Move over, New York! Watch out, Chicago! There's more afoot in LaLaLand than movies, movies, movies. The hills, the valley, downtown, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Pasadena, Santa Monica and especially NoHo are alive with the sound of cachinging at the boxoffice. Live theater is alive, well and thriving in Los Angeles.
There are the big shows at the lovely, warm and intimate Ahmanson (and could there be a nicer theatre staff at any other venue?), currently running the tour of 42nd Street, with Phantom of the Opera returning for two months in October and for next January, La Boheme. Then Kaufman and Ferber's Royal Family hits the boards in March, with Thoroughly Modern Millie to follow.
The Mark Taper has imported August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean from Chicago's Goodman. Just off the new Hollywood and Vine [just blocks from the Kodak/Academy Awards Theater and mall], at the Pantages, Jason Alexander and Martin Short are wowing 'em in The Producers.
The Pasadena Playhouse just closed their popular area premiere of Jerry Herman's Showtune, which was most recently at New York's York. The very first-class Reprise! series has three ambitious concerts lined up: Rodgers & Hart's Babes in Arms (September), Wright & Forest's Kismet (January) and the already much-anticipated Sondheim Company (May).
There's no shortage of good plays and musicals at the midsize and intimate theaters, which would be the equivalent of New York's Off and Off Off Broadway. Several New York-based companies, such as Vampire Cowboys, have sister companies here performing the same play that's ongoing in Manhattan. Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson's outrageous Jewtopia, at West Hollywood's intimate Coast, has been set to close several times, yet audiences keep coming, and the producers have decided to keep it running.
The award-winning, 86-seat Fountain is packing in audiences for the Southern California premiere of Mart Crowley's sequel to his landmark The Boys in the Band, The Men from the Boys. Reviews have been mixed to glowing, but there've been enough important money ones to have management putting chairs in every available space. Will a move to a larger house be far behind?
After what Crowley described as several "relaxing and dull years," his life is hectic again with non-stop calls and faxes and phone conservations with his New York agent.
But what to do? Crowley, like the producers of the just-ended return- limited engagement of Sam Harris' concert tour de force SAM. [sic], which packed them in this time at West Hollywood's Coronet, and those behind Lorna Luft's SRO Songs My Mother Taught Me at the Beverly Hills' Canon (after a start in the Roosevelt Hotel's Cinegrill), is eyeing a possible New-York run.
Dampening their enthusiasm is New York's soft theatrical economy; and, in Crowley's case, a bit of worry at how badly recent, even well-reviewed or gay-themed theater has and is faring. In Laguna Beach, the revival of Harvey was so panned, the tour and planned New-York run have been canceled.
None of this seems to be bothering the acclaimed Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, which has just posted that following last weekend's finale -- they're New York bound.
A walk through NoHo, the North Hollywood area of dozens of intimate and subintimate theaters (in storefronts and on second and third floors) where anyone who wants to put on a show can and does, reminds one of the type of theatrical synergy that once thrived Off Off Broadway.
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