TURKEY A L’ORANGE : Here Are Some Choice Cuts: From Opera’s Bait, Switch to Deadhead Traffic Jams

Well, unlike last year, we didn’t hear any Orange County city officials decrying Shakespeare as “too high-brow” for the citizenry. But that doesn’t mean that 1989 hasn’t supplied plenty of material for the annual Turkey Awards, which we hand out for the lapses in taste, bad calls and downright air-headedness that too often have made us want to reach for the ax.

So with a drum(stick) roll--let the Turkeys begin!

First and foremost to local arts groups that try to sell tickets based on hype, rather than performance. Here’s a sample from one of the ads touting New York City Opera’s appearance earlier this year at the Orange County Performing Arts Center: “Treachery and murder. Mystery and magic. Passion and love. Delightful tales and sinister plots abound. . . . This magnificent week of soaring music, masterful song and opulent settings is destined to be one of the most exciting and memorable events of 1989!” I’m sure it was, though I really can’t remember . . .

An award to organizations that sell one thing, then deliver another--the arts world version of bait and switch. Opera Pacific was a prime example. When tickets were put on sale last February for its 1989-90 production of Puccini’s “Turandot,” only the name of tenor Lando Bartolini was in the ads, leading any reasonable person to assume that if you bought a ticket, you’d be hearing Bartolini in the lead role as Calaf. But just last week, the company slipped out a press release announcing that in three of the six performances, Calaf will be sung by one Giorgio Tieppo, who is an unknown even to opera experts, much less to the average opera-goer. Worse, the release referred to Tieppo’s “New York Metropolitan debut,” implying an association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York (whose officials had never heard of Tieppo) instead of calling it his “New York metropolitan-area debut”--at Long Island University, which, come to think of it, isn’t technically the New York metropolitan area, either. The release was unequivocally misleading, if not deceitful. In response, Opera Pacific general director David DiChiera explained that he had “always intended on double-casting” the role. Too bad he hadn’t “always” let ticket-buyers in on the secret.

To numerous local rock clubs that continue to enforce the abominable “pay to play” policy, in which struggling bands buy a predetermined number of tickets, or fork out cash outright for the privilege of getting exposure.

To the producers of “Elvis: A Musical Celebration,” not so much a “celebration” as a theatrical grave-robbing of the late King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s legacy. If Elvis were alive and saw this show, which played the Center in March, he might wish he were dead.

To Cypress College administrators who deleted a photo of an artwork by Rafael Serrano at the last minute from a flyer announcing the show because it used phallic symbols as part of its anti-war imagery.

To the Deadheads who show up for Grateful Dead concerts at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre without tickets and clog traffic, parking lots and surrounding strawberry fields, seemingly forever. Another helping to city officials who think the answer is banning the band, instead of the offending ticket-less fans, from Irvine Meadows in the future.

To Music Plus, the first major Southland record chain to drop vinyl LPs completely from its stores. It, and others who have followed in treating vinyl as malaria of the music world, cite declining demand and consumer preference for CDs (which just happen to give record companies about double the profit margin). Of course sales of vinyl are dwindling--you can’t buy what you can’t find.

To security guards at South Coast Plaza, who snapped into action and hustled out a couple of trouble-making . . . artists. It seems a couple of local women who like to paint Orange County scenes one day a week decided to while away one rainy day making sketches of the mall’s indoor carousel. Little did they know they hadn’t applied for the proper papers, so they were told, politely but firmly, they would have to stop. This in Costa Mesa, the self-proclaimed “City of the Arts.” Boy, lucky for the artists they weren’t actually doing something illegal within city limits--like standing on a street corner seeking gainful employment.

To magician David Copperfield for his lascivious stage manner in shows at the Performing Arts Center, where he’ll return in January. His bump-and-grind form of entertainment smacks more of Harbor Boulevard “tricks” than magic from the time-honored Houdini school.

To the Laguna Beach City Council for declaring that a beer permit for Club Postnuclear would constitute a public danger, unlike all the other establishments in the area that do have liquor licenses.

To Cal State Fullerton students and Associated Students officers, for the recent campus flap over the appearance of Morton Downey Jr. A turkey to the students who named Downey as their No. 1 choice in a survey of potential guest speakers, and stale stuffing to the Associate Students for following up this bone-headed choice by spending $5,000 collected in student fees to pay Mr. Big Mouth. The payoff? Only 150 students (of 25,065 enrolled this semester) bought tickets. Bravo to the good taste exhibited by the remaining 24,915.

To the Beach Boys, for their by-the-numbers performance (yet again) at the Pacific Amphitheatre in May. Maybe they should call the producers of “Elvis” and commission a stiff musical in which they would star as themselves, paying homage to how wonderful they once were. Oh, wait--they already do that.

To poet and author Donald Britton for his pretentious series of articles entitled “The Dark Side of Disneyland.” Writing in Art Issues magazine last summer, he described the Happiest Place on Earth as “less an amusement park than a moving elegy for dead children,” stopping just short of dubbing it “The Tragic Kingdom.” Don--get a life.

To the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s tired batch of road shows that, with one notable exception (see below), masqueraded as the best of current musical-theater: “Anything Goes,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cats” (for the third time) . . . May we expect singing waiters and chicken-fried steak dinners before show time in the near future?

To the Orange County Board of Supervisors for for contributing precisely zilch to the arts in recent years. Now they have a new plan starting in 1990 to support art--at the John Wayne Airport. Maybe this is for all our fly-by-night art lovers?

To actor-turned-would-be-rock-star Dennis Quaid for thinking even for a millisecond that he could emulate Jerry Lee Lewis in a suffocatingly bland show at Club Postnuclear in Laguna Beach last March. There’s more to rock ‘n’ roll greatness than a wicked smile and the ability to pound a piano. A modicum of talent please, maestro?

To the Pacific Symphony for keeping ticket holders waiting for more than two months while they dawdled around deciding what to play on a concert program after canceling Verdi’s Requiem. Again, the concert-goer gets the message: “We’ve got your money, we’ll give what we decide to give, if and when we decide to give it.”

To any and all others who treat Orange County audiences with disdain, as credit-card numbers instead of culture-hungry denizens deserving of respect.

Well, now that the turkeys have been thoroughly carved up, it’s only fair to offer Thanksgiving Day toasts to those who have made our lives a little tastier and culturally satisfying this year:

To the San Francisco Ballet, whose October engagement at the Performing Arts Center featured some refreshingly bold works of cutting-edge choreographer William Forsythe. All that classical ballet is swell, but it’s also nice to look forward now and then. Ditto for the appearance of the Lewitzky Dance Company for introducing some modern dance on the sacred Segerstrom stage in October, courtesy of the Master Chorale of Orange County.

To the Celebrity Theatre’s bold bookings of everything from rap and comedy to country and punk. If only we had a 1,000-seater run by people with similar sense of adventure and open-mindedness. Next best thing: any 1,000-seat pop music venue.

To the Imagination Celebration, for managing to get blues musicians John Cephas and Phil Wiggins into the Performing Arts Center as part of the annual arts program for children. But a Bronx cheer to whoever wrote the impenetrable, overly intellectualized program. If you have to explain the blues like a doctoral dissertation, you jus’ ain’ got no kulcha.

To the Costa Mesa City Council, which created a new agency to provide greater and more stable funding for artsrecognizing that the arts can not only be an aesthetic asset to the community, but good business, too. Imagine that.

To the San Francisco-based Landmark Theatre Corp., which in 1989 bought the Port Theatre in Corona del Mar and leased the old Fox Theatre in Fullerton, which will now be completely refurbished. The company might be able to make greater profits showing “Friday the 13th, Part 39--Jason Takes Mylanta,” but it prefers to cater to the smaller, under-served audience for foreign films, independents and other “art” films.

To comedian Jerry Seinfeld, a regular on the Orange County comedy front, for showing, a la Jay Leno, that you can still get people to laugh without verbally or physically abusing your audience, ethnic minorities, people who are overweight or in any way different from the performer. Seinfeld’s school of comedy celebrates the things we all have in common, rather than reinforcing those things that separate us.

To Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana, Illusion’s/New View Theatre in Brea (though it recently closed), Way Off Broadway Playhouse in Santa Ana for noble efforts, even when artistically unsuccessful, at establishing some sense of a storefront-theater scene in Orange County.

To KOCE Channel 50, Orange County’s public television station, which nearly qualified for a turkey for its heavy promotion of the popular BBC series “EastEnders” in a March fund-raising drive, then turned around in April and canceled the show because they “couldn’t afford it.” But they earned thanks for rescuing the show from oblivion with a last-minute reprieve in the form of corporate underwriting from the Queen Mary-Spruce Goose Entertainment Center in Long Beach. This followed an unprecedented flood of hundreds of letters and phone calls protesting the cancellation.

To the Fullerton Museum Center for its “Document Orange County” exhibit, especially the entertaining segment called “Looking Forward,” which presented local kids’ notions about the face of Orange County Yet to Come. Some were quite dark, but you couldn’t help predicting that the fourth-grade kid who envisioned a futuristic “Computer Mug (that) will be used for drinking coffee and doing work at the same time” is soon gonna be a millionaire.

To Bogart’s in Long Beach, for providing at least one relatively close outlet for invigorating, eclectic shows, most of which never find their way to Orange County, and for providing a desperately needed outlet for aspiring Orange County rock bands.

To “Into the Woods” at the Performing Arts Center. This engaging Stephen Sondheim musical had a message, even a heart, instead of the empty visual flash of “Cats” and all the other Andrew Lloyd Webber tripe that is so much the rage in the musical theater world.

To Nicholas Slonimsky, the beloved and seemingly immortal critic and raconteur. During his UC Irvine talk in January, Slonimsky always had an insight or witty retort aimed at keeping artistic standards high and stuffed-shirts deflated.

To South Coast Repertory for, among other things, a lively staging of Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell.” (A separate toast to those continually amazing eyebrows of actor I.M. Hobson.) Also, for its endlessly imaginative Second Stage production of Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times,” in which five actors miraculously, and convincingly, managed to conjure up dozens of distinct characters, proving again that invention and imagination will always triumph over spectacle and special effects.

To Neil Young for a riveting performance in August at the Pacific Amphitheatre. Built around a powerhouse new “Freedom” album, Young’s show demonstrated again that the best socially conscious rock is compelling, not simply suffocatingly well-intentioned (are you listening, Bono?). But was it just another persona donned by rock’s stylistic carpetbagger? Answer: when the result is this powerful, it doesn’t matter a whit.

To the Grove Shakespeare Festival, which is as adept outdoors (in fine summer performances of “Romeo and Juliet” and a particularly admirable performance by Charles Lanyer as “Cyrano de Bergerac”) as it is indoors (in a moving production of Rod Serling’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight”).

To Dr. Dream Records, the tiny label in Orange that is putting dozens of local rock acts on tape and vinyl, providing tangible evidence of a still-exciting original-music scene. The company released albums by noteworthy performers including Imagining Yellow Suns, Eggplant, National People’s Gang, Ann De Jarnett and the late, lamented El Grupo Sexo.

And, lastly, to any and all who conceive of, promote and disseminate the arts as art first, commerce second.

Happy Turkey Day!