LP Repertory to Close Failing ‘Tribute,’ Bring Back Revue

As theater troupes throughout the county are striding into the fall season with high hopes, a venturesome company in Tustin has found the going tougher than ever.

“To quote from a recent production, ‘The situation is desperate but not hopeless,’ ” William J. Durkin, managing director of the LP Repertory, said Wednesday.

Audiences have paid so little respect to “Tribute,” the current offering at LP Rep’s dinner theater, that the Bernard Slade seriocomic play will close Sept. 23, five weeks earlier than planned. It will be replaced by an original musical revue, “Brobie’s Club LPR,” followed possibly by Las Vegas-style entertainment.

“Although we got great reviews for ‘Tribute,’ people have not been showing up,” Durkin said. “The cast is not pleased about playing to small audiences and, as management, we’re not too pleased about it either. Attendance is the pits. It’s a little scary right now.”

LP Rep has struggled to attract audiences since it was formed a year ago, Durkin said. Attendance had picked up before the summer for Ayn Rand’s courtroom drama, “The Night of January 16th,” but slacked off considerably for Woody Allen’s comedy “Play It Again, Sam.” He said “Tribute,” which opened Aug. 10, has drawn as few as 10 people a night.

The troupe has fallen $16,000 behind in the rent at its 150-seat storefront dinner theater, Durkin said. (It is in a shopping mall at 15732 D Tustin Village Way.) Nevertheless, he remained optimistic that the troupe would survive the current crisis.

“We’ve been in trouble for quite a while now, and we’re still here,” he noted. “I don’t really see us shutting down.”

LP Repertory renovated the storefront and launched the dinner theater to help finance a 12-year-old adjunct troupe, the Lilliput Players, which brings educational children’s shows to schools throughout the county and Southern California on an annual budget of between $60,000 and $100,000.

Ironically, income from the Lilliput Players, which put on about 350 performances last year, has so far helped to underwrite staff expenses at the dinner theater, Durkin said.

To offset some of the financial losses, LP Repertory held a benefit two weeks ago that raised $2,000. The troupe did up the theater as a 1940s nightspot called Brobie’s Club LPR and presented a gangster-movie spoof along the lines of “Bullshot Crummond.” The sendup was so well received, Durkin said, that he decided to install it as the replacement for “Tribute.” The first show is scheduled for Sept. 30.

“It was too good to let go,” Durkin said. “People loved it. We have gangsters, cigarette girls, reporters, Gershwin songs, dancing, and a magician. It’s a lot of fun.”

“Brobie’s Club LPR” is expected to run Fridays and Saturdays for at least three weeks, with a benefit performance Oct. 21 for the ALS Foundation of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Assn. and the Lilliput Players. (Sarah Coleman, the Lilliput founder, died July 12 of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.)

In the meantime, Durkin said, he is negotiating to book singer-pianist Sergio Alberti at the dinner theater for “some time in October,” after “Brobies.” Alberti is currently appearing at Bally’s in Las Vegas and is scheduled to perform at The Aladdin as well, according to his agent.

Regardless of what happens at the dinner theater, Durkin added, the Lilliput Players will continue to perform children’s shows. “They are absolutely unthreatened” by LP Rep’s financial difficulties, he said.

Indeed, the Lilliput Players will open a new show today--H2O--a rock musical on water conservation for the Orange County Municipal Water District--at the McGarvin Intermediate School in Garden Grove.