STAGE ’88 : 1988: It Was a Battle : But LATC--and others--came through with strong shows

A surprising amount of good work got done in Los Angeles theater in 1988, considering that it was a war year.

For months, Actors’ Equity and the smaller theaters fought out the question of how to compensate Waiver actors. This at least established the principle that Waiver actors deserved compensation. But it also used up a lot of energy. By year’s end, you had to hope that the Waiver wars were winding down: Everybody was sick of them.

Meanwhile, the smaller theaters got on with it. A fine young writer named Jamie Baker had a double debut. His “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” was first seen at the Pacific Theatre Ensemble, then at the Victory Theatre. Set in 1944, it concerned a surly young Kentucky Derby jockey named Ed (Andrew Philpot). His unaffectionate progeny turned up a few months later at the Tamarind Theater in Baker’s “South Central Rain.”

Ed and his nasty-nice spawn didn’t have a lot to recommend them as human beings, but they had a sneaky vitality as stage characters. They suggested Lanford Wilson’s Talley clan, except that they didn’t come off as “characters,” but as people with real needs--even if selfish ones. Volume Three of this family saga is awaited with interest.

Rafael Lima also hit the mark with “El Salvador” at the Gnu Theatre. The scene here was a hotel room from which a group of journalists were trying to cover the war in El Salvador without getting their heads shot off, and the message was that this kind of life can get to be addictive. An oddly effective combination of “The Front Page” and “Apocalypse Now,” tautly directed by the Gnu’s Jeff Seymour.

It was an election year, and the Bush-Dukakis debates provided playacting of a dim sort. But there weren’t many overtly political plays. Jeff Goldsmith’s “McCarthy” at the Odyssey came closest, a somewhat overwritten script, but with two lean and mean performances: Victor Brandt as Tail Gunner Joe and Ralph Seymour as Roy Cohn.

AIDS remained a scourge. “Jerker”--the notorious script by Robert Chesley that the FCC had found pornographic when it was performed on KPFK--got a live production at the Fifth Estate Theatre. It ended with a tired voice saying, over a Judy Garland record, that he couldn’t come to the phone right now but please leave a message. No more needed to be said.

In larger theaters, the best work, and certainly the most work, was done by the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Not everything that LATC attempted came off, but each of its shows had a reason for being and left a sense that somebody at the theater was in its corner.

LATC introduced us to two playwrights with imagination and control, Jose Rivera and Marlane Meyer. Rivera was born in Puetro Rico, and his “The Promise” was a wild juxtaposition of family drama and tall tale, set in a world as real as a rusty muffler, yet a world where demons came and went. Marlane Meyer gave us two plays, “Etta Jenks” and “Kingfish.” The first brought back to life the cliche of the girl who goes to the dogs when she tries to break into the movies. Meyer’s script worked because it dealt with the grungy Hollywood that actually exists, as opposed to the Oz of popular imagination; and because Meyer didn’t waste any time sentimentalizing over Etta. (Actress Deirdre O’Connell didn’t sentimentalize her, either.)

“Kingfish” concerned a non-existent dog who nonetheless existed, since it was to the interest of certain parties that he do so. This could have been a terribly precious play. Perhaps the conceptual framework imposed on it by director David Schweizer was a bit precious. But, again, Meyer knew her people. She knew, for instance, that a lonely bachelor (Buck Henry) might covet a son (Merritt Butrick) so badly that he would pay to have one. This script didn’t go any farther out than human behavior does. We’re just not used to seeing it go this far in the theater.

LATC also took on the Russians. Stein Winge’s nightmarish production of “The Inspector General” got all tangled up in its bedclothes, but Ron Campbell proved wonderfully idiotic in the lead. Charles Marowitz’s staging of “The Sea Gull” was dead-on: a production that called Chekhov’s characters to account, rather than issuing them a blanket pardon because they were all so sensitive.

Bill Bushnell’s staging of Alexander Galin’s “Stars in the Morning Sky” didn’t redeem a pedestrian script about some played-out whores in “protective custody” during the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Nevertheless, as with “Sarcophagus” in ‘87, the play was an interesting theater event--further proof that Soviet playwrights no longer have to pretend that they live in Utopia.

This was the pattern at LATC last year: Even when the play fell short, the viewer could grab onto something. Another example: Chloe Webb’s exuberant performance as the schizophrenic daughter in “The Model Apartment.” LATC is on a roll these days: You can feel the energy in the lobby.

The only time you felt that energy in the Mark Taper Forum lobby in ’88 was after “The Colored Museum.” Younger viewers, black and white, had been exhilarated by the anger in George C. Wolfe’s script, while older people suspected that Wolfe was reviving the hurtful black stereotypes of the past, under the guise of satirizing them.

Few other Taper plays proved so stimulating: Certainly not its yuppified production of George Walker’s “Nothing Sacred.” It was good to see Joe Chaikin back at Taper, Too. Director Robert Woodruff kept Sam Shepard’s loose-jointed “A Lie of the Mind” all in one piece. Ron Taylor gave a tremendous supporting performance in “Lost Highway.” But it was a season that said “Me, too” rather than, as in the old days at the Taper, “Look at this!” Or are we romanticizing the old days?

“Fences” was the Doolittle’s big hit, with James Earl Jones even more resonant than he had been on Broadway, and Lynne Thigpen taking no garbage as his wife. Another August Wilson play, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” played the Old Globe Theatre prior to Broadway, with Delroy Lindo as a self-flaying fugitive.

The Pasadena Playhouse, once given up for dead, had a fine year. Amanda McBroom starred in the splendid “Lies and Legends,” based on Harry Chapin’s songs. The show later transferred to Beverly Hills. We can’t understand why Robert Harling’s beauty-parlor comedy “Steel Magnolias” didn’t make a similar transfer. Barbara Rush and the rest of the cast loved doing it, the audience loved watching it, and even a critic had to acknowledge that behind the sitcom rhythms, there was a genuine admiration here for the way women can get it together.

As opposed to men. Jules Feiffer’s “Carnal Knowledge” at the Playhouse had Gregory Harrison and David Marshall Grant as two guys who treat women like The Enemy, and end up sandbagging themselves. This was also the predicament of Sean Penn, Danny Aiello and the other scuzzy Hollywood guys in “Hurlyburly,” staged by playwright David Rabe at the Westwood Playhouse.

Disgracefully, the “Hurlyburly” company canceled a performance just before curtain-time, the excuse being that their friend Gary Busey had just had a motorcycle accident. The professional reaction, in this circumstance, is to dedicate the performance to your friend and go on. Nonetheless, Penn and his colleagues--including Mare Winningham as the toughest of their lady friends--gave “Hurlyburly” one hell of a ride.

The funniest classical revival of the year was South Coast Repertory’s “School for Scandal,” which director Paul Marcus set in a strange land where 18th-Century types read the National Enquirer. SCR also brought us an urgent revival of “The Crucible,” directed by Martin Benson--one of those shows where the audience gasps even when it knows what’s coming next. In San Diego, the show of the year was the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s “Red Noses,” Peter Barnes’ black comedy about the uses of comedy in a bad time. Co-produced with the Dell’Arte Players of Blue Lake, Calif., the production combined expert clowning and scathing satire. Only one show gave us more pure pleasure during 1988--the Moscow Circus.