THEATER’S ALLISON DIED AS HE LIVED--WITH GRIT

It may be a bit presumptuous of me to call John Allison my friend. He was, but our relationship--that of guarded mutual respect between a critic and a director/actor/writer--took special definition, as did his life. When John died on Sept. 26 of acquired immune deficiency syndrome, he was 46 and not many people knew he was ill--let alone with AIDS.

For whatever personal reasons, John wanted people not to know. He had made up stories about a trip to England to explain his eventual dropping out of circulation. In a town where that kind of word gets around faster than you can think the thought, his illness remained a well-kept or, at least, well-respected secret. If people knew, they honored his wish for confidentiality because they chose to honor him.

John was an intensely private person with a witty, bristling personality skillfully arranged to keep out the world. He was not easy to love because he didn’t allow it. Many thought him brash and arrogant. The brashness came from a certain inbred British reserve (he was Welsh, with all its brooding implications), but the arrogance was a form of realism: He had a quick, impatient mind and a special talent--and he knew it.

When he came to this town in the early ‘70s, he came as a triple threat. In time, the actor and writer receded and he mostly directed, gaining attention and respect. His approach was audacious, always personal, preferably iconoclastic. It erred exuberantly on the side of excess. He understood that theater was about risk.

Dan Sullivan cut close to the bone when he wrote in 1982, about John’s direction of “End of Summer” at the Odyssey, “Allison hasn’t approached the play timidly. . . . He’s wrestled with it as a director might with one of the great classical comedies, trusting the text to withstand a fairly far-out interpretation. . . . (It) definitely makes an impression, if not always the appropriate one.”

Making the impression was top priority; making an appropriate one came second.

The next-to-the-last time I saw John was the summer of 1984 at a performance of “Perfect Timing,” a brittle comedy he had directed with great verve at the West End Playhouse. Our meeting took place only days before he found out he had AIDS. He was in a rare mood, joking, bursting with the news that he would soon be staging Shaw’s “Saint Joan” at South Coast Repertory. But the “Saint Joan” when it happened was not vintage Allison. He knew by then that he was ill. It doesn’t take genius to assess the blow dealt by such catastrophic news.

John directed one last production, a British musical called “Bashville,” at the Odyssey last spring. “Daft” is how he characterized it, and it may have been just what he needed to stay sane at that point. I was away and never saw it.

The next time John and I talked was shortly after my return. He called and said, “Sylvie, I have terrible news. I am in the final stages of AIDS.” It was only then that I detected the devastation in his voice.

Shattering as it was, this news once more underscored John’s capacity for pragmatism: He hated what was happening, but looked it squarely in the eye. He knew he was dying and made full preparation. He handled his death the way he handled a panel I once had watched him moderate: never allowing himself or anyone else to get off the point.

We had one last visit, in late August or early September, I’m not sure. I brought champagne, which he couldn’t drink, wild flowers he said he would dry, and a surprising amount of good humor stemming, I think, from my relief at how well he looked for someone beset by so many ills. We even talked of cure, though he may have been indulging me and taking some encouragement from the fact that he was having “a good day.”

The half-hour sped by so pleasantly that we promised to do it again. It never happened. We talked on the phone, but John declined visitors. Racked by three kinds of cancer, he was rapidly deteriorating and before long, he slipped into a coma.

John died at home, according to his wishes, surrounded by caring friends who kept a steady vigil. (“I may go down as the most arrogant son-of-a-gun who ever lived,” he’d said during our final visit, “but I have terrific friends.”) One of them described John’s final days as peaceful, with only his heart giving any signs of struggle: “You can see it beating like a caged bird.”

The struggle is over and the bird has been set free, but the disease rages on. Only Wednesday, it claimed the life of Rock Hudson, its most celebrated victim. It is crushing too many lives, plundering the ranks of too many people who are far too young to die--and, try as it may, science hasn’t been able to keep up with the ravage.

John wanted no services, only contributions to the AIDS Project/L.A. If we can’t rush medical discovery, we can see that money is there to fuel it. And for the researchers we can echo John’s favorite opening-night admonishment to his casts: “Louder, faster and with more talent, please!”