THEATER AND FILM : Loss of Easter Pageant Hasn’t Sunk Pair Who Started It All

When “The Glory of Easter” made its debut at the Crystal Cathedral in 1984, the $1-million spectacle was staged by Conwell Worthington II and Michael Coleman, and in many ways it was their finest hour.

Worthington and Coleman had nothing to do with the 1988 production, which has just completed a three-week run at the glass edifice in Garden Grove. The producing-directing team had been cast out two years earlier, just after the ’86 “Easter.”

Cathedral officials said Worthington and Coleman’s termination had been a cost-cutting necessity. They maintained that the Easter pageant and “The Glory of Christmas,” which the team also staged, had become too expensive.

Worthington and Coleman, who operate their own stage-production firm in Orange, claim otherwise. They say that the Rev. Robert H. Schuller simply had decided the pageants should be entirely in-house operations.

In any case, “it’s over and done with,” said Worthington, a 38-year-old who had been involved in concerts and pageants at the Crystal Cathedral since it opened in 1980.

The message now, added the 29-year-old Coleman, is that their production firm is alive and well. “We haven’t folded; we’re still very much in business.”

In the works, they say, is a musical production--”The Bells Are Ringing” with Sally Struthers--which might be staged this summer at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Talks, according to Center administrators, are in the preliminary phase.

Another possibility is a “Christmas-type spectacle” that Worthington and Coleman hope to present this year at an unnamed Southern California venue.

When Worthington was hired by Schuller eight years ago, he already was a showbiz veteran, having served as stage manager for numerous New York and touring productions including “The King and I” with Yul Brynner, “Dames at Sea” with Bernadette Peters and “Man of La Mancha” with Howard Keel.

He came to the cathedral as an associate to Robert Jani, the Radio City Music Hall impresario hired by Schuller to stage the first “The Glory of Christmas” shows in 1981 and ’82. By the time Worthington took over as pageant director in ‘83, the formula--flying angels, live animals, booming music and milling extras--had been well established.

The following spring, “Easter” was added. Staged by Worthington and Coleman to a script by Paul David Dunn, it featured recorded narration by Gregory Peck, extras by the score, and all-out thunder, lightning, earthquake and laser-beam effects.

Both the Nativity and Easter pageants had their share of live headliners, including Carol Lawrence, Jim Nabors, Debby Boone, Dean Jones, Robert Reed and Michael York. And the pageants weren’t all. Worthington also helped present concerts by such performers as opera diva Beverly Sills and pianist-comic Victor Borge.

After the 1986 Easter production, Worthington said, there was talk of wooing even bigger headliners, such as Peter O’Toole to play Pilate. And, he said, there were “exploratory” discussions of two new pageant proposals--”The Glory of Creation,” based on the Old Testament, and “The Glory of America,” a tribute to our “melting pot” heritage. But all these plans, he added, became casualties of major economy moves by the church, which faced soaring operational costs amid signs that audience growth was leveling off. Before ’86 was even half over, Worthington and Coleman had become casualties themselves.

These days, the pageants’ producer-director is Dunn--Schuller’s son-in-law. He has declined comment on the matter, except to reiterate that the Worthington-Coleman termination was a “cost reduction” measure.

Even when they were producting and directing the “Glory” shows, though, Worthington and Coleman kept their hands in producing ventures outside the Crystal Cathedral. There have been concerts at the Long Beach Terrace Theatre and other locations starring the likes of Robert Goulet, Tom Jones, Andy Williams and Doug Henning. And Worthington, assisted by Coleman, was associate producer in 1984 for a revival of “Sugar” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with Robert Morse and Joe Namath.

Last May 30, Worthington and Coleman produced a one-man show by Red Skelton at the Orange County Performing Arts Center (although a concert to have been held there Nov. 21, featuring Nell Carter, Barbara Cook and Chita Rivera, was canceled.) Current “working projects” include bringing the Skelton show to Broadway; presenting a play, “The Kid Can Fly,” off-Broadway, and staging “Home,” a family-oriented musical written by Coleman about nuclear survival.

And there is that new Christmas production. Last year, Worthington and Coleman announced a $400,000 Nativity pageant to have been staged at the John Anson Ford Theatre in Los Angeles. That project, they now say, has been scrubbed but is being expanded into the production they hope to mount this fall.

The new show will not, they insist, be a copy of the Crystal Cathedral productions. Although it would include the Nativity, Coleman said, it also would “encompass other aspects of family celebrations around the world.”