THE TAPER AT 20: EXTRAORDINARY, NO; INTERESTING, YES

When a theater tries to be bold yet prudent; confrontational yet celebratory; searching yet engaging; committed to the playwright yet equally committed to the actor; critical of its society, yet in tune with those who determine the direction of its society--it is likely to end up with a blurred artistic profile.

After 20 years, that’s the Mark Taper Forum.

It is also one of the best theaters in the United States. We will hear this more than once as the Taper celebrates its birthday all this week. It happens to be the truth. But to call the Taper’s first two decades extraordinary is to go the truth one better.

One might argue that there is, in fact, something extraordinary about an American resident theater’s having survived 20 years with its sailing orders more or less intact and with its original artistic director still on the bridge. Think how often Lincoln Center has been dark over the last two decades. Look at how many artistic directors the Guthrie Theatre has had.

On the other hand, look at Zelda Fichandler at Washington’s Arena Stage (founded 1950) and Joe Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival (founded 1952). No. Others have survived with honor in the American theater. It’s fine that Gordon Davidson and the Taper are still creating serious theater on the Hill after all these years. But the work hasn’t been “extraordinary.”

The Taper has given us 20 interesting seasons, with the expected number of peaks and valleys. It has given us great nights (the opening of “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine” in ‘71, with FBI agents supposedly skulking around the theater--did anyone actually see them?) and awful afternoons (the Sunday in 1980 when Tony Curtis and Dinah Manoff both walked out of “I Ought to Be in Pictures”).

We have been moved to tears at the Taper (“Guns”--’76) and we’ve been bored to tears (“An American Comedy”--’83). We’ve seen great acting (Roscoe Lee Browne in “The Dream on Monkey Mountain”--’70) and lousy acting (James Earl Jones in “Othello”--’71, his primal scream period).

We’ve been shaken up (Andrew Robinson in “In the Belly of the Beast”--’84) and we’ve been pandered to (“The Mind With the Dirty Man”--’73). We’ve had sprightly Shaw (“Major Barbara”--’71) and slow Chekhov (“Uncle Vanya”--’69, Harold Clurman’s only Chekhov production).

We have cheered when a Taper show found success in New York (“The Shadow Box”--’75, “Children of a Lesser God”--’79) and we have winced when it didn’t (“Zoot Suit”--’78, “Division Street”--’80).

And it has all made a pattern, in a way. Years ago someone at the Taper noted that “not a scrap of paper goes out of this place without Gordon’s name printed on it.” He puts his stamp on all Taper productions, too. He may not have directed the show--more often than not he hasn’t--but he has at least looked it over, adjusting a hemline here and an exit line there.

Taper shows therefore always have a certain sheen. The design package is always attractive--think of Ming Cho Lee’s dazzling spread of autumn leaves for “Traveler in the Dark” (‘85)--and the acting rarely falls below a certain level. In the 18 years I’ve been going to the Taper, I can recall only one really awkward presentation--an anti-nuclear benefit that Davidson didn’t have a hand in preparing (as he charmingly informed the audience beforehand).

Another unifying note is the Taper’s theater space. Even empty, the Taper feels alive. One afternoon I arrived half an hour early for an interview, and it was a pleasure just to sit there, taking in the curve of the auditorium and the silence. When the house is packed, with everyone leaning forward intent on some question in the play, you think of a mini-Epidaurus. Odd that a theater so hastily designed (see Jo Mielziner’s book, “The Shape of Our Theatres”) should put out such good vibrations.

But the Taper’s real ground-note is Davidson himself. He communicates superbly with his patrons, following the old George M. Cohan rules: (1) Tell ‘em what you’re going to do; (2) Tell ‘em what you’re doing; (3) Tell ‘em what you did.

Davidson is particularly good at the last. I always look forward to his program essay at the end of each season, where he reveals what it had all meant: How Production A had “resonated” against Production B; how Production C had renewed a long relationship between the playwright and the Taper (anecdote of Davidson and playwright discussing future of world theater in swimming pool); how Production D had explored issues of deep concern to contemporary scientists, as well as furthered the Taper’s ongoing exploration of musical theater; how Production E, “although not popular with all subscribers,” had engendered some of the most moving letters that Davidson had ever read; how Production F was shortly to open on Broadway, thanks to valuable discoveries made about the script during the Taper process. . . .

It is dazzling to see him connect the dots. But somehow a couple of days later the season once again seems a smorgasbord. And here is my problem with the Taper. At 20, it is still trying to do it all, and not doing enough of it really well.

One understands a resident theater’s desire to offer something for people of every taste. But Taper seasons are so eclectic that some nights you ask yourself: What does this theater really think of the world? What is the bottom line here? What does it really want to be--besides well-subscribed?

Not that a theater need aim any higher. South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, for example, has never claimed to do anything more than put on good shows, new and old. But from the Taper we expect more; because the Taper claims to do more.

A recent press release notes that “the future of humanity” has often been addressed on its stage. That’s a little pompous, but it does jibe with the Taper’s vision of itself as a theater of issues and ideas--a theater that wants to help the viewer mark out a position on the way the world is being run.

From “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer” (‘68) to next week’s “Aunt Dan and Lemon,” this organization has done its proudest, most valuable work when it has touched a nerve--when it has directed our attention to something in our culture that we were in danger of looking past, and made us think about it.

Now no one expects the Taper to work at that level of seriousness all the time. A theater is for fun, too. But one does expect a measure of intellectual integrity. When a show as vapid as last autumn’s “The Immigrant “ shows up on the Taper schedule--a saccharine celebration of a young Jewish couple coming to Texas from Russia in 1910 and settlin’ down to raising three fine boys (baby pictures flashed on the screen), the discrepancy is startling. Suddenly the leading theater in town is doing “The Waltons.”

Davidson picked up “The Immigrant” from the Denver Center Theatre Company. Perhaps the story tugged at his heartstrings. My guess is that he saw the show for exactly what it was, knew it was bound to be adored by those of his subscribers who get tired of all that intellectual stuff, and went for it. One of the subscribers embraced Davidson in the lobby on opening night. “You’ve made up to us for ‘Green Card,’ ” she said. To give him credit, he winced and started to defend “Green Card.” But it was a little moment of truth. You went home wondering, as so often--”How serious a serious theater is this?”

Perhaps not so serious as we have given Davidson credit for. The 20th anniversary album gives us a chance to look back, and it’s plain that the attempt to touch base with every constituency has always been there: the Shakespeare crowd, the political-theater crowd, even the Neil Simon crowd. (No need to replay the “I Ought to Be in Pictures” debacle here.)

The Taper has been a theater of ideas; it has not been a crusading theater. Except for “Catonsville,” it has never asked the audience to choose up sides, as it were. Nor has it ever dramatized a specific community issue at the moment it was before the community. “Zoot Suit” looked back to the 1940s. “Savages” (‘74) looked down to Brazil. “Ghetto” (‘86) looked back to the ghetto.

Except for a lab production of Philip Roth’s “Our Gang” in ‘73, Watergate wasn’t dealt with. The Reagan era slipped by more or less without note. “Green Card” (‘86) looked at the immigration issue and “The Genius” (‘84) looked at the nuclear issue, but neither look went deep. “The Shadow Box” talked about death and dying, but the AIDS epidemic hasn’t been addressed--and Davidson would probably consider it too trendy to do so now.

That’s fine. A theater can choose its battlefields, and it doesn’t have to be at war all the time. It will be be fun to see Hal Prince’s new Broadway-bound musical, “Roza,” at the Taper at the end of the month. But if Davidson is truly getting uneasy about the decline of American values during the Reagan era (he was a guest at the White House last year)--the platform has been available.

Actually the Taper has two platforms--the main stage and Taper, Too, its lab space under the John Anson Ford Theatre in the Hollywood hills. This stage has the “experimental” feeling that the Taper must have had when it was brand new. “Belly of the Beast” started at Taper, Too, and the theater has just closed a too-brief run of Vaclav Havel’s comedy of dissidence, “Largo Desolato,” with the excellent Robin Gammell.

“Aunt Dan and Lemon” is next--truly a nervy play. One feels that Taper, Too, represents the kind of work that Davidson would like to do downtown, if he dared. One wishes he did dare. The Clurmans are history. He’s the mentor now.

Taper, Too has gone well. So has the Taper’s literary cabaret series at the Itchey Foot Ristorante--all but the grim food. So, in general, has the Taper’s recurrent New Theatre for Now series. Last season’s whirlwind festival of new scripts was a most impressive display of how much work this theater can put out in a short time, when pressed.

Besides keeping all this in his head, Davidson has directed one or two shows a year himself. He indicates that that’s his real love--being alone in a rehearsal room with a group of actors. His classical work has been mediocre. His big pageant plays have sometimes been impressive (as with “Savages”) and sometimes been ponderous (as with “Murderous Angels”--’70).

His best work, for me, was his staging of “Children of a Lesser God,” as fluent and charming as the play itself. If he and author Mark Medoff never quite licked the last act, they came up with something far more interesting than did the recent movie version, despite its Oscar showing. On the other hand, Davidson allowed Medoff’s “The Hands of Its Enemy” (never exactly a subtle play) to become more and more crass as its run went on. When it transferred to the Huntington Hartford, it had become sitcom tragedy--and again, you wondered why a theater of quality would want to put its name on something like this.

One of the Taper’s defeats was the attempt to run the Hartford (renamed the James A. Doolittle Theatre) with UCLA. That proved as impossible financially as its earlier attempt to run the Aquarius Theatre. Taper Media, an attempt to set up a film-TV wing, also went under.

But Davidson’s biggest disappointment has been the Taper’s rep company. He hasn’t been disappointed in it , but in us , the audience--and especially the critics. Season after season, he has assembled a company of actors to do two or three plays in repertory, and nobody ever gets excited. Why?

One reason is that the casting has been so spotty. A “Measure for Measure” with a Claudio as boring as the one we had two seasons ago can’t possibly come alive, no matter how exciting the director’s concept.

Another reason is that there’s been so little continuity between companies that we never get the sense, from year to year, of welcoming back a band of actors with whom we’ve developed a relationship. I once asked Coral Browne--a magnificent Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest” in ‘76--why she had never played the Taper again. “They never asked me,” she said.

Watching Keith Reddin’s “Highest Standard of Living” at South Coast Repertory last season, I suddenly realized how much fun I was having watching familiar SCR actors like Ron Boussom and Hal Landon showing us yet another set of faces. I also realized how much fun they were having. It was like seeing a great infield casually pulling off a triple play.

That’s repertory. With a $7.5 million budget (to South Coast’s $4.2 million) it would seem possible for the Taper to put a dozen actors on the payroll for a whole season and set them to work, as it has done with its enterprising children’s theater company, the Improvisational Theatre Project. You can’t proclaim repertory, any more than you can proclaim a great infield.

Davidson, however, tends to equate the word with the deed, especially when it’s his word. This is one of the reasons he’s a great theater leader: He absolutely believes in what he’s doing. Granted, he takes his time in deciding what this will be, triggering tension-headaches among his staff. And he’s not afraid to postpone or scrap a project if it’s not coming together. (Both “Story Theater” (‘70) and “Children of a Lesser God” were last-minute replacements for other projects.)

But once Davidson has set his mind to doing something, that’s it, and it’s going to be terrific. And, afterward, it was terrific. Which is to say, he and the cast had a terrific time working on it. That the excitement may not have been felt in the auditorium is hard for him to credit--although he can read audience signals quite realistically when someone else has directed the show. He asked me at lunch recently what I hadn’t liked about his staging of “Ghetto.” “The acting wasn’t alive,” I said. “You’re wrong !” he shot back.

The self-belief is enormous; the energy astounding. Running a resident theater isn’t nearly as easy as Davidson makes it seem. He knows how to do it all--how to put his finger on a weakness in a script, how to coax a commitment out of an actor, how to show a designer what he had in mind, how to break down a production budget, how to speak up to the Shuberts, how to chair an arts panel. . . .

What he doesn’t know how to do is stop. During his 1983 sabbatical from the Taper, he had a golden chance to jump off the bandwagon, shut off the phone and do some solid thinking about what kind of theater he wanted to make for the rest of his life. Instead, he spent the year being busy.

Probably he likes the pace. To some of his colleagues it suits a superficial intelligence quick to catch this or that current in the culture, but without a real center.

Says an older actress who has known him ever since he was stage-manager Off Broadway: “Gordon is about Gordon. The charm is infinite. He works hard and he’s well paid for it. (Davidson makes about $100,000 a year.) It’s been a brilliant career. It’s not been what I’d call a dedicated theater life.”

Says a playwright who served on a panel with him in the South: “I had lunch with him and I thought, ‘This person is with me 100%.’ I drove him to the plane. He said, ‘You know, you ought to hook up with a theater.’ I said, ‘Well, buddy, you run one.’ That was the last I ever heard from him.”

Then the older actress reflects--”But what would we have done without the Taper?”

And the playwright calls back to say that the morning mail contained a grant-recommendation letter from Davidson.

Another caller: “You know what I said before about Gordon? I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided I’m ambivalent.”

Who isn’t? If the Taper stage is just a space, and if Davidson’s only job has been to make something happen on it, he has done the job with more grace than most.

But if the Taper is to be a superior theater, with a mandate to challenge and lead, then Davidson has listened too often to the voice that says: “Theater is the art of the possible.”

Let’s save extraordinary for the Taper’s next 20 years.

FO