Lazarus Named Pasadena Playhouse Artistic Director

Paul Lazarus is the new artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse.

Perhaps best known for his work with Stephen Sondheim, Lazarus is a 36-year-old director who has worked almost entirely east of the Mississippi. But he now lives in Venice.

He replaces Susan Dietz, who resigned in October.

It was previously announced that Lazarus will direct the Cole Porter musical “You Never Know” at the playhouse for a May 17-June 30 run. He adapted and directed “You Never Know” for engagements at the Huntington Theatre in Boston and the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut during the ‘80s.

In 1983, Lazarus produced and directed “A Stephen Sondheim Evening” for Composers Showcase and RCA Records; it was nominated for a Grammy. As associate director of the 1985 concert version of “Follies” at Lincoln Center, he took over most of the directing duties at the last moment when director Herbert Ross was called away by an illness in his family.

Lazarus received a Drama Desk nomination for directing the off-Broadway musical “Personals.” Most recently he directed the premieres of Jon Klein’s “Life Class--The Last Lesson of Thomas Eakins” at the Art Institute of Chicago, a play that deals with artistic censorship; Mark St. Germain’s musical “Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller”; Stephen Gregg’s comedy “Sex Lives of Superheroes”; and “Cave Life” at Circle Repertory Theatre in New York.

Although not available for comment Wednesday, Lazarus said in a Playhouse statement that he is already “hard at work . . . planning the next season. I am tremendously excited about the possibilities of this wonderful stage.”

New ‘Angels’: When “City of Angels” opens at the Shubert Theatre in Century City on June 12 (previews start June 3), it will be under the auspices of new producers, Barry and Fran Weissler.

The producers of the show on Broadway were Nick Vanoff, Roger Berlind, Jujamycn Theaters, Suntory International Corp. and the Shubert Organization.

The Shubert Organization and Pace Theatrical Group made a bid to take the show on tour, according to several sources.

What happened?

“They (Shubert/Pace) wanted more than we wanted to give them, and we wanted more than they wanted to give us,” said playwright Larry Gelbart, speaking as a royalty participant in the musical. “We couldn’t come to terms.”

According to several sources, the issues included disputes over how much money could be deducted from the weekly gross for amortization, and the size of the royalties pool.

“For the general public, all this may be too arcane,” observed Gelbart. He added that none of it should affect the finished product, which will be “Broadway quality in terms of design and production.”

That sentiment was echoed by Barry Weissler. Although he declined to comment on the specifics of his financial terms with the royalties holders, he said he hoped the show’s creators will do well by the production, because that would mean that it’s prospering.

‘Saigon’ Cast: Never has the racial makeup of a cast created as much controversy as it did for the upcoming Broadway production of “Miss Saigon.” This week the entire cast was finally announced, and the list includes 26 Asian Americans, one Filipina (Lea Salonga in the title role), eight members of other minority groups, and 13 Caucasians (including Jonathan Pryce as the Engineer).

The race of one subsidiary character has been changed. John, the best friend of the G.I. who falls for Miss Saigon, will be played by Hinton Battle, a black actor who was recently seen in “The Joni Mitchell Project” at Los Angeles Theatre Center. John was played by a white actor in London. “It’s not considered non-traditional casting,” said a spokesman for the production. “There certainly were plenty of black American soldiers.”

Celebration Moves: Celebration Theatre, the city’s most prominent gay/lesbian theater, is moving from its cramped 38-seat space on Hoover Street in Silver Lake. The group’s home as of March 1 will be a 60-seat theater at 7051 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood, subleased from the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center.

Michelle Mindlin recently became the first woman to be the sole artistic director of Celebration.

The theater’s founder, pioneering gay activist Charles Rowland, will be memorialized at the Hoover theater, Saturday at 2 p.m. He died Dec. 26 at the age of 74. Information: (213) 666-8669.

CMT Watch: Last week, when California Music Theatre announced a campaign to raise lots of cash fast, theater officials cited a long-running dispute with the Musicians Union and an unexpected pay raise for stagehands at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, which CMT rents for its productions, as two of the reasons for last year’s budget shortfall.

Yet the pay raise, which Davis said amounted to approximately $100,000 of unbudgeted expenses, should have been anticipated, said Jim Matousek, business representative for the stagehands’ union. It was part of a contract that had been negotiated with the auditorium several months earlier.

CMT artistic director Gary Davis said Tuesday that auditorium officials “simply didn’t tell us what the new rates were.” But auditorium manager Doris Stovall responded that a CMT official had received a copy of the contract.

The Musicians Union dispute still isn’t over. It arose from a CMT claim that the union violated a “favored nations” clause in its contract by giving San Bernardino Civic Light Opera better terms than it gave CMT. Acting on its own, CMT used the San Bernardino scale to pay orchestra members for “On the Town” last February; the union directed its members not to work for future CMT shows without a bond and then took the matter to arbitration, which CMT lost. The union and CMT are still negotiating the settlement.

The union expenses were not the only unforeseen costs last year, said Davis. There also were cost overruns on productions of “On the Town” and “Annie.”

Bomb Scare: A bomb scare emptied the Embassy Theatre Saturday night in the middle of the second act of the Southland Artists Goodwill Event tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein and Hart, a benefit for AIDS Project/Los Angeles. The show was delayed about a half hour while the premises were searched, but resumed when nothing was found. The two-night benefit raised $110,000.

‘Tru’ Tops Own Record: ‘Tru’ has broken box-office records for one-day advance sales at the Henry Fonda Theatre twice in the last week. The Tuesday figure, $64,662, easily sailed by last Wednesday’s record-setting $47,061.

“Tru” tickets cost $30 to $40. It has been extended through March 10.

And it was just last week that we heard from the producers of the postponed “Sarafina!” that theatergoers were staying home, watching war news on TV. . . .