Westwood Playhouse Takes a Yiddish Turn : Bookings: Eric Bogosian’s ‘Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll’ won’t be coming, but ‘Finkel’s Follies,’ ‘Yiddle With a Fiddle’ and Avner the Eccentric will.

For a period next fall and winter, the Westwood Playhouse will become a modern Los Angeles outpost of old-fashioned Yiddish theater, as it was practiced on Second Avenue in New York’s Lower East Side.

So it appears from Westwood co-producer Eric Krebs’ announcement that at least two shows reminiscent of the Yiddish theater era, “Finkel’s Follies” and “Yiddle With a Fiddle,” will follow in the footsteps of “Those Were the Days,” a Yiddish-flavored show seen at the Westwood last winter.

Krebs had planned to institute a subscription package, not necessarily along Jewish lines, this year. But the show that he hoped would open his package next month and stay for eight weeks--Eric Bogosian in “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll”--won’t be coming after all.

Krebs decided that he couldn’t raise the $150,000 he estimated would be necessary to mount it here--and he simultaneously ended his plans to offer a subscription package.

“In this very tight economic climate,” he noted, “people have grown ultra-conservative with their investments.”

Bogosian, of “Talk Radio” fame, may now bring “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll” to a larger theater in Los Angeles for a shorter run, perhaps next spring, said the show’s co-producer, Fred Zollo. A plan to make a film of the show during its Westwood run will probably shift to Cambridge, Mass.

No, “Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll” is not a Jewish-themed show (though it did play for 16 weeks earlier this year on New York’s Second Avenue in a former Yiddish theater). Nor is Andrea Marcovicci’s previously announced cabaret/theater piece, “What Is Love?,” which will rent the Westwood for a Sept. 4-16 run.

But after Marcovicci, the next two shows booked there will provide a glimpse at an earlier age of Jewish theatrical history.

Krebs himself will produce “Finkel’s Follies,” playing Nov. 27-Jan. 1. He describes it as “a modern reworking of a ‘30s Yiddish vaudeville show--but all in English.” The star is Fyvush Finkel, a veteran of that milieu and that era. A workshop production was held in New York, but the Westwood outing will be the show’s official premiere.

Next up is “Yiddle,” a musical based on a 1936 Yiddish movie that starred Molly Picon. Two of the producers of “On Second Avenue,” a Yiddish/English revue that played the Wilshire Ebell in 1988, will bring “Yiddle’s” cast of 13 and klezmer band to the Westwood for a Jan. 8-Feb. 10 run, in between runs in New York and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Set in Poland, it’s the story of a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and joins a troupe of street musicians. It will be presented primarily in English.

Following “Yiddle” will be Avner the Eccentric, a “new vaudevillian” who is described as “a one-man circus” by his producer, David Silberg. His show will make its Los Angeles debut with an eight-week run beginning Feb. 12. Avner is “a nondenominational entertainer,” said Silberg.

However, Krebs is considering one other Jewish-themed play, “Cantorial,” for one of the vacant spots during coming months.

The outer trimmings at the Westwood Playhouse will look different soon. Owner Kirsten Combs plans to close her furniture store, Contempo, which has made the Westwood lobby one of the most interesting intermission venues in town. She is considering renting the lobby to an art gallery. Stratton’s, the 15-year occupant of the restaurant space in Combs’ building, closed at the end of 1989. Combs is seeking another restaurant tenant.

‘Butterfly’ Cast: Philip Anglim and A. Mapa will star in the touring company of David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly,” scheduled to play the Wilshire Theatre next summer. Anglim, best known as “The Elephant Man,” singed the South Coast Rep boards earlier this year in “Search and Destroy.” Mapa played the title role in “Butterfly” on Broadway earlier this year, opposite Tony Randall.

Williamstown West?: The Williamstown Theatre Festival, known since 1955 for star-studded summer presentations in a small western Massachusetts town, is looking for a winter home, probably in Southern California.

“So much of our talent goes out to California” to work in films and television, said artistic director Peter Hunt, who was describing himself as well as the Williamstown actors. Hunt lives in Los Angeles during the winter and works as a movie/TV director. A winter home would enable the institution to go on a year-round basis, he said, which would assist its fund-raising efforts.

While Hunt hasn’t eliminated Los Angeles itself as a possible site, “we’re looking for an area a little more isolated, as Williamstown is,” he said, “where you can work away from the madding crowd.” He is considering the entire area between San Francisco and San Diego.

“It would be much easier if there is a facility in place,” he noted. He hopes to find facilities similar to those in Williamstown, where the main theater seats 521 and a smaller space seats 96.

The California branch probably wouldn’t keep the Williamstown name, “because each community has to feel a sense that it’s their theater. But everyone would know it’s the same operation.”

At this point, he said, “it’s a dream. Can we find a base where it makes economic and creative sense?” However, he expects the dream to come true: “I’m fairly tenacious about these things.”

One of the Williamstown plays this season was Jane Anderson’s “The Baby Dance,” which premiered earlier this year at the Pasadena Playhouse. Both of the Pasadena stars, Linda Purl and Stephanie Zimbalist, went with the play to Williamstown.