Restaurant a Fitting Place for Fables With Dog-Eat-Dog Humor

It’s an evening of food and theater Thursday, as Pacific Palisades’ Lido Ristorante presents a dinner and reading of Oscar Mandel’s “The Gobble-Up Stories,” a selection of fables performed by actress Maylou Sullivan.

“A fable has to be relatively brief,” said the Belgian-born Mandel. “It’s a dramatic story--very often with animals, but not necessarily. It comes to a real point, and the point is a moral of some kind, some observation. Philosophical, yes. A fable is always philosophical: philosophy as entertainment. It’s moral instruction in the form of little stories. But there’s no connection between them. Just as when you read Aesop, they’re individual ideas.”

Mandel, who began writing fables in 1960, has performed them on a number of occasions and in a variety of venues----and with different scripts. “They exist in two versions,” he noted. “When they are performed by one person, they are called ‘The Gobble-Up Stories.’ When two or more people perform them, they are ‘The Kukkurrik Fables.’ ”

They were conceived solely as literary pieces. It was almost a year afterward that Mandel realized: “My heavens, they’re full of dialogue. One can make little plays out of them.”

Last year, Sullivan performed the fables at Venice’s Sculpture Garden Restaurant, where the program was preceded by the meal.

“People had dined very well and drunk wine,” said Mandel, 62. “Frankly, they were sleepy. So we’re doing it differently this time. The hors d’oeuvres will be served first. Then we’ll bring out Maylou, who does a selection--about 50 minutes to an hour. When that’s finished, we have the main course, dessert and coffee. This way, people won’t be starved; they’ll still be awake. And the owner, Hedy Ciani, promises a spectacular meal.”

Mandel himself will be available afterward to chat with the patrons.

“I enjoy the meeting,” he said. “I’ve often done it in the past. Once I was reading the material myself, and a woman told me her mother had read ‘The Gobble-Up Stories’ during her last illness, and it gave her so much pleasure. It’s that kind of conversation that can be so moving--even though they’re very cruel stories.

“They’re called the ‘The Gobble-Up Stories’ because they’re very Darwinian, in terms of people gobbling up each other, dog eat dog. But they’re humorous, so people think they’re charming.” About 10 of Mandel’s collection of 45 fables will be read in Thursday’s program.

The original fable was prompted by an irate letter from a friend, accusing the writer of a breach of literary ethics, “and quoting Plato, Kant and Spinoza.” Mandel said, “I thought it was very amusing, a great artillery on a very small target. For some reason, this led to a fable, ‘How God Learned What Measure Is.’ From that point on, I had one idea after another for different fables.”

A veteran of numerous essays, translations and a dozen plays, Mandel is a Fulbright scholar and graduate of New York University and Columbia; he has taught at Ohio State University, the University of Nebraska--and since resettling in Los Angeles in 1961, has been professor of humanities at Caltech.

“Were all together: economists, political scientists and historians,” he said genially of Caltech’s humanities and social sciences departments. “I love my teaching. It’s very social, very gratifying. We’re teaching 18- to 22-year-old youngsters who are very, very intelligent, but who haven’t read much. So you have to interest them, educate them, perform for them. It’s a drive, yes. But I do a lot of thinking on the freeway. I get some of my better ideas on freeways.”

The son of a Belgian diamond dealer who relocated his family to New York in 1940, Mandel discovered writing on his own.

It hasn’t always been easy. “I have trouble getting my stuff produced,” Mandel admitted. “People are looking for realistic, gritty, trailer-park-in-Pacoima things, and the plays I write are grand, imaginative stories. I guess the word for it--it’s very old-fashioned--is patrician.”

Tickets for Thursday’s program are $50 a person, and include the entertainment, dinner, tax and tip. The all-imported menu begins with two antipastos: bocconcini di bufalo with radicchio and pecorino Toscano with arrugola, followed by pasticcio with porcini alla medici, insalata fiorentina and insalata della nonna, homemade focaccio bread, choice of carre di vitello farcito ai porcini or scampi versilia, assorted homemade desserts, pinot grigio and merlot wines, coffee, tea and capuccino . Seating is limited. For reservations, call (213) 459-9214.