A ‘Country’ Mile From Chekhov

“Don’t confuse this with Chekhov,” says director Joel Asher of Turgenev’s “A Month in the Country,” which opens tonight at Theatre 40.

“Turgenev was 50 years before Chekhov--and his style of writing was what Chekhov was trying to get away from: that very theatrical, presentational, traditional way of performing. So Turgenev wasn’t the revolutionary Chekhov was,” he said. “But this does have that wonderful sense of pathos and comic self-involvement that runs through Russian literature.”

The piece (“charming and delicate, like a dance”) revolves around Natalia, “the very bored wife of a wealthy landowner, who has a platonic lover--meaning they’re intimate, share things with each other they don’t with anyone else--but they don’t have sex.” Enter a handsome tutor, with whom Natalia and her 17-year-old ward promptly fall in love. “And in the tradition of Russian plays,” Asher says, “everyone lives delightfully unhappily ever after.”

Rita McKenzie and Christopher Powich’s “Call Me Ethel,” a one-woman tribute to Ethel Merman, opens Tuesday at the Cinegrill of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

“She was a bigger-than-life gal, the queen of Broadway,” says McKenzie, who plays the title role. “For a long time, people have said I reminded them of a young Ethel Merman. In the show, we use a backdrop of her music--23 songs like ‘I’ve Got Rhythm,’ ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business,’ ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ and ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses.’ This is really a valentine to Merman, to her genius.”

A revival of John Ford Noonan’s two-man comedy-drama “Some Men Need Help” at the Beverly Hills Playhouse is benefiting The Young Actors Fund, a grant program for Brown University graduates in the arts. It runs through next Sunday.

“It’s a real loaded situation: about alcoholism, co-dependency and facing the truth of (the characters’) lives--as opposed to the dreams we all have as young men,” said director Christopher Smith. “It focuses on the characters dealing with their perceptions, their sense of values. It’s also about the role-playing men assume in relationships.”

It’s opera of a very different order when the Peking Opera arrives Friday at UCLA’s Royce Hall for five performances. The production--which combines storytelling, swordplay, songs, mime, martial arts, dance, and acrobatics--marks the first North American tour for the 60-member company.