaurant Enterprises Group, a newly formed company, assumed control of Tibbie’s and Baxter’s.

The troupe’s new home in the former Josephina’s restaurant is to be renamed the Young Americans Dinner Theatre. Up to 26 Young Americans “alumni” will be employed, Brawley said.