Can A Christmas Tree Have Bed Head?

There is plenty of room in my one bedroom condo. I just can't find any of it. I'm drowning in Christmas decorations, Christmas Cards, dirty laundry from 11 days in LA, and hundreds of vinyl records which sit on my file cabinet, taunting me, waiting to be converted to digital.

I do all this to myself. I've always been a sucker for Christmas decorations, though I have no sense of style or proportion. Any junky old thing with Santa or candy canes and out it comes, to be placed in a nook where nobody would ever see it anyway.

And about this tree. As referenced above, it has bed head. No matter which way I point the thing, one side of it looks smushed. And this year, it's really short. I've been downsizing my trees for two seasons now, which makes it so much easier to negotiate the two flights of stairs to my abode. But this year I was in a hurry to get the tree, and I just did not take enough time to examine it thoroughly. And though it was marked as a 5-6 footer, once the guy chopped off the bottom of the trunk, the thing shrank like 100% cotton.

Merry Christmas! I have a tree from Munchkinland.

Ghosts

Though I have made periodic trips back to LA over the past decade or so, I have not always been searching for ghosts. Those in my circle with whom I've kept in touch were the ones I spent time with, but a host of others were overlooked. This trip was different. A year of loss which began with my dear college (and waaaay beyond) chum Jenny, followed by the news of the death of my high school drama coach, gave this trip more significance to me. So, I made an effort this time to see some of those folks who were important to me back in The Day. I had lost touch with most of them years before moving from southern California, so some of these people had not been seen by my eyes in 20 or even 30 years.

What a treat it was to spend a long brunch with Kathy. Surely 20 years had passed since I had laid eyes on her, but during the high school years and beyond, she was a force in my life. One of the first kids to take me under her wing at Kennedy, she was a powerful presence in the bustling theatre dept there. She had a strong artistic sense, better than any of the rest of us, and in fact, she was the one who directed me in my first Shakespeare attempt, a Malvolio monologue. The intervening years have given her a son and a booming career in academia, where she is encouraging new generations of teens to find their special artistic voice. With my dearest Claud at our side, we gabbed for hours.

Three more ladies from that high school era popped up later in the week. Claudia arranged a surprise dinner for me at a local Italian joint, and we were joined by three gals I had not seen in roughly 30 years. Wow. We are all mid-life folks now, but more than vestiges of the old teen agers remain. Loretta (at left) is a stunning, statuesque blond whose exceptional appearance and talent gave her portrayal of Helen of Troy at Kennedy real truth. (Can you believe a high school did The Trojan Women? Joan Peterson was no slouch.)

Robin was another gal I remember vividly from that production from Troy, in which she played the doomed queen Hecuba. Robin remains special in my memory because she agreed to donate her time to appear in my directing project in college, a whacked out production of "The Bald Soprano." She reminded me over dinner that we narrowly avoided disaster during the show when another actor almost crushed her hand during the leap frog segment. I didn't even remember a leap frog segment! Boy, what I put those actors through. (Secretly, I admit now that having the four uptight characters of that Ionesco absurdist classic doing the leap frog is a spectacular idea. I wonder if I would come up with such stuff nowadays?)

Today, Robin's quirky wit remains intact, and she has emerged as a strong survivor of motherhood, cancer, and pilates.

Debi never met an experience she couldn't turn into a funny story. She remains the charming gal with the infectious laugh and, though it sounds cliche, a real zest for life. She was one of a handful of teen age girls who kidnapped me in my senior year, forcing me to breakfast at the Pancake House (or was it Denny's?), then dumping me at school to attend classes in my pajamas. I wonder what kids do to each other these days?

I reconnected with several of my undergraduate college folks as well.






Cris was present in my life from my first days at Cal State Northridge. He has a hilarious sense of humor and was a welcome aspect of any party or gathering. He could have me howling with laughter at a moment’s notice. We only worked together onstage once or twice, and I have long since forgiven him for snagging the Emcee in "Cabaret," one of my dream roles. (I later played it at Conejo Players, so all turned out well). Cris became a greater part of my artistic life when we both joined Bobbi Holtzman’s private acting workshop. (Bobbi had a huge influence on my artistic development, so large that I cannot describe it here. Perhaps another posting...). Since graduation, Cris has remained in the business, both as a performer and a writer, and he recently won an Emmy for his participation in a local PBS series.


















Ronnie was responsible for my first professional gig, "Poof!" at the old Company Theatre in downtown LA. We worked together on various projects during our undergraduate years, including an updated version of "The Menaechmi," by Plautus, translated as "The Twins" and slanted toward children:




(That's Ronnie on the far left, myself on the far right)








Ronnie recently revealed that he caught my over-the-top performance as Mortimer, the Man Who Dies, in "The Fantasticks" at Valley College, while he was still in high school! Ronnie has also continued in the business, playing comic roles on stage, film and television. Remember the MAC vs PC commercial, with the PC who had a virus? That was Ronnie.












Valerie was responsible for gathering this group together for lunch this week. I have never really lost touch with Val, who took me under her wing at CSUN and always included me on social occasions. She introduced me to Sondheim, wrote the occasional song for me, and included me on a variety of yearly events. For years we had an annual Easter Brunch, but it was her Christmas Bash with a Twist which was the highlight of the season. Everyone brought gifts, which were passed out indiscriminately. After all the gifts were opened, each guest presented some kind of little performance piece which reflected the gift they brought. Then, everyone tried to guess who brought what.














Valerie also directed "Perfectly Frank," which became one of my all-time favorite performances. She is now known as "Madam V" at Louisville High in Woodland Hills, CA.

So, I reconnected with more than a half dozen souls from the distant past. I wonder if ghost hunting is always this much fun?

California Road Trip: Dinner and a Show

I lived in Los Angeles, off and on but mostly on, for 20 years before heading east to grad school. I've returned to the scene of all those crimes many times since leaving, but this has been the longest stretch between visits.

The problem seems to be that when I am out of work, I can't seem to justify to myself the expense of a vacation. And what if an audition pops up while I'm out of town? And when I AM working, well, there is no time to travel.

So, four years have slipped by.

I was lucky enough to snag a cheapo flight from National Airport to Burbank, rather than LAX, which is convenient to NOTHING except traffic getting to wherever you are going. I was UN-lucky enough, however, to be seated next to a gigantic woman in the middle seat who never relinquished the armrest. Not once, in five hours.

I picked up my bags from the baggage claim carousel, which is located OUTSIDE. Only in LA.

My hosts for my fortnight's stay are dear friends who kindly let me take over their guest bedroom and bath (Alternately known as "the west wing" and "Skipper's Guest Bedroom," after Barbie's little sister. Don't ask). I came and went as I pleased. I lined up some teaching at Notre Dame High School from my best friend Judy, who runs the theatre program there. Three days of my trip were spent running movement workshops for 40 energetic teen agers.

I also spent some time driving around the Valley, looking up some old haunts. Get a load of these swanky digs, where I worked several times during those formative years:

This is actually the Granada Hills Woman's Club, from which the Granada Theatre sprang, like snakes from Medusa.

This little hut housed some of my early and probably most eye-rolling performances. Sadly, my debut performance at Granada, as Motel the Tailor in "Fiddler on the Roof," seems to have gone undocumented (at least in photos; I write about the experience here). I admit I am most proud of my performance as Pseudolus in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum:

After "...Forum," I appeared as the neurotic drunk Dr. Einstein in "Arsenic and Old Lace:"

That's me overacting on the left. Note the hair, similar to Suzanne Pleshette on a bad day...

(I described my experiences in ...Forum and Arsenic here.)

I also attempted, and mostly failed, to play that tap-dancing ego-maniac "George M" during this period:

Ah, youth...




After a while, Granada Theatre gave up sharing their space with the Woman's Club, and moved into their own little theatre, where I appeared several more times. TWICE I played Prince John in original musical versions of Robin Hood:

I was also in an embarrassing original Christmas musical called "Winter's Magic." It was really just a cheap fund raiser for the theatre, which was always on the cusp of bankruptcy:

I'm sure the most fun I had during this period was as part of "Perfectly Frank," a musical revue of Frank Loesser's work:

The truth is, Granada was not an easy place to work, and I eventually outgrew the place. There was little chance of "being seen" by important industry people, and since I was waiting tables at the time, I usually lost money by being in the shows. And the pay? A single glass of wine after the show.

Still, I drove down to check out this second Granada space. I didn't take a picture. It's now a Korean grocery store.

Album Droppings: Duplicatus Interruptus, or, "What Were They Thinking??"

I have proudly been making headway with the outrageous task I have given myself: to convert my huge collection of vinyl recordings to digital format. I've made it through the "G's".


But my monumental task is being interrupted, for at least several weeks. Christmas is rearing its unforgiving head, and I've had to break in order to get my Christmas Cards out. Due to my upcoming trip to LA, from which I won't be returning until the middle of December, it was necessary to dispatch my cards this week. All 109 of them. Don't even ask.


So, music duplication has ceased. But not before I marveled at several albums which must be labelled "What Were They Thinking?"


I mentioned earlier "Doonesbury the musical." Why oh why would anyone think that the very topical, very current comic strip "Doonesbury" could be translated into a standard musical comedy? In spite of having in its cast Kate Burton (Richard's daughter, and a Tony nominee lately), Mark Linn-Baker (later on TV in "Perfect Strangers"), and Gary Beach (recently a Tony winner for "The Producers"), the show is a true disaster. The creators, which included Gary Trudeau himself, placed the music in the hands of Elizabeth Swados, who never met a melody she couldn't deconstruct. (Her big claim to fame was the fluke hit "Runaways," which I bet I'll have something to say about once I get to the R's. But we're still on the D's here...). Her atonal music sinks an already shaky concept, and "Doonesbury" failed to follow in the footsteps of other comics-to-musical hits such as "Annie," "L'il Abner", and "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown."



I've run across two more "What Were They Thinking?" musicals in my collection. I've already confessed to being a Hermione Gingold fan, so when I ran across an album with her name on the cover, I pounced. The show happened in the late 50s, and was called "First Impressions." It's the musical version of (are you ready for this?): "Pride and Prejudice." Yes, somebody thought Jane Austen's novel would make a good musical. They were wrong. Gingold played the mother, and two of the daughters were played by Phyllis Newman and Polly Bergen (who's currently chewing the scenery on "Desperate Housewives"). When, in the opening number, Gingold laments the fact that she has Five Daughters who need husbands, I was reminded of Tevye and his five daughters, all of whom are more interesting than this bunch.









Perhaps the weirdest of this set of musicals was scored by none other than Charles Strauss, who should have known better. Who in the world would have thought that "Flowers For Algernon" should be a musical? This is a real corker, with a pre-Phantom Michael Crawford fawning his way through the thing as the retarded Charlie who suddenly gets better, grows up, sleeps with his doctor, then regresses to his childish state. I kid you not, there is even a vaudeville-type number between Crawford (as Charlie) and Algernon. In case you've forgotten who Algernon is, get ready: he's a mouse.







Truth be told, there is one number in this stinker which deserved some life outside, maybe in cabaret acts, called "I Really Loved You." But the ballad is rendered unlistenable by the slurred delivery of Crawford.







Wow. And yet I press on, loading these losers onto my hard drive, then burning a homemade CD. Who's the real loser, I wonder?

"The Shakes" on a Roll

I made my second trip to the "new" Harmon Center for the Arts. "New" is in quotes because I went to the old part of the new center. It's the same old Landsburg where The Shakespeare Theatre Co. has been in residence for decades, but for fundraising reasons, the building is now part of the "new" Harmon Center.








Whatever. The show, "Taming of the Shrew," is a homerun for the hometeam. Inevitably, the two leads were imported from New York, but director Rebecca Bayla Taichman, making her debut at The Shakes, was smart enough to use her knowledge of the local talent pool (she's had success at Woolly in the past), and surrounded her leads with smart DC actors. It's terrific to see local kids make good, and they do, like gangbusters. Aubrey Deeker, Bruce Nelson, Erika Rose, and Fred Shiffman are among the local gang who are tearing up the Landsburg with jazzy, snazzy, leading performances.





So, with the terrific "Edward II" running at the Harmon's new New Space, The Shakespeare Theatre has a couple of swells running.

Album Droppings: Oddities and Discoveries

I have continued to plug away at the task at hand, and am now mid-way through the D's.

[sigh]

My collection contains more than a few odd ducks. "Cyrano the Musical"? Yep, it's a double album and includes a healthy dose of dialogue, so Christopher Plummer's performance, which won the Tony, is much on display. The show was a failure, but they made a cast album anyway. They used to do that back then. Regional theatre director extraordinaire Mark Lamos was playing young Christian, and it was fun to catch Tovah Feldshuh in the chorus!

I love it when people who later became famous show up in these doozies early in their careers. I had multiple finds in "The Canterbury Tales" (yes, they made a musical of that too), which had a healthy run in London but failed in New York. Sandy Duncan played a supporting role (and snagged a Tony nom for it!), and the cast included that battle ax Hermione Baddeley, years before she blew "Maude" out of the water. (She sounds completely over the top as the ribald Wife of Bath, for you Chaucer fans. I'm sure she was a hoot in the theatre, but on the recording, she shouts her songs).

This is not to say that I have only been recording obscure shows. For some reason, I have never purchased any cast album of "Company" on CD, so the duped vinyl will have to do. I know why I never bought it on CD. It's never been one of my favorite Sondheims, but on hearing it again, I really don't know why I formed that opinion. It's a terrific cast of actors (I love musicals that have ACTORS in them), and the recording is swell. Of course, it includes the iconic performance of "Ladies Who Lunch" by Elaine Stritch, but the real surprise is Dean Jones. His voice is so full of emotion, so right for the guy who can't commit. How many times has "Being Alive" been recorded? His is the best I've ever heard, full of pain and longing. Sondheim experts all know that Jones left the show shortly after opening it, and I've always heard that he was very nervous about his singing. I can't tell why. But I remember hearing, years after the fact, that another reason Jones withdrew so soon after opening the hit was that he was getting pressure from the Disney people. He was under contract to the studio for several family movies, and there has always been the suspicion that the character of Bobby in Company carried homosexual undertones. Disney wanted no hint of that.

I don't know if any of that is true, though I think if Sondheim wanted to write a gay character, he would write one. In fact, he only HAS written one, to my knowledge, and he waited until the new century to do it: one of the brothers in "Bounce."

OK, back to the D's. Next on my turntable is another odd duck: "Doonesbury the Musical." What were they thinking? What was I thinking to buy it? And the worst slap of all: I actually SAW the thing.


And what is it about me that requires me to create a homemade disc of a crummy show that I couldn't stand?

Dance, Gypsy, Dance!

I took a bit of a break from the unwieldy task I have given myself, to convert my vinyl album collection to CD, and popped down to Signature Theatre to see what's doing.

I wasn't expecting much from "The Studio," as the review I read was pretty lukewarm, but I enjoyed the piece very very much. I love any behind-the-scenes look at how art is created; who doesn't love "Amadeus" on film, or "Sunday in the Park with George" onstage?

The performances of the two dancers really came alive during the movement portions of the play, and I have a hunch that these two are actual triple threats. They weren't given a whole lot of depth to play with in the text, so I hope the playwright continues to refine his piece. But it was a surprising and fulfilling evening of theatre



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