Myerson Out as Artistic Director at Pasadena Playhouse; ‘Pump Boys and Dinettes’ Heading for Las Palmas

Jessica Myerson, responsible for launching the Pasadena Playhouse on its first season after its rescue and resurrection by the City of Pasadena and real estate developer David Houk, is officially out as its artistic director.

While the theater has made no official announcement, both Myerson and Houk confirmed that the parting of the ways was a fact. Whether Myerson resigned or was fired, however, could not be determined. Myerson said it was more like a seasonal layoff that sent her looking for other employment.

According to Houk (whose Historical Restoration Associates owns the Playhouse and guarantees the operation of the theater under a complex lease-back arrangement with the city and the nonprofit Pasadena Playhouse State Theater of California Inc.), Myerson “packed her bags and left” after he told her there would be “no more checks (including salary checks) until January.” That does not seem like an unreasonable motivation to leave and suggests that the Playhouse’s financial and artistic woes are still far from over.

“I need to keep working,” Myerson explained. “Much as I love the Playhouse, much as I feel that I have a lot to give it, the amount of break time involved made it unlikely I could afford to stay on. I was originally working on a September time frame (for the second season). Now that’s into next year.

“It’s with regret that I leave,” she emphasized, “and I’m proud of what we accomplished. The Playhouse now has a 60% subscription. We came in almost on budget. I’d love to see the Playhouse open up and be a school and do all those things quickly that we all want it to do, but the Playhouse will have to be more limited for a longer period of time than I’d anticipated.

“There is some long-range planning that needs to happen,” she said without elaborating, “including a long-range development program. It should have been in place before we even went up and there were real efforts made. It was being addressed, but it didn’t happen.”

Myerson praised the volunteer effort that helped her launch the first season but speculated that the wide publicity given to the $1-million Houk donated to the operation of the Playhouse backfired.

“It was to cover a five-year period,” she said, but created a false impression of affluence when, in fact, “there isn’t the money to support a staff between seasons.”

If Houk and his partners were disenchanted by Myerson’s choice of plays for the first season (“Arms and the Man,” “Look Homeward Angel” and “Spokesong”) or the lackluster critical response to them, he wasn’t saying.

“We feel very good about the subscription base we’ve built,” he said, echoing Myerson, “and we’ve reopened the Playhouse. That’s a lot. Right now we’re concentrating on getting the final accounting done, the final bills (of the first season) paid. The attitude at the moment is catch your breath. We don’t want to rush on anything.”

Will Myerson be back as artistic director next year?

“No,” Houk said, adding that the search is actively on for a replacement. He declined to give a time-table for the next season beyond “some time next spring,” indicated that there might be some outside bookings in the interim (one of which might involve a new project Myerson is pursuing) and emphasized that “it’s a great opportunity for someone. It’s a good house and it’s open and running.”

Sort of.

“Pump Boys and Dinettes,” a show that was promised as a Nederlander attraction at the Henry Fonda Theatre earlier this year and then never made it, will be coming to Los Angeles after all.

This heartland-of-America cabaret event, consisting of the rockabilly songs and country humor of four Hwy. 57 gas station jockeys and the friendly Cupp sisters, (the two waitresses in the adjoining diner), will now come to us from Chicago, via the auspices of Cullen, Henaghan and Platt Productions.

These producers are currently presenting “Pump Boys” at the Apollo Theatre in the Windy City (where it is reportedly selling tickets a year in advance) and will mount the show at the Las Palmas Theatre beginning Oct.15.

“We visited all the (Los Angeles) theaters and talked to everybody,” said producer Michael Cullen. “We chose the Las Palmas because of its intimacy, the proximity of the parking lot and (producing director) Josh Schiowitz in particular. It’s a changing neighborhood, I know, but I think it’s the right house for this show--with the right promotion and advertising.”

In fact, “Pump Boys” saw the light in 1981 as a creation of Dodger Productions at the Colonnades, a basement theater in New York’s Greenwich Village, for which the Las Palmas is good approximation.

The show has such song titles as “The Night Dolly Parton Was Almost Mine” with which to raise body temperatures--and perhaps even the Las Palmas roof. (An extended San Diego Old Globe production of “Pump Boys” just became that theater’s single biggest grosser ever.)

Some members of the current Chicago company will come west with “Pump Boys.” Among them: Maggie LaMee, Susie Vaughn-Raney, John Foley (who was in the original Colonnades production) and Joel Raney (who served as assistant musical director on “Tap Dance Kid” and “Me and My Girl”). They will audition the remaining roles and musicians in Los Angeles.

The Las Palmas presentation will be Cullen, Henaghan and Platt’s first venture in Los Angeles and, depending on its success, presumably not the last. They are expanding their activities in Chicago and hope to export more product to Los Angeles.

Beginning Saturday, Pipeline Inc. and the Saxon-Lee Gallery (7625 Beverly Blvd.) will join forces in presenting “We Have Ways of Making You Laugh with Paul Krassner” Saturdays at 8 p.m. though Oct. 4. This uncommon alliance is only the first of several planned by Pipeline’s Scott Kelman with Saxon Lee, as well as with other theaters and performance spaces all over Los Angeles and beyond. Kelman sees it as a sign of the times: “As the elements of theater transform,” he states, “we are afforded new opportunities--not only in the nature of the pieces themselves but also in the spaces where they’re presented.”

Last week’s Watch inadvertently extended the existence of the Los Angeles Theatre Center by an entire year, claiming that it had been at the 514 S. Spring St. address for 23 months instead of 11.

Blame the theater’s volume of activity for the mistake. It seems as if it had to have been around for at least 23 months to have achieved what it has achieved in a mere 11.