What Was Peculiar Was . . . How So Few Other Productions Out of the Scores and Scores That Opened Over the Last Year Were Even Mentioned. : DRAMA CRITICS’ AWARDS SHOW

Going in style is not something the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle has always proven itself capable of doing. At least not this year, when, in its 16th annual Awards Ceremonies for Distinguished Achievement in Los Angeles Theatre 1984, it demonstrated that while critics may be well able to comment on theater, they’re not unfailingly skilled at mounting it--even at a flossy event such as an awards ceremony.

An audience of nearly 700 sat with stomachs grinding in empty peristalsis at the Variety Arts Center Monday night at a show lasting nearly three hours (dinner was served after the ceremony). It was stodgy, disconnected, threadbare (only two showgirls prance onstage for the opening production number, “Follies”), self-congratulatory and curious in the way it revealed how the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle makes its decisions about who gets what.

The bulk of the awards this year went to “Tamara” (six awards), “In Trousers” (five) and “In the Belly of the Beast”(also five). What was peculiar was not that these productions and their artists did so well, but how, relatively speaking, so few other productions out of the scores and scores of openings over the last year were even mentioned.

Part of that has to do with the LADCC’s complicated voting procedure, about which the engaging and witty outgoing President Jack Viertel confessed, “How these awards are voted I promised to tell you last year; I’ve done some investigating and haven’t found out anything.” One can wonder therefore how a category such as Production can have three winners out of four nominees (“Are You Now and Have You Ever Been?” is the odd man out). How does the lone loser feel? And what do you make of a major category, such as Playwriting, that has a single nominee (Caryl Churchill, playwright for “Top Girls”) who doesn’t win?

The LADCC has always tended to vote in clusters (remember when Crane Jackson and Karen Koranye leaped out of and back into obscurity in the space of a year?), and a comprehensive system of voting still apparently eludes a relatively small group of 20 writers who have to fan out over a large area. Too, many of them work for small publications on tight budgets. (How many get to go steadily to the South Coast Repertory, for example, whose productions are almost always superbly designed?)

Whether they ever work it out, this year’s theme show, “Theatre Sings Theatre,” was not only disappointing for how ponderously it was put together, but for how, in all its speakers’ talk of Los Angeles theater being on “the cutting edge” (as Moses Znaimer put it), so little of Los Angeles theater was represented.

We didn’t see L.A. We saw tired renditions of Broadway musicals. As a random example, Carole Cook didn’t have the emotional intensity and vocal drive to make “Rose’s Turn” work out of context. Donna McKechnie’s rendition of “Let Me Entertain You” was drawn through three cities and made you feel at the end that you were carrying her trunks. The intermittent use of body mikes didn’t help (a graceful song-and-dance duet from “Ballroom” with Jane A. Johnston and George Wallace was marred when she sounded as if she were swooping in from Pico Boulevard).

The theme of theatrical self-canonization didn’t elude the recipients, many of whom were full of effusive thanks toward lengthy lists of names. One quoted from one of her letters. Another mentioned his Mom. When Julie Harris was asked to ad-lib over a scene change, she gave us her “Knots Landing” schedule for the day.

There were gracious and amusing moments. Before singing Los Angeles Times critic Dan Sullivan’s “L.A. ment,” Stan Freeman wryly observed that “Sullivan hated me in a 1970 production. He hated me in last year’s ‘Get Happy.’ Here I am singing this. Call it a career move.”

When the big figure of James A. Doolittle mounted the stage to receive a Special Award, we realized that this was a valedictory appearance (he’s given up the Huntington Hartford Theatre) and that Doolittle, for all the years he’s been a prominent Los Angeles producer, is someone we don’t really know as well as some more recent, more vocal arrivals.

Dame Judith Anderson as Honored Guest told us she felt naked without the words of gifted poets to clothe her, and made thereby a brief, classy appearance. Andrew Robinson told us that the force of evil in “In the Belly of the Beast” was sufficient to drive his daughter out of the theater opening night.

“I had to go through the ninth circle of hell to be part of this community,” he said. And noting that “everyone’s blood sugar is getting low,” he thanked everyone and made a swift departure.

Teller, of Penn and Teller, was the most expeditious. On receiving his Creation-Performance award, he bounded onstage, drew out some paper currency to pay off his presenters, snatched the award and walked off--all in silence. That was early on, however. By the time Pamela Myers had taken the spotlight at the end of the show to sing “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” much of the audience was already bolting toward the doors. You might say that it had become a critical mass.

David Galligan and Susan Obrow produced, Galligan directed and Steven Smith was the fine musical accompanist.

A full list of the awards recipients follows:

Production: “In the Belly of the Beast,” Taper, Too; “In Trousers,” Callboard Theatre; “Tamara,” Il Vittoriale.

Lead Performance: Elizabeth Huddle, “Second Lady”; Andrew Robinson, “In the Belly of the Beast.”

Featured Performance: Joan Copeland, “Brighton Beach Memoirs”; Edith Fields, “Like One of the Family”; Karen Hensel, “Top Girls”; Kenneth Tigar, “The Coming of Stork.”

Ensemble Performance: Margot Dionne, Sue Giosa, Marilyn Lightstone, Wendel Meldrum, Leland Murray, John P. Ryan, William Schallert, Helen Shaver, Michael Stefani, Robert Thaler, “Tamara.”

Director: Matt Casella, “In Trousers”; Richard Rose, “Tamara”; Robert Woodruff, “In the Belly of the Beast.”

Concept: Richard Rose and John Krizanc, “Tamara.”

Literary Adaptation: Adrian Hall and Robert Woodruff, “In the Belly of the Beast.”

Musical Score: William Finn, “In Trousers”; Randy Newman, “Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong.”

Musical Direction: Roy Leake Jr., “In Trousers.”

Orchestration: Michael Starobin, “In Trousers.”

Creation and Performance: Penn Gillette and Teller.

Costume Design: Theoni V. Aldredge, “La Cage aux Folles”; Gianfranco Ferre and Diana Eden, “Tamara.”

Light Design: Martin Aronstein, “Passion Play”; Paulie Jenkins, “In the Belly of the Beast”; Russell Pyle, “Billy Budd.”

Scenic Design: D. Martyn Bookwalter, “Passion Play”; Robert Checchi, “Tamara”; Bo Welsh, “Steaming.”

Margaret Harford Award: Susan Albert Loewenberg.

Special Awards: James A. Doolittle, Robert J. Fitzpatrick.