‘Drood,’ ‘Kismet’ Will Be at California Music Theatre Next Season; Pasadena Playhouse to Deliver ‘Mail’ for Another Week

While we wait to hear what the third show of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera’s current season will be (the news is promised by next week), the fledgling California Music Theatre has announced its second season. And it’s only halfway through its first year at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

It kicks off with the West Coast premiere of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (Feb. 18-28) followed by a revival of the 1950 “Kismet” (June 16-26) as a salute to the 50-year-old LACLO and its founder, Edwin Lester. Lester originated “Kismet,” which benefits from the melodic themes of Borodin on which George Forrest and Robert Wright based their score (even if the Charles Lederer-Luther Davis book is slender as a wraith).

Completing the season will be--unbelievably--the West Coast premiere of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Strike Up the Band” (Aug. 18-28) with historian Tommy Krasker and Philadelphia’s American Music Theater Festival helping to reconstitute the original score--and Victor Herbert’s “Babes in Toyland” Dec. 8-18, in time for Christmas.

Experimentation is not the name of the California Music Theatre’s game, but there’s a welcome variety in this second round. “Drood” was the 1986 Tony Award winner for best musical, book and score (even if the London critics recently found its biggest mystery to be why such awards were heaped on it). There will also be no national touring company of “Drood,” which explains how California Music Theatre acquired the rights.

“Strike Up the Band,” which the Gershwins wrote with George S. Kaufman and launched in Philadelphia in 1927, is, to put it mildly, overdue. Its anti-war message was considered touchy at the time and was softened for Broadway in 1930.

“By today’s standards,” said CMT managing director Lars Hansen, “it’s not all that biting. What I find fascinating is reconstructing the original show.”

Aside from its familiar title song, “Band” contains such classics as “The Man I Love” and will resurrect, in this version, such newly uncovered items as “The Meadow Song,” found in the Warner Bros.’ Secaucus warehouse in 1984. Gary Davis, CMT’s artistic director, will stage “Drood” and “Band.” Directors for the other shows aren’t set.

As for the general health of the California Music Theatre, Hansen put it this way: “We wanted to have 10,000 subscribers; we have 12,000. We have an enthusiastic support group and our single tickets have averaged 5,000 per show. People are trying us out.”

The CMT’s renewal campaign begins today and producers are also offering a special two-show packet for the remainder of the 1987 season, which consists of Sigmund Romberg’s “The Desert Song” and, for the holidays, the Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick “She Loves Me.”

Does Hansen mind that, in the meantime, the Ahmanson decided on a summer production of “She Loves Me,” which opens tonight?

“We’ve already sold 14,000 tickets,” he said, “and group sales are still coming in. The musical is so aligned with Christmas, we think we’ll do well.”

SPEAKING OF MUSICALS: “Mail,” the new Jerry Colker-Michael Rupert musical that received enthusiastic reviews at the Pasadena Playhouse (Pasadena is humming these days), has been extended by a week to July 11. And the future looks bright.

“I’ve never had a show that’s gotten such response,” said Playhouse producing director Suzie Dietz, who, as an individual, is partnered with Michael Frazier and Stephen Welles to produce “Mail” on Broadway. But first they hope to remount it elsewhere. Why?

“It can use another think-through,” Dietz said. “We’ve had representatives here from theaters around the country. We’d like to move a little to the east, see how those eastern audiences respond.

“Our dream time-frame is to get a second production in November/December and open on Broadway in the spring. But who knows? A small sum of about $3 million stands between us and Broadway. There’s a commitment to do it, but the funds have not been raised.”

If and when they are, the Playhouse will get its share.

“It has a participation in the gross and the profits,” Dietz said, “for pretty much all of its life.”

NO END IN SIGHT: Amid the usual hum of movie options, “Checkmates,” Ron Milner’s play of sexual and generational battles in the black middle class, closes July 12 at the Inner City Cultural Center and skips across town for a run at the Westwood Playhouse July 17 to Aug. 9. At least.

The move was confirmed by the Westwood’s Norman Maibaum and “Checkmates” executive producer Hayward Collins, who said that the production, featuring Denzel Washington, Paul Winfield, Rhetta Greene and Gloria Edwards and staged by Woodie King Jr., will move in toto. This includes Virgil Woodfork’s duplex set.

Collins and Angela Gibbs are producing, with Michael Harris and Collins serving as executive producers and putting up the $60,000 needed for the move.

As for “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” Maibaum, who has rights to the show, hopes to bring it into the Westwood at a later date.

LATC NEWS: “Jacques and His Master” are doing so splendidly in their adventures at the Los Angeles Theatre Center that they’ve added four performances: an 8 p.m. show July 12, and three 2 p.m. matinees July 19, 26 and Aug. 2.

Also confirmed: LATC has substituted “King Lear” for “Titus Andronicus” as the third show of the ‘87-’88 season (Oct. 23-Nov. 22). Stein Winge will direct with Norwegian actor Espin Schoenberg (new to us) in the title role.

And two LATC shows of the current season--Jon Robin Baitz’ “The Film Society” and Darrah Cloud’s “The Stick Wife”--were named by the American Theatre Critics Assn. as two of four outstanding new plays produced in the regional theater over the past year. The others were Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods,” which took top honors (it was done at Yale and opens at the La Jolla Playhouse July 19) and Stephen Mack Jones’ “Back in the World,” out of Detroit. They’ll be featured in the Best Plays Volume for 1986-87.

PIECES AND BITS: Among six shows receiving “special mention” from the jury at the Theatre Festival of the Americas in Montreal were Eduardo Pavlovsky’s powerful “Potestad,” seen earlier this year at Stages. It now goes to London’s Royal Court.

Another winner was the Wooster Group’s “The Road to Immortality, Part Two,” due to show up at September’s Los Angeles Festival.

And at the Coast Playhouse on July 14, Steven Bauer will repossess the lead role in “Bent” from director David Marshall Grant. This is a role Bauer had originally been set to do and had relinquished in favor of other commitments.

Other cast replacements in the long-running show include J. P. Hubbel, Michael Dellafemina, Dan Gauthier, John Carlyle, Tony Maggio and Paul Satterfield.

THE SEARCH IS OVER: In memory of Trudy the bag lady, and Agnus who worries, and Chrissy and Kate and the rest--here’s a toast to Lily Tomlin, who created them all and who shines brightly in our firmament on any given night, but who outshone herself at Sunday’s closing performance of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” at the Doolittle Theatre. It was an astral explosion worthy of the Fourth of July, shards of which will radiate in our internal galaxy for years to come.

So when do all of her return?