‘The Eighties’ Finding a Home in Westwood; A ‘Phantom’ Gets Sidetracked on Way to L.A.

Two producers who have never met each other are planning to take over the lease on the Westwood Playhouse.

Although the five-year lease hasn’t been signed, reports Westwood owner Kirsten Combs, “I feel positive that it will be, and there is no doubt that the first show (under the new operators) is going on.”

The producers are Eric Krebs and Howard Pechet, and their show is Tom Cole’s “The Eighties,” about a long-married couple, starring James Whitmore and Audra Lindley, directed by Lamont Johnson. Previews begin Oct. 18, with the opening scheduled for Oct. 30.

Krebs had obtained an option on the play after seeing it produced with the same cast and director in his home state of New Jersey. Because the two actors and director Johnson wanted to do the play in their home town of Los Angeles, Krebs arrived here in June in search of a theater to rent.

While considering the Westwood, Krebs learned that it was available for long-term lease, and he formed a partnership with Pechet, a Canadian producer, for that purpose. Whitmore, who had performed at Pechet’s Canadian theaters, was the matchmaker.

Krebs hopes that the 498-seat Westwood will be part of “a series of off-Broadway-size theaters in various cities” that will serve as a circuit for his and Pechet’s productions. Krebs currently runs the 287-seat John Houseman and the 199-seat Douglas Fairbanks theaters on West 42nd Street in New York, and he is looking for spaces in Atlanta and Philadelphia (he also teaches theater full time at Rutgers University). Pechet owns or operates seven Canadian theaters, four of them dinner theaters, as well as a hotel chain.

The producers have sent Paul Morer to Los Angeles “for the foreseeable future,” said Krebs, to manage the Westwood. They plan to “upgrade the electric and sound systems rather substantially,” to make the stage more flexible and to post banners--perhaps across the street in front of the theater--to draw more attention to it.

Nothing beyond “The Eighties” has been scheduled, but Krebs hopes to do a locally cast “Little Ham,” a musical based on a Langston Hughes folk comedy, which he has already produced in New Jersey and Connecticut. He has an option on William Mastrosimone’s “The Understanding.” Pechet has “Romance, Romance” in mind as a possibility for the Westwood.

The team hopes to rent the theater to other producers “as little as possible,” said Krebs, but “realistically it will probably be about 50-50” (the ratio of Krebs and Pechet productions to rentals).

Krebs has never seen a show at the Westwood. But Pechet saw “Groucho” there, with Gabriel Kaplan (not to be confused with “Groucho: A Life in Revue” at the Pasadena Playhouse) and then booked it into his own theaters. He also did “Little Shop of Horrors” after seeing it at the Westwood.

Pechet has four months of production experience in Southern California--that’s how long he ran one of his Stage West dinner theaters in Cathedral City in 1985. He owns a vacation home in the Palm Springs area.

Although Krebs hasn’t produced in this area, he has seen shows at the Mark Taper Forum and Los Angeles Theatre Center (he thought LATC’s experimental “Minamata” was “wonderful”), both mid-sized nonprofit theaters. He believes their audiences will also support commercial productions in mid-sized theaters, especially in “such an attractive and upbeat area as Westwood.”

PHANTOM WEEK: Why was the first week of the upcoming Wiltern Theatre engagement of Ken Hill’s “The Phantom of the Opera” canceled?

There wouldn’t have been enough time to move the show from its previous stop in Milwaukee, said producer Jonathan Reinis. Now it will play in two cities in between there and here, Des Moines, Iowa, and El Paso, Tex., for half-week runs during what would have been the first week here.

Reinis added that Los Angeles audiences have been “the least responsive” so far in buying tickets. The advance for the canceled first week was a mere $80,000, and the advance for the second week is $150,000, compared with an average weekly gross of $467,000.

“The reason is obvious,” he said--it’s the presence of the other “Phantom” at the Music Center. “That’s not a problem anywhere else.”

BACK ALLEY ODYSSEY: As the Back Alley Theatre leaves its current base on Burbank Boulevard in a self-designed attempt to find a larger theater, its operations move in several directions. The theater’s new office, as of Nov. 1, will be at 14532 Friar St., Van Nuys. Its new children’s show, “Be-Bop, Sizzle, Pop!” will open at the West End Playhouse in Van Nuys Nov. 4.

Back Alley’s already-opened children’s show, “Max & Zoey, Zoey & Max” will move to the Odyssey Theatre in early November, the first rental scheduled for the Odyssey’s new facility.

The Odyssey, meanwhile, reports that the long-running “Kvetch” will resume Saturday in its new Sepulveda Boulevard building, after several false starts. “Personality” will re-open Oct. 14; both shows are in the new Odyssey 3 space. “Accidental Death of an Anarchist” is slated to open Odyssey 2 on Oct. 21, and a revival of “Nightclub Cantata” will open Odyssey 1 in November.

MORE ADJECTIVES, PLEASE: From the Ahmanson’s season brochure, on “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”: “The great film and theatre actors, Glenda Jackson and John Lithgow, bring their incomparable genius to Albee’s staggeringly powerful tragicomic and revolutionary play. . . .”