Will Guillaume Be the Next Phantom?; Shakespeare Sets Taper Box-Office Record

Several candidates are in the running to replace Michael Crawford as “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Ahmanson. Robert Guillaume is one of them. But the producers still aren’t ready to announce when Crawford is leaving the cast.

That’s the word from a “Phantom” spokeswoman, responding to a published report that Guillaume was on the verge of getting the job--and would go in for Crawford at the end of March.

The producers are “still seeing people,” said the spokeswoman.

So Pee-wee Herman should get his resume over there right away.

In another “Phantom” matter, most of those “Phantom” house seats that went on sale at Actors’ Equity, benefiting the union’s Equity Fights AIDS campaign, were snapped up. But weekend matinee tickets, at $250 apiece ($200 of which is deductible), are still available for March 31 and April 1, 7 and 8. Information: (213) 462-2334.

COMING UP: The national tour of Jerry Sterner’s “Other People’s Money,” a Hartford Stage Company and Off-Broadway hit starring Tony Lo Bianco as a corporate raider, is expected at San Diego Civic Auditorium July 10-15 and the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills July 17-Aug. 12.

And Cirque du Soleil plans to return to Santa Monica Oct. 9-Dec. 16, followed by a San Diego gig in January and yet another return to Santa Monica in February.

BARD BOX OFFICE: The Renaissance Theatre Company’s visit to the Mark Taper Forum was the highest grossing event in Taper history. The total gross, $837,897, surpassed the previous record holder, “The Colored Museum,” by $88,604. And the final week’s gross, $106,586, broke the one-week record set by “Mystery of the Rose Bouquet” earlier this season.

THE LAWEES: “The Blue Dahlia” was named smaller-theater production of the year at the LA Weekly awards Monday.

This year’s ceremony, at Myron’s Ballroom downtown, was hosted by Artificial Intelligence, best known as the “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” company.

Tony n’ Tina weren’t there, though. The 35-member group appeared as the Wilshire-Upon-Avon Players, earnest members of a community theater from somewhere in Los Angeles.

They mixed fictional Wilshire-Upon-Avon nominees in with the lists of real nominees, and many of the presenters were characters affiliated with Wilshire-Upon-Avon. Nancy Cassaro, who usually plays Tina, was the emcee, in the guise of Wilshire-Upon-Avon leader Totie Anouilh.

Some of the group’s early production numbers were a hoot, but the humor wore thin as the evening went on.

The Artificial Intelligence folks weren’t the only featured performers. Michael Kearns cut an impressive swath through the party atmosphere with a selection from “Intimacies,” his one-man portrait of people with AIDS.

One of the award presenters, plump British actress Miriam Margolyes (“Wooman, Lovely Wooman . . .”) raised more eyebrows than anyone else: first by wearing a snug black swimsuit under a gold cape, then by making unprintable remarks about her anatomy and the envelope bearer who helped her present the award.

Among the real award winners were two actors from Actors for Themselves productions, Nancy Lenehan of “Wenceslas Square” and Arlen Dean Snyder of “Better Living”; Noel Harrison for his “Adieu, Jacques . . .”; the late Jackson Hughes for his “Our Man in Nirvana”; the ensembles from “Cloud 9” and “Holiday Dinner”; director Laura Fox of “Buck”; former Groundlings director Tom Maxwell for career achievement, and many more.

WAIVE THE WAIVER: What’s wrong with these sentences?

The L.A. Weekly awards “celebrate outstanding achievement in Equity Waiver productions in Los Angeles during 1989,” according to a Weekly press release.

Accepting the production of the year award, “Blue Dahlia” director Daniel O’Connor referred to “our productions in Equity Waiver.”

Every week, in The Times as well as other publications, people are quoted about their continuing work in “Equity Waiver.”

Here’s what’s wrong: There were no Equity Waiver openings in 1989, and there won’t be any in the future. Except for a few long-running productions that were allowed to continue under the old rules, Equity Waiver ended in October, 1988, with the imposition of Equity’s new 99-Seat Theater Plan.

This turn of events wasn’t exactly hushed up. It followed seven months of bitter controversy known as the “Waiver Wars.” So why do people still use “Equity Waiver”?

“Old habits die hard,” said Edward Weston, western regional director of Actors’ Equity. “It doesn’t bother me . . . we’re not in the business of thought control.”

Still, we need a more accurate term; “99-seat theater” has the drawback of implying that all of such theaters have 99 seats (some are smaller). “Smaller theater” is better, but it doesn’t indicate that these productions share specific Equity rules and regulations, as opposed to community theaters (formerly known as “little theater”) or dinner theaters of the same size.

Please send Stage Watch any other suggestions for a concise term to use when describing Equity-sanctioned theater in houses with fewer than 100 seats. Someone’s got to have a better idea.

MUSIC CREDIT: This writer mentioned “the romantic strains of Jon Gottlieb’s sound track” in a review of “And Baby Makes Seven” at Los Angeles Theatre Center, without noting that many of those “strains” were written by composer James McVay. Sorry about that.