To a Teen-Aged Lester, ‘Kismet’ Was Fate

Is there any doubt that the 35-year-old musical “Kismet” (opening Thursday at the Pasadena Civic as a California Music Theatre production) is the creation of Edwin Lester?

“It is and it isn’t,” said the retired founder of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, “because I had such good collaborators with (musical adapters George) Forrest and (Robert) Wright, and now with (CMT director) Gary Davis.”

The musical treatment, the 93-year-old Lester said, was inspired by Edward Knoblock’s original play of the same title. “In my teen-age years, I saw Otis Skinner do ‘Kismet,’ ” he explained. “Skinner was possibly the best actor we’ve had in America. I saw him long before I ever thought of doing the musical, but it was one of the first (properties) I thought would make a great musical.

“I had a glorified idea at the time of doing it with Lawrence Tibbett at the Shrine, but he turned it down. Later, I let the rights lapse and picked them up for Ezio Pinza. And just at the time that we were working on it--we hadn’t started the writing yet--the attorney for Rodgers and Hammerstein, who was my attorney also, called me and told me that the boys were working on ‘South Pacific.’ So we negotiated a deal. Pinza said, ‘You’re getting rid of me.’ I told him, ‘I’m kicking you upstairs.’ ”

Eventually, the “Kismet” starring role went to Alfred Drake.

“The show was a sensation in London and New York (where it won five Tonys),” Lester recalled. “The last revival of it was the last show I produced, the year I retired. Our San Francisco schedule was full, so we did it here in 1976 and in San Francisco in 1977 and made some important changes.”

The newest version, which kicks off its two-week run with a tribute to Lester, stars Juliet Prowse, Steven Kimbrough and Byron Webster.

“It’s about couples who are going through a moment--a romantic moment when they feel a lot of new things happening,” said Chuck Workman of his play “Bloomers.” (It opens June 24 at Beverly Hills Playhouse under the direction of John Bowab.) “The first couple, Sarah and Billy, are both experiencing that feeling--but with different people. For Sarah it’s her old love David, ‘the one that got away.’ And her husband is having a romance with a young dancer.

“It’s a very realistic, ‘La Ronde’-type thing,” added the Academy Award-winning writer (whose film “Words” was released earlier this year). “What I noticed going through my 30s was that a lot of people who’d married early in life were breaking up and having major affairs. Not minor crushes, but these big, full-blown romances. Suddenly they were all blooming again, rediscovering that romantic process--as I believe people do.”

Most people, that is. “Fortunately, it’s never happened to me,” he said brightly. “I’ve been married 20 years to the same person.”

It’s back to the boards for actor Hal Williams (“227”), who’s spending his current series hiatus producing and starring in “To Find a Man,” a new play by Jeff Stetson (“The Meeting”) opening Friday at the Harman Theatre.

“It’s a familiar story to me,” Williams said genially. “The character is an actor who’s got a recurring role in a daytime soap. Over the years he’s gotten frustrated at not being able to be a ‘significant performer’--not a star, but someone allowed to do a range of characters. His frustration has led him to alcoholism, disrupted his work situation and made him a difficult person to live with.”

And to play. “The way it’s written, it’s very easy to hate the character,” Williams acknowledged. “And I don’t want that. I want audiences to cheer him at the end; I want to play the negativity plus the sensitivity and the pathos. This man is beleaguered but basically OK.” Co-starring in the play are Roxie Roker (“The Jeffersons”), Marie Cheatham, Mark Chaet, David Downing and Veronica Reed. Whitney LeBlanc directs.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: A revival of Kaufman and Hart’s “Once in a Lifetime” opened recently at the La Jolla Playhouse. Stephen Zuckerman directs.

Said Sylvie Drake in The Times: “With only a little bit of doctoring and one or two minor anachronisms, ‘Lifetime’ launched the Playhouse summer season not with a roar but a meow. . . . Some larger-than-life performances were on view, but too many were life size--no less and no more.”

Not so for Welton Jones, who wrote in the San Diego Union that “director Zuckerman has wisely cautioned his cast to remain serious, sober and businesslike while encouraging them to explore readings which might suggest character. The result is a series of inspired miniatures which give the production a luxurious depth and texture.”

Drama-Logue’s D. Larry Steckling agreed, finding “a sumptuous production that spares nothing in the way of glamour and glitz. The entire company looks smashing and exudes a spontaneity that is exhilarating. Zuckerman has directed with style, class and a definite flair for the flavor of the ‘20s.”

Thomas O’Connor in the Orange County Register demurred: “Zuckerman knows how to set up individual gags efficiently. But the La Jolla cast of 22 never spins a truly manic spiral in motion, and the director too frequently draws on the when-in-doubt-have-them-shout school of comedy.”

And in the Daily News, Daryl H. Miller noted that although Bob Shaw’s set and Susan Denison Geller’s costumes were “breathtaking,” the vehicle “is a one-joke show, and Zuckerman’s straightforward staging merely emphasizes the script’s fluffiness.”

Times Theater Writer Sylvie Drake contributed to the “Kismet” item in this article.