CRITICS GO HOME TO WRITE ABOUT L.A.

Seventy members of the American Theatre Critics’ Assn. spent a week investigating Los Angeles theater last month, and some of them have written columns about it.

Al Reese of the Medford, Ore., Mail Tribune began his this way: “In and around the City of Angels, live theater spreads many wings. It flies on the nostalgia of classic revivals, on the angry or satiric statements of ethnic groups seeking a warm perch near the center of the American dream, on musicals imported from New York, on new plays about to be exported to New York. It huddles in storefronts, waiting to be discovered by the insensitive spotlight of fortune. . . . “

Jeremy Gerard of Long Island’s Newsday saw L.A. theater as reflecting the city’s “crossover dreams.” For instance, “Picnic” at the Ahmanson showed the dream of TV stars like Gregory Harrison to be regarded as regular theater “troupers”--and Gerard found Harrison, indeed, terrific.

JoAnne Akailitis’ “Green Card” at the Taper concerned the immigrant crossing the ocean, or the border, in search of the American dream. But Gerard found it a jumbled piece. “I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center also concerned buying in to the American dream, but wasn’t clear enough, for Gerard, as to where playwright Luis Valdez stood on that.

Lawrence DeVine of the Detroit Free Press was also struck by the ethnicity of the city’s theater. His prime example wasn’t “Green Card” or “Badges” or the East West Players’ “Rashomon,” but an Irish play, Ron Hutchinson’s “Rat in the Skull” at Taper, Too. He called it “a galvanizing evening’s worth of Irish history, politics, lyricism and bluster.”

William Gale of the Providence, R.I., Journal found L.A. theater “varied and strong, although perhaps lacking in the grit, the guts that make the East Coast a theater stronghold.” Gale found “Green Card” obscure; “Picnic” swell; “Badges” funny but derivative; the Odyssey’s “Kvetch” funny but too long; the Odyssey’s “Other Places” chillingly performed, and “Tamara” the ultimate Los Angeles theater experience--flamboyant, arch, rococo, sexy, funny and well-performed.

Bernard Weiner of the San Francisco Chronicle thought that Equity Waiver theater had come a long way from its early showcase days, displaying a new ensemble feeling. Clara Hieronymus of the Nashville Tennessean was particularly impressed by the reinaissance of the Pasadena Playhouse, thanks to real estate entrepreneur David Houk.

Gerard nicely summed up the group’s general reaction to L.A. theater in his final comments on “Tamara.” “Like the city that spawned it,” he wrote, “ ‘Tamara’ brashly requires a second look, damn, the price, and a third--even when the first led you to wonder if there’s any there there.”

The latest woe of Baltimore’s Theatre of Nations festival: It has lost a $45,000 grant from the U.S. Information Agency.

That’s because the festival dropped the National Theatre of Great Britain’s production of “Animal Farm” from its official roster, on the protest from the Soviet Union that it was insulting to the Soviet bloc.

USIA spokesman Joe O’Connell told Wendy Zentz of UPI that this “flies in the face of the basic principle that we adhere to, which is openness and freedom of discussion.”

Frank Hodsoll of the National Endowment for the Arts also condemned the action, but said the NEA won’t withdraw its $25,000 grant to the festival, “because we do not wish to hurt in any way those U.S. artists who are innocent bystanders.”

Apparently the withdrawal of the USIA grant won’t do that either. The $45,000 was to have been used to finance the visiting expenses of executive members of the International Theatre Institute--to Baltimore. The institute sponsors the festival.

APOCRYPHAL QUOTE OF THE WEEK. An anonymous critic (quoted by Yeats) at the first English performance of “Hedda Gabler”: “A series of conversations terminated by an accident.”