The Best and the Worst, at Times

Theater in ’97 was plentiful and uneven--two things you can always count on in L.A. “Rent” and “Ragtime” dominated the big-ticket arenas, giving musical lovers two reasons to rejoice, while Disney spent some of its massive treasury to restore a theater on the other coast--and gave New York the roaringest hit of the year, “The Lion King,” at the splendid New Amsterdam Theatre. But there was plenty to keep us busy here: a Neil Simon premiere at the Ahmanson, a better year for the Geffen Playhouse in its struggle to find its feet and a Robert Egan directorial breakthrough at the Taper, with David Hare’s “Skylight.” Here’s an idiosyncratic, 10-part remembrance of some of the ups and downs of 1997.

1. “Ragtime” Theater Lab. Common wisdom says Los Angeles won’t accept a major new show for an open-ended run without the Manhattan seal of approval. Producer Garth Drabinsky thought otherwise and brought a beautiful $10-million production of “Ragtime” to the Shubert in June, a full seven months before the separate Broadway company has its opening next month.

Drabinsky now says that if he could have done one thing differently, he would not have announced an open-ended run for “Ragtime” here, in order to have created more urgency for tickets among laid-back Angelenos. (He did release tickets for sale in time blocks, and he repeatedly extended the date through which tickets could be purchased.) The box-office numbers turned out to be strong but not stellar, although Drabinsky admits to no disappointment. At first the city embraced the show, which in its first three months earned significantly more than the show cost to run weekly (insiders put the weekly “nut” at $550,000, though Drabinsky says that number is high). But by September’s end, the numbers had dipped to the assumed break-even point and below--where they have more or less stayed ever since.

“Rent,” which did arrive with the N.Y. seal of approval, as well as the almost mythical status of its dead composer, Jonathan Larson, has maintained very high numbers, bringing in about $700,000 a week since it opened at the Ahmanson at the end of September. “Rent” exits the Ahmanson for its national tour next month, so its numbers will probably never have a chance to dip.

Given the risk Drabinsky took on L.A., the success of “Ragtime” is more important to this city than the success of “Rent.” The Canadian producer insists that he is happy with L.A., that his show was seen here by a “very savvy show-biz community that served as goodwill ambassador” across the country. Drabinsky intimated he would do it again, but only time will tell if other national and international producers will view Los Angeles as a primary, stand-alone theater city.

2. Comedy Tonight--or Not. Few things are harder to achieve than soaring, hysterical comedy. When artists jump off a cliff in an effort to reach the spirit of Plautus, they sometimes wind up flattened like a pancake. The Geffen suffered a couple of casualties on this front, with Robert Brustein’s faux-zany “Shlemiel the First” and the dull Alan Ayckbourn/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “By Jeeves.” More recently, the Flying Karamazov Brothers in “Room Service” at the Taper reached for the stars and fell down the stairs.

Two theaters farther south had better luck, turning lots of effort into effervescence. The gods of comedy smiled ecstatically on Ayckbourn’s wonderfully complicated “How the Other Half Loves” at South Coast Repertory, starring Kandis Chappell and Paxton Whitehead and directed by David Emmes. Down at the Old Globe, John Rando directed a superbly silly “Comedy of Errors” set in Turkey and featuring flying cats and nuns in high heels.

3. Love to . . . Oh, Sorry, I Can’t! Although it was first conceived in New York (under the name Encore!), Reprise! seemed ideal for Los Angeles theater. Seven performances only of an old musical--low costs, high enjoyment. Because performers only had to commit for about two weeks, Reprise! could theoretically snag well-known names who had abandoned the stage for TV and film.

And yet, even with its brief commitment window, Reprise! lost four name-brand actors in the course of putting on three productions (Keith Carradine, Ned Beatty and Joel Grey all bailed from “Finian’s Rainbow”; Tyne Daly exited “Wonderful Town”). This town is harder to book than anyone thought!

Despite its problems, Reprise! put on three terrific shows--”Promises, Promises,” with Jason Alexander and Jean Smart; “Finian’s Rainbow,” with Andrea Marcovicci, Malcolm Gets and Rex Smith, and “Wonderful Town,” featuring a lovely performance from Lucie Arnaz. Just hearing the enchanting La Marcovicci sing “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” was enough to erase whispers of behind-the-scenes turmoil once and for all.

4. “Friends” of Theater. It took a TV star and a Chicago company to demonstrate the exquisite cohesion of a well-oiled ensemble. “Friends” guy David Schwimmer, along with Jessica Hughes, brought the Lookingglass Theatre Company and its splendid production of “The Arabian Nights” to the Actors’ Gang.

The enormously gifted Mary Zimmerman adapted and directed the story of Scheherazade, the woman forced to marry a despot who kills each wife he takes. To save her neck, Scheherazade tells her husband riveting tales--each one acted out by a great ensemble of 15--and we understand why he cannot bear to have the stories end. He spares her life again and again until she humanizes him through her storytelling. While it may be wishful thinking to believe that art humanizes, there’s no question that “Arabian Nights” was immensely touching and should be made required watching for all despots, just in case.

5. L.A. Ensemble. Though the play was juvenile, the Actors’ Gang went wild in “The Kick-Ass Militia!!!” in which a large cast got to portray a galaxy of zonked-out hillbilly militia cultists of many sleazy stripes. They played off one another like expert trapeze artists.

On a more serious note, the three actresses playing British drug runners in Winsome Pinnock’s “Mules,” part of the Taper’s New Theatre for Now series, were all great: Gail Grate, Saundra Quarterman and Bahni Turpin, under Lisa Peterson’s direction.

Finally, at South Coast Rep, in Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain,” the best American play to debut in Southern California in 1997, John Slattery, Jon Tenney and Patricia Clarkson were sublime as three childhood friends trying to sift out the present and the past.

6. Holocaust Watch. The year ended with a newly adapted “Diary of Anne Frank” on Broadway, starring Natalie Portman as the eager, awkward, heartbreaking Anne. Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation excised some of the 1950s sentimentality, and James Lapine’s direction subtly brought the context of the diary--the surrounding darkness of the Holocaust--more into the picture. This is devastating theater, made in the understanding that artists, when depicting Holocaust-related events, have a special responsibility to exercise their greatest sensitivity.

Would that the same could be said for Bruce Sussman, who wrote book and lyrics for “Harmony,” the Barry Manilow-composed musical about a male harmonic singing group in Germany in the ‘30s. In “Harmony,” which premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse, Sussman tramples on historic reality to show just how heroic his heroes are. They have the nerve, it would seem, to stage a sit-down protest in front of Adolf Hitler. As Hitler passes by them on a train, they remain seated, hold hands and sing a Jewish prayer. Hitler and his soldiers don’t think anything of it. Hello?

7. Taper Two. At the Mark Taper Forum, director Robert Egan ran into some trouble staging “Arcadia,” the wonderful Tom Stoppard play about the workings of the universe and a young girl’s mind. Specifically, Egan failed to prevent John Vickery from achieving the eye-poppingest, ham-boniest performance of the year.

But Egan made another play brim with life--David Hare’s “Skylight.” Egan hit no false notes in staging this difficult play, making an extended conversation, and the plights of a stubborn schoolteacher and her arrogant ex-lover, something that mattered deeply.

8. Geffen MacGuffin. Trying to find its feet, the Geffen has done some stumbling. One can’t help wishing this handsome theater well. And so “Peter and Wendy,” the most magical holiday fare of the year, was a treat for more reasons than one. Though it didn’t originate at the Playhouse (which transported the production from Mabou Mines in New York), it’s hard to find fault when the Geffen delivers something so theatrical and so well done.

9. Actress Worship. This year saw two incandescent performances by actresses on Southern California stages. Athol Fugard’s “Valley Song,” about a South African girl dreaming post-apartheid dreams, featured the breathtaking LisaGay Hamilton as a character bursting with life, hope and song. She managed never to hit a treacly note. Down in San Diego at the Old Globe, the magnificent Cherry Jones captured the soul of a woman, an English Channel swimmer, from childhood to age 91 in Tina Howe’s play “Pride’s Crossing.” Using no makeup, without ever leaving the stage, Jones traveled the years and was always luminous and clear.

A footnote: Both of these actresses lost an Ovation Award to Suanne Spoke, who played the mother of an autistic boy in “David’s Mother” at the Company of Angels theater. (Jones was up for her equally hypnotic work in last year’s “The Heiress.”) I did not see Spoke, but she was either phenomenal or else the Ovation voters put on some serious local blinders.

10. Never Were There Such Devoted Sisters. Amy Freed gave us the memorable “Freedomland,” a world premiere at South Coast Rep. This play uncovers sibling rivalry as the fierce, soul-shaping force that it is. In a wonderfully primal moment, one sister almost spits to another: “You have a narcissistic personality disorder. . . . You’re the freak!”

On a more codependent note, the Broadway musical “Side Show,” about a pair of Siamese twins, gets even deeper at sister stuff. On the cast CD, just out from Sony, listen to the end of “Tunnel of Love.” In this number, each sister is sitting next to her beau on a fairground ride. Daisy is returning her boyfriend’s passion; Violet’s getting nothing from hers. Sung by Alice Ripley, Violet can feel her own disappointment as well as her sister’s heat and cries out, in a piercing, hair-raising infant demand: “I want what she’s got. . . . Where is mine? I want mine!” You can’t get much more direct than that.