‘1789’ Aiming for Circus Feel at Las Palmas; Samm-Art Williams and His New ‘Woman’

Stages artistic director Paul Verdier has decided to expand the revolution. He is moving his production of Ariane Mnouchkine’s “1789” to the Las Palmas Theatre--just around the corner from the much smaller Stages.

The reasons are many: “Because of the size of the piece, the (October) weather, the complications of putting up a circus tent in the back yard at Stages,” he said. “And because I wanted to attempt the move to a bigger house, not only for this production, but perhaps for others in the future.”

An advantage, too, is that the show will remain in the same Hollywood neighborhood--Stages’ constituency--and, Verdier said, in “one of the few theaters (whose owners) would allow us to rearrange the seating--as long as we put it all back.”

To create the required circus atmosphere, he plans “to put some seating on the stage and create three playing areas in the house.”

Like the three rings of a circus. When the show was first mounted in Paris, in the early ‘70s, 90% of the audience stood for two hours.

“There’s no way I want to ask an audience to do that,” Verdier said. “So we’re surrounding the playing areas with seats.”

The refashioning of the theater will result in the removal of 90 seats, down to 299. The play itself takes the form of mountebanks coming to tell and to re-enact the events of the French Revolution.

“That’s the backdrop,” Verdier emphasized, “but ‘1789’ is not a historical play. The real theme is political. It’s about the people’s power to change things. Mnouchkine’s interest was sparked by the events of May, 1968, in Paris, when Jean-Louis Barrault lost his theater and there was a minor student revolt that spread quickly to other countries.

“It also relates to other political situations--to Tian An Men Square, to the retaking of the streets from the drug dealers right here in Hollywood. That’s probably our biggest oppression today.”

Jim Sweeters is designing the playing areas and John McCarthy, a new arrival from Washington, D.C., will design the lights.

But a lot of other people are also getting into this act. Among them: City Councilman Michael Woo, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the Hollywood Economic and Revitalization Effort Project, the Franco-American Chamber of Commerce and French Consul General Gerard Coste, under whose auspices the show is being presented.

“It’s the Hollywood community’s birthday gift to France,” Verdier said. The revolution begins Oct. 19 with a gala opening night. More democratic previews start Oct. 12.

SMART SAMM-ART: Samm-Art Williams is riding high. After winning early awards and recognition as a writer with his off-Broadway play, “Home,” and enhanced visibility as an actor on TV’s “Frank’s Place,” he’s now a writer-producer at Orion Television--”in development,” he specified, meaning the department, not a personal condition.

“I like it,” he said, sounding as if he did, “because I’ve always loved television and I’ve always wanted to get into it. Good roles come along, and I certainly don’t turn them down. But writing is, always was, my first love.”

Especially play writing.

Now Williams has written a new play, “Woman From the Town,” that he’s producing at the Inner City Cultural Center under his own Smart Productions banner. It opens Friday at 8 p.m.

“I’m sort of in my rural phase,” he says of this six-character piece about a woman who was run out of her small town, pregnant and unmarried, and returns home after having made a success of herself in the big city, able now to deal from a position of strength.

Williams said that the heart of the play is the conflict within the woman of love for the townspeople and a desire for revenge. For his director, he has chosen Adleane Hunter, founder and producing artistic director of the Orange County Black Actors’ Theatre.

“Samm’s from North Carolina,” Hunter said. “He has that love for rural people and what makes them tick. He also knows about living and surviving in the big city.”

Sounds a lot like “Home.”

“It has that same kind of flavor,” Williams acknowledged.

“But this is a six-character play, fully developed, in which he’s woven several themes,” Hunter injected. “Heredity versus environment, the choices we make.

“The difficulty facing the woman of the title--Lila--is in coping with her own values and the hypocrisies and narrow minds of the town.”

Donnice Wilson plays Lila. Others in the cast are Roxie Roker, Eugene Lee (“The Women of Brewster Place”), Loretta Devine (“The Colored Museum”), Lou Hancock and Robyn Hastings.

TO PHANTOM OR NOT: A reader has written to ask a fair question: Are the rumors true that “Phantom of the Opera” star Michael Crawford will be leaving the Los Angeles company in February?

“We are concerned,” writes Ralph E. Harris, “because as season subscribers we are being offered tickets for March and April and we want to be sure that Mr. Crawford will still be in the show.”

There is apparently no way to be sure right now. A spokeswoman for Crawford replied that the actor “feels the question is premature,” which can be fairly interpreted to mean that Crawford has not made up his mind. His contract does, however, run through February and he can be counted on to remain until then.

After that, only the Shadow knows. . . . Producer Cameron Mackintosh, in London for the opening of his new show, “Miss Saigon,” could not be reached for comment.

ROLLING TO ROSTOV: The Mark Taper Forum’s Improvisational Theatre Project is off to Rostov-on-Don in the Soviet Union, to perform Colin Thomas’ “One Thousand Cranes” as part of the International Assn. of Theatre for Children and Youth festival, Oct. 9-21. The troupe, the only American company to be invited, will join seven others from Europe and Asia.

EXIT LINES: The new artistic director at Santa Monica’s Second City (the third one since the Chicago-based company opened a branch there at the old Mayfair Theatre in March) is Steven Kampmann. Kampmann, an alumnus of Second City in Chicago and Toronto, is also a writer for screen (“Stealing Home,” which he also directed) and television (“WKRP in Cincinnati”). . . . The California Music Theatre is poised to open its next show of the current season: “The Pajama Game,” starring Pat Harrington and Mary Jo Catlett, Oct. 4-22. That will be followed by the final show of 1989, Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Iolanthe,” Dec. 2-17.

Information: (818) 356-7469. . .The Beverly Hills Theatre Guild is again scouting unproduced manuscripts for its annual Julie Harris Playwright Competition. First prize: $5,000. For the rules and application forms (essential), send a self-addressed, stamped evelope to 2815 N. Beachwood Drive, Los Angeles 90068. Deadline: Nov. 1