THE SHUBERTS: ABSENTEEISM IN L.A. SCENE

The leaders of the Shubert Organization, Bernard Jacobs and Gerald Schoenfeld, weren’t trying to be provocative in their answers to this writer’s questions in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Magazine. They were simply being frank.

But frankness from men as worldly wise as Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld is bound to have an edge of provocation. What dazzled me about their answers (we only had room to print a few) was the continued assumption that the American theater still begins and ends on Broadway, with the rest of the country, including Los Angeles, serving as a test market for its wares.

It makes sense for Broadway’s major landlords to behave as if this were still the truth. But Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld, New Yorkers to the core, actually believe it. They are familiar, of course, with America’s nonprofit resident theaters. Indeed, they generously contribute to their support, through the Shubert Organization’s parent institution, the nonprofit Shubert Foundation. (This year it made 199 grants, totaling $3.3 million.) They visit the regional theaters; they even import the occasional show from there.

But in their minds, that is not where the action and the quality are. The regional theaters do very nice work, Mr. Jacobs assures you, but Shubert Alley is the vital center of the American theater. The rest is “the road.”

At this late date, nobody is going to argue Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld out of this belief, and nobody wants to. Broadway in 1986 needs all the friends it can get. My concern, however, is Los Angeles. What difference has the L.A. Shubert made in the local theater scene over the past 14 years? Surprisingly little.

This answer would amaze Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld, and would probably strike them as ungrateful to boot. From their point of view, the L.A. Shubert has proved that the city can sustain long, open-ended bookings of hit shows, the mark of a mature theater metropolis. Moreover, the Shuberts have seen to it that these shows were every bit as polished and as well-cast as their Broadway originals.

This last is no small matter. The production quality of “Follies,” “Evita,” “A Chorus Line,” “Dreamgirls” and the current “Cats” has been a pleasure, as has the spick-and-span ambiance of the L.A. Shubert. The original Shuberts had the reputation of being schlockmeisters, as in their eternal flyblown revivals of “Blossom Time.” Their successors are tough businessmen, but responsible and tasteful producers. They haven’t cut corners in Century City, and deserve credit for that.

However--with respect--Los Angeles isn’t a city where shows can afford to cut corners without its being noticed. (Edwin Lester got us off to a good start in this respect during his years at Civic Light Opera; his shows could be nonsense, but they were immaculately produced.) We appreciate the fact that the Shuberts have lived up to the mark over the years, but gratitude is not in order. If the L.A. Shubert hadn’t been built, it is safe to assume that “A Chorus Line” would probably have played the Music Center in a not-too-shabby production. “Evita,” one recalls, did play the Music Center before coming to the Shubert. Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld aren’t doing missionary work in Southern California. They’re doing business, and if the market wasn’t here, they wouldn’t be here either.

In that regard, the fact that Broadway shows can play long runs at the Shubert has actually worked against its artistic importance as a theater. Compare the variety of experiences offered by the Los Angeles Theatre Center or the Mark Taper Forum over the past couple of years to the one experience offered by the Shubert--”Cats.” It’s nice to have “Cats” around, but you can’t make a theater season of it. In box-office terms, the Shubert is a major house. In terms of what it has contributed to the mainstream of Los Angeles theater, it’s much less important. In terms of what it has originated, there’s been nothing.

That’s not necessarily a complaint, simply a reminder that “the theater” and the Shubert Organization are not conterminous, particularly not outside New York, an area that Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld can’t quite take seriously as a creative theater sector. In our interview, Mr. Jacobs pointed out that “money represents quality,” and that the resident theaters haven’t got as much of it as a Broadway producer might, while Mr. Schoenfeld proposed that the resident theaters should house touring Broadway plays, thereby introducing their audience to the real goods.

Again, Mr. Schoenfeld and Mr. Jacobs do get around the country, so they can’t be accused of speaking from ignorance. But is the acting, direction and design on Broadway these days really that much different from the work in first-class resident theaters--the Taper, the Long Wharf, the Guthrie? Not in my experience, at least when it comes to straight plays. Indeed, it’s common to find the same actors, director and designers working on both fronts--and often doing better work away from the tension of 44th Street (as with Kathy Bates and Anne Pitoniak in the Taper’s production of “ ‘night, Mother,” who gave far more moving performances than they had given in New York).

It could be that Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld suffer from a condition common to New Yorkers who were raised solely on Broadway plays: a confusion between the atmosphere of 44th Street and the theater experience itself. Some people actually equate going to a play with taxicab fumes, smoky theater lobbies, too-small seats. Some people have trouble entering the world of a play unless the play is presented on a proscenium stage with a curtain that goes up to reveal the set, at which point the audience applauds. We could be dealing with a perceptual difficulty here.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume that dramatic standards on Broadway are clearly superior to those seen elsewhere. If so, it’s time for the Shubert Organization to bring more of the Broadway theater to Los Angeles. Not to the Shubert, which Mr. Schoenfeld and Mr. Jacobs rightly regard as oversized for spoken plays--even though they have done a few there (“That Championship Season,” “Amadeus,” etc.). Rather, the plays should be brought to a house around the size of the James A. Doolittle Theater, where a play doesn’t have to shout to be heard. If the Shuberts could find a Los Angeles theater with the intimacy of the Booth or the Lyceum and could stock it with two or three first-class productions--originals, British imports (they do very much believe in the British theater), revivals--one would begin to see them as contributing members of the Los Angeles theater community rather than as absentee landlords who occasionally come out to show the flag.

Will this happen? Probably not. Mr. Schoenfeld explained all the reasons it can’t be done in our interview, reasons related to issues of “debt service” and “amortization” and other financial matters about which he and his partner know a great deal. Mr. Jacobs brought up the question of the shallowness of the Los Angeles audience in terms of serious plays--an audience that was likely to exhaust itself after four or five weeks. “Equus” at the Huntington Hartford Theater, however, ran for some months. It depends on the play, the star and the merchandising, not very impressive for the Shuberts’ production of “Nicholas Nickleby” at the Ahmanson.

Mr. Jacobs, on the other hand, also said that the Shuberts had been looking for just such a theater for some time, so perhaps there is hope, particularly now that the Nederlanders have picked up the Henry Fonda Theater and are trying to do plays there. It’s not beyond possibility that the Nederlanders and the Shuberts could run the Fonda together, with provision for on-site inspection for both sides, of course.

The Shuberts also could help bring to Los Angeles an effective and accessible half-priced ticket booth, like the one at Times Square. There’s no need to wait for someone else to move on this matter, as Mr. Schoenfeld seemed to indicate he was doing. His organization could do it in a stroke.

All in all, Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Schoenfeld have achieved something in Los Angeles, but the achievement has been of more significance to the Shubert Organization than it has to the city. Los Angeles didn’t “come of age” theatrically because it turned out for “A Chorus Line.” It came of age a decade before, when it proved that it could support a complex of home-based theaters, starting with the Taper. The Shuberts have brought us some terrific shows and given our home theater some generous grants. But they have fried their real fish elsewhere, reminding us that we need to fry our own if we want to keep from going hungry.