Elizabeth Hailey: Life With a Playwright

“People are probably more embarrassed for us than we are for ourselves--because we know what really happened,” said Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey of her two-character comedy-drama, “Joanna’s Husband and David’s Wife” (opening tonight at the Pasadena Playhouse), a semi-autobiographical account of her 29-year marriage to playwright Oliver Hailey. “The truth is, I’ve taken great liberties.”

She describes her story as “the drama that begins after ‘happily ever after.’ ” The play opens with David, 25 years married, waking up to find that his wife has taken off; the only explanation left is a journal she’s kept since the day they met. As he reads aloud from it, “The play unfolds inside his head,” Hailey noted. “So at first it’s an older David looking back on Joanna when she was young, remembering how enthusiastic and naive she was--before life battered them.

“At one stage, Joanna is content to be ‘David’s wife.’ Then he has to learn how to be ‘Joanna’s husband,’ when she writes a book that’s successful.” Hailey faced a bit of that herself a few years ago when her first novel, “A Woman of Independent Means,” became a hit--as a book, then a play. Real-life also takes a twist with the casting of Kendall Hailey (the author’s daughter) as Joanna. “Seeing her is very Fellini-esque,” Hailey admits, “because it’s real enough to make people wonder.”

That reality wasn’t always easy to work with.

“At first, you wonder if anybody’s interested (in your story),” she said. “But this is my third novel, and I’m getting brave enough to get close to the material of my own life--and also have the courage to embroider facts, not be afraid to invent and heighten the drama. In ‘A Woman of Independent Means,’ I found that by using specific incidents from my own life, I could relate to a lot of people. It’s the same with this marriage. I’d say the tone is bittersweet, finally affirmative--but a bit ambivalent. It’s a hard-earned happy ending.”

Bill Cort directs.

THEATER FILE: David Schweizer, who directed Marlane Meyer’s controversial “Kingfish” last fall at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, will re-team with the playwright for her Las Vegas-set “The Geography of Luck,” opening Friday at LATC. In the cast: Ennalls Berl, John Considine, Christine Elise, Arliss Howard, Garrett Morris, Deirdre O’Connell, Tom Rosqui and Susan Tyrrell.

The Beverly Hills Theatre Guild has announced its annual Julie Harris Playwright Competition. The national event offers a $5,000 top prize. For further information, send a SASE to 2815 N. Beachwood Drive, Los Angeles, 90068. Entry deadline is Nov. 1. . . . The diabetes Unit of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center still has seats available for its “Phantom of the Opera” benefit Sept. 19. Cost per ticket is $150, of which $100 is tax deductible. For information: (213) 278-7597 or (213) 855-3664.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Vaclav Havel’s modern takeoff on the Faust legend, “Temptation,” is playing at the Mark Taper Forum, with Mark Harelik as the young Czech scientist intrigued with the occult. Richard Jordan directs.

Said Sylvie Drake in The Times: “Havel overcame the detachment of the early didactic scenes to end his play with a deliberate flamboyant flourish of jeering and spent emotion. He got it right. The Taper gets it partly right.”

From Steve Mikulan in the L.A. Weekly: “Havel’s Faustian fable would no doubt strike many a sensitive chord back home, but in America it leaves us a bit cold. The main problem is the deliberate vagueness of the script.”

Noted the Orange County Register’s Jeff Rubio: “Fine director Jordan and a splendid cast work very hard to milk the play for its theatrical potential, (which) yields some hearty laughs and moments of insight about state duplicity and suspicion of non-conformists. But they are disconnected moments.”

Said Charles Marowitz in the Herald Examiner: “Jordan’s production captures all the levity of Havel’s work but almost none of its gravity. It’s as if the director felt a pill so remorselessly dialectical had to be generously sugared and sprinkled with jimmies if it were going to be swallowed at all.”

And from the Daily News’ Tom Jacobs: “Havel is an accomplished playwright. His technique of having one scene echo another--key lines and situations get repeated in slightly different form--give the play an eerie, neo-absurdist edge. His characters don’t have much depth but a number are amusing.”