O’Brien Replaces ‘Jake’s’ Director

Ron Link is out, Jack O’Brien is in as director of “Jake’s Women,” Neil Simon’s latest comedy, which opens Thursday at the Old Globe Theatre and is scheduled to open at the end of next month in Broadway’s Neil Simon Theatre.

“It was not a meeting of the minds artistically,” said producer Emanuel Azenberg of Link’s dismissal. He declined to be more specific about the reason for the switch, which happened Friday, but he said “there was no ranting and raving. It was done very maturely.”

He discouraged speculation that the show, which went into previews last Wednesday, is in trouble. “The play is fine. It’s not like ‘Oh, my God, it’s a disaster.’ ”

Reached at his hotel, Simon said only that “I’m in the middle of rewrites. I can’t talk.”

Link said that Azenberg blamed “chemistry” for the switch when he delivered the news. “I don’t know what that means. I’m not really that sure what happened,” he added. “All of Neil’s people said that his shows have never been in better condition than this one was.” Link had not talked to Simon since Friday, but he said that “Jack has promised me to shepherd my play to its opening.”

“Neil and Ron just had different views of the direction the play was going,” said Thomas Hall, the Old Globe’s managing director. “And it’s the playwright’s interests that need to be served.” Asked if the Old Globe management concurred in the decision, he replied, “It was a consensus of opinion.”

O’Brien, artistic director of the Old Globe, must balance his new assignment with his direction of a television adaptation of Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” for KCET in Los Angeles. It goes into rehearsal today, said a KCET spokesman, and will shoot for 11 days beginning March 19. It’s scheduled to be broadcast in May.

This marks a turnabout for the Simon/O’Brien relationship. In 1980, Simon fired O’Brien as director of the Los Angeles production of Simon’s “I Ought to Be in Pictures.” As recently as two months ago, O’Brien commented, “I believe in my heart right now that Neil loves me as a colleague but doesn’t think I can play his music. As a director, I believe I can direct anything. To be successful, you’ve got to have enough chutzpah to say, ‘I can do anything.’ ”

Link could take some consolation in the fact, announced today, that he won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for his direction of “Stand-Up Tragedy” at the Mark Taper Forum last year.