It’s Official: Center Theatre to Drop Curtain on Doolittle; Nederlander Fans Keep Those Calls and Letters Coming

Reports last week that the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum might withdraw from its share of the operation of the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood have been confirmed.

Both David Haft, president of the CTG board, and UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young have acknowledged that the CTG is unable to continue to participate financially in the running of the Doolittle.

(The Center Theatre Group and UCLA are equal partners in the Theatre Group Inc., the nonprofit corporation that owns and operates the Doolittle.)

“We’ve agreed to withdraw,” Haft said Monday. “UCLA will continue and we have to decide how to negotiate our way out.”

The financial withdrawal should be completed within the next few weeks, Haft said. Both he and Young, however, hope an arrangement can be found to allow the Taper--and in particular its artistic director, Gordon Davidson--to continue to have a hand in determining the theater’s artistic menu.

“We’re going to help UCLA in every way we can,” Haft said, “but we can’t continue to maintain a theater off campus. We just can’t be all things to all people.”

Chancellor Young was more sanguine: “We’re exploring our artistic and financial options,” he said.

Davidson echoed the sentiment Tuesday, citing other celebrated liaisons between theaters and universities (the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and the Yale Rep in New Haven) and stating:

“We’re going to spend a month studying if there is a way to continue the relationship we’ve forged with UCLA, not only vis-a-vis the Doolittle but in several deeper, more important ways.”

(He gave as an example the five-week new play workshop, just completed at UCLA, that was part of playwright Mark Medoff’s Taper residency and was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.)

“Of course,” Davidson added, “if a donor came along and said, ‘Here’s a million bucks,’ we’d continue in a moment the Doolittle.”

Still high on his agenda is the hope that he can continue to do the Taper’s annual two-play rotating repertory season at the Doolittle.

Only time and money will tell.

NEDERLANDER FALLOUT: Mail and calls on a variety of Nederlander-related issues continue to come in. These range from people still seeking refunds on canceled Nederlander shows or series to people grateful that the Nederlanders are now telephoning subscribers to make sure they know what they (and other theatergoers) should have known all along: that Rebecca Wright is dancing the matinees of “On Your Toes” and Natalia Makarova the evening performances.

The program, however, remains misleading. It still only shows Makarova performing and Wright as understudy, when in fact she is an alternate. And Actors’ Equity hasn’t been much help. Equity’s George Ives said Wednesday that the union has done nothing about the situation because, he said, “no one has complained.” Oh, yeah?

Sooooo . . . anyone with tickets to a canceled show (such as “A Chorus Line” at the Wilshire) or a subscription to a non-delivered series (such as the Fonda Playgoers Series) should mail those tickets or series refund requests to the Nederlander office at the Pantages, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles 90028. You also may take them there in person, though, in that case, it’s advisable to call first.

The number is (213) 468-1700.

RE-EMERGING THEATERS: Remember the Hollywood Playhouse? That 240-seat theater on Las Palmas south of Sunset, which opened with a splash, had a brief, fling as an operating Equity theater in the spring of 1985 and has not been heard from since?

Norman Maibaum, who runs the Westwood Playhouse and is one of three co-owners of the Hollywood Playhouse, has announced previews of “Nicol Williamson: An Evening With a Man and His Band,” Williamson’s one-man catch-all, begining there Aug. 18.

This is a pastiche of excerpts from dramatic works (Beckett to Lenny Bruce) and jazz compositions (Hoagie Carmichael to Stevie Wonder) that Williamson plays expertly on the piano. The four-week run opens officially Aug. 25, with Stanton Kamens producing.

“TARTUFFE”-ING ALONG: The Los Angeles Theatre Center’s vivid “Tartuffe,” which had momentarily threatened to extend the long arm of Moliere’s neo-churchman to the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood, will be remaining instead right where it is--in the Center’s Tom Bradley Theatre, through Oct. 12.

Said artistic producing director Bill Bushnell, “What I’ve done is I’ve moved (Slawomir) Mrozek’s “Alpha” (which was to open there Sept. 18) to Theatre 2 and moved “The Film Society,” which was supposed to preview starting Sept. 12 in Theatre 2, into the Bradley in a slot to be announced later.

“It’s interesting because this (flexibility) is another variation of how I knew this place would work when we were designing it.”

The cast remains intact and “Tartuffe,” headed by Ron Leibman in a vividly theatrical portrayal, appears to be fast becoming the hit that the Center has needed since it opened 23 months ago.

Bushnell is happy the show is staying home.

“It has to do with perception,” he explained, “which goes back to a conversation I had with Athol Fugard last year in New York. He and Zakes Mokae were in a 1,000-seat house with ‘The Blood Knot,’ playing to 500 people a night. And they flopped. If they’d gone to the Promenade that has 500 seats they would have been a hit.

“I’d rather fill a theater here,” he concluded, “than half fill one elsewhere. It also builds an audience for the LATC, which we need.”