. . . And a Humbug in a Pear Tree : Celebrating some of the tackier theatrical misdeeds of 1988

Suddenly Scrooge lost it. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he snarled, kicking the stool from under Tiny Tim. “Nephew-- you’re out of my will! Cratchit, you’re fired!”

Scrooge was suffering from Delayed Holiday Stress Syndrome. Readers similarly afflicted are in the proper frame of mind to peruse our Humbug Awards, celebrating some of the tackier theatrical misdeeds of 1988.

Let’s start at the top, with the Royal Shakespeare Company. The RSC used to concentrate on doing Shakespeare. Now, in order to impress the Thatcher administration that it can generate private-sector revenue, it concentrates on cutting deals with commercial producers.

“Carrie” was its most cynical project yet, a shlocky American-style musical that would try out under the RSC’s roof at Stratford and then transfer to Broadway. What the RSC didn’t realize was that shlock isn’t that easy to do. “Carrie” was laughed out of town.

“Legs Diamond” got the next-worst Broadway reviews of the year, but its producers are not taking it off the boards. That’s admirable. A brass Humbug to them, all the same, for allowing “Legs” to run from October to December at full Broadway prices (a $50 top) while keeping the critics out on the grounds that these were “preview” performances.

Speaking of brass, the new artistic director of the Cleveland Play House fired the theater’s core company, began jobbing in New York actors and acquired a Broadway press agent--who presented all this as some sort of victory for resident theater.

“Until Ms. X’s arrival,” said a pitch-letter to theater editors, “the Play House was considered a non-professional also-ran.” How’s that for institutional loyalty?

Also speaking of brass, the League of American Theatres and Producers, Inc. continues to use that title, while remaining strictly a trade organization for the Broadway theater. The group’s original and proper title: the League of New York Theatres and Producers.

On the patriotic front, Dale Wasserman threatened to sue the Denver Center Theatre Company unless it excised the “anti-American propaganda” from its production of Wasserman’s and Joe Darion’s “Man of La Mancha.” Peace was declared when Don Quixote’s windmill was repainted from red, white and blue to a neutral color.

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Now for the home boys.

Gordon Davidson, artistic director of Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, told Calendar that his deepest wish for the Christmas season was that “nontraditional casting” would someday become a reality.

Putting such things in the realm of “someday” is a good way to ensure that they’ll never happen. When we came to town in 1969, one theater was committed to nontraditional casting: the Inner City Cultural Center. This remains the case today. Davidson should take this issue off his wish-list and put it on his action-list.

Another Humbug to the cast of “Hurlyburly” for canceling a performance at the last minute because their dear friend Gary Busey had just been hurt in a motorcycle accident and they were too overwrought to perform. This may or may not be the real reason they didn’t perform. (We have heard other versions of the story.) The point is that they didn’t. Grow up, boys and girls. Doing a play is not like doing a taping in Burbank. That’s not a studio audience out there. They paid money. You can’t send them home because you’ve got the vapors.

On a related issue, Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson not only failed to provide a sufficiently rehearsed understudy when Frank Langella was taken ill during a matinee of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” it refused to refund its patrons’ money when the understudy was still carrying a script at the evening performance. Whatever happened to “The customer is always right”?

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Other local Humbugs go to:

UK/LA. Not the sound that followed Langella’s sudden dash into the wings, but the acronym for a British tourist promotion masquerading as an “arts festival” that mostly included shows we were scheduled to get anyway--and didn’t deliver on all of them.

“If They Come Back” for the year’s most presumptuous come-on: “The Most Powerful Play the Stage Has Ever Seen.”

“Tamara” for the year’s second most presumptuous come-on: “Be Closer to Adultery Than You’ve Ever Been Before.”

The press agent who wrote this letter to a Broadway producer: “Dan Sullivan is my closest first cousin. This can help immensely when your show comes to Los Angeles. Well, maybe Dan isn’t a cousin, but after working as a press representative in L.A. theater for the past 15 years he feels like one. . . .”

He didn’t get the account.

The Garden Grove city councilman who voted to de-fund the Grove Shakespeare Festival because it hadn’t done a thing to improve Garden Grove’s bum image. We hadn’t realized, until that moment, that Garden Grove had a bum image.

The Los Angeles artistic director who sought to change the above councilman’s mind thus:

“I would hope that you will reconsider your position on old Will Shakespeare who wrote some of those most insightful and devine (sic) works to date. I would hope that you would take just a little time to look over some of his speeches just to see how they might inspire you and others around you to convey these words onto (sic) younger generations. . . .”

He didn’t change his mind.

The Equity Waiver producer who demanded a second review for his show on the grounds that “the night your reviewer saw it, it was not one of the better performances due to inordinately bad weather conditions (high winds/ low humidity) which proved to be a strain on the singers’ lungs, throats and nerves. . . .”

Every theater in town, for celebrating Eugene O’Neill’s 100th birthday on Oct. 16 with--nothing. Not even a birthday cake. Happily, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre gave O’Neill a bang-up celebration.

Manu Tupou, director, for providing 16 pages of pictures and program notes about everyone involved with his showcase production of Dale Wasserman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”--with emphasis on Manu Tupou. But there wasn’t a word about Wasserman or the author of the original novel, Ken Kesey.

A generic Humbug to readers who won’t sign their hate mail--or, worse, who sign phony names and addresses.

William E. Adams of Venice wasn’t afraid to sign his name. “I hope that you soon resolve your emotional conflict with Andrew Lloyd Webber. You Irish are a lovable people but your childlike prejudices against the British are too much to bear.”

Nor was Edward Mann of Los Angeles: “No wonder you are a $65 a week clerk at a newspaper. No class!”

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A final Humbug to this writer for various sins of omission and commission. For example, we reported that the man into whose arms playwright David Henry Hwang jumped when he ran up to get the Tony award for “M. Butterfly” was his producer, David Geffen. Wrong. It was Geffen’s co-producer, Stuart Ostrow.

We also confused St. Sebastian and St. Stephen (Sebastian died by arrows, Stephen by stones), and we misspelled the name of the great Restoration woman playwright Aphra Behn. But we did get the name of her medieval predecessor right--the immortal Hroswitha. 1989 is sure to see further improvements.