L.A. THEATRE CENTER: NOTES AND QUIBBLES

Notes, quibbles and speculations after seeing the first round of plays at the new Los Angeles Theatre Center, downtown:

1--Everybody has remarked on the steep pitch of the audience area in the center’s four playing spaces. I like the idea of looking down on the stage as if it were a playing field. But the visitor does have to watch his step. The man behind me missed his footing in Theatre 2 the other night after “Fool for Love,” almost sending those of us in front crashing down the stairs. Railings are needed, even if they foul up the sightlines.

2--Walking to one’s car in the open air after a show is far more pleasant than hunting for it in some fume-choked garage, especially when the parking is free. But unless you get to LATC early, you may find yourself shunted to its auxiliary parking lot, which involves crossing Main Street in mid-block against traffic.

3--The service in the restaurant next door to LATC, Irwin’s, was so slow before “Three Sisters” the other night that at least one pre-show diner never got his main course. If LATC can’t have its own restaurant and bar, why not follow the example of New York’s Public Theatre and offer a nice selection of pastries at intermission? Plus coffee with real cream, instead of the present powdered junk.

4--The tuneless young singer who used to make life miserable for people standing in front of the Mark Taper Forum has now transferred his attentions to LATC. This is an argument for not coming to the show early.

5--A decorator friend wishes that LATC had chosen a really gala color for its lobby carpeting, rather than industrial gray. Wouldn’t a deep red have gone beautifully with those white marble walls? Yes--and would have made the place seem just another culture palace. Industrial gray says that LATC doesn’t want to be the Music Center or Ambassador Auditorium.

6--Because the fire inspector is skeptical about the lobby door to LATC’s “black-box” theater, Theatre 4, the audience has had to take the loading-dock entrance to see Theatre 4’s first show, Greg Mehrten’s “It’s a Man’s World.” This so sets the viewer up for an out-of-the-way theater experience that it should always be used.

7--”It’s a Man’s World” is, unfortunately, drivel. It chronicles the life of a gay Hollywood soap opera actor (Mehrten) with the piety of a devotional biography of St. Theresa. The fact that we’re allowed to follow parts of the story on video monitors adds some formal interest, but not enough. LATC’s Bill Bushnell says that Theatre 4 will grant artists the right to fall on their behinds without anyone giving a damn. In that sense, “It’s a Man’s World” is a perfect opener.

8--William Mastrosimone’s monolithic “Nanawatai” is likewise the perfect opener for Theatre 3, which looks like a sunken Greek amphitheater. Some reviewers dismissed it as an old-fashioned Hollywood outdoor epic (“Broken Arrow,” “Gunga Din,” etc.) recycled to fit contemporary Afghanistan. But an American doesn’t have to travel far in the Middle East to sense that life there is melodrama, festooned with extravagant language. Whether “Nanawatai” reflects the real Afghanistan, I don’t know. But Lamont Johnson’s actors make you believe in their Afghanistan.

9--”Fool for Love” has drawn complaints for running an ad with two white actors, when the cast is actually black. Look again: One of those white actors is Elvis Presley. Did you expect to see him? This is the ad that’s been running since Sam Shepard’s play opened three years ago in San Francisco. The problem with the present company isn’t that they’re black, but that they aren’t connecting underneath--not with the text and not with each other.

10--Much as I hated director Stein Winge’s decision to play Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” as if the sisters were nut cases, that approach might be very useful in the middle of a long rehearsal period devoted to the play. In an ideal theater, a director and his actors wouldn’t have to fix their “concept” of a classic until they’d looked at the text from various angles for at least a couple of months. Perhaps Charles Marowitz’s LATC classics unit will explore that approach.

11--A reader scolds me for not complimenting some of the actors in “Three Sisters” who have made reputations in The Industry for putting themselves on the line by doing a play. Sorry. That puts the theater in the position of an aging parent who’s supposed to be grateful whenever one of the children comes home for a visit. Theater is as real, as demanding, as contemporary as film or TV. Actors should be proud to do a play.

12--Seeing four shows in repertory, it’s natural to start drawing lines between them. “Three Sisters,” for instance, uses fragments of conversation in much the same way as “It’s a Man’s World” bounces between video and live images. “Fool for Love” is as mystical about carnal love as “Nanawatai” is about Allah’s will. Meanwhile, the three sisters pray to The Future and Greg Mehrten’s twirpy actor worships The Industry. Such resonances don’t turn a poor show into an effective one, but they do entice you to examine the theater process and, behind that, the life process. Interesting, how good plays (and bad ones, too) speak to one another.

13--What was missing in LATC’s first round of shows? A show produced by another local theater. One of best things this house can do for the community is to serve as a host for small-theater shows that are ready for a wider audience. South Coast Rep’s “Top Girls,” for instance, bombed out at the Westwood Playhouse, which panicked when the customers didn’t come right away. That kind of pressure doesn’t obtain in a four-stage house. LATC needs “product” and local theater can supply it. (Example: South Coast’s new show, “Blue Window.”)

14--It’s possible to drive to the Music Center and back without being exposed to the city at all. That’s not possible at LATC, which is, for better or worse, smack dab in the middle of the urban soup. By its very location this theater reminds us what a big city this is, and how many of its citizens are hurting. Perhaps like that guy singing those strange songs on the LATC doorstep. (Scratch Note No. 4.)

15--LATC will die if it’s expected to survive on hits. One hopes that its “A Chorus Line” comes along, as happened for Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York, but amusing the public can’t be its central focus. It’s there to provide us challenge, intellectual grit, a connection with the times--and, yes, art too (the toughest of all). It’s also there to bring minority actors and playwrights into the mix, which is why a gay play and a black “Fool for Love” were a good idea. None of that is necessarily box office. The best way to help LATC would be to subscribe to its next season right away, sight unseen.