L.A.’s Theaters Set Records Despite War; O.C.’s ‘Pretty Good’

Despite the war, the Los Angeles “legit” box office is booming.

The city’s theatrical box-office gross hit a new high of $2,246,994 last week, up from the previous week’s $2,220,491, according to figures compiled by the trade newspaper Daily Variety.

The Los Angeles activity is in stark contrast to London and even New York, where attendance at Broadway theaters fell 20.3% last week, according to Variety.

At South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, director of marketing John Mouledoux said that “business is pretty good” and that the two current productions--”Pirates” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman”--could gross 15% more than expected by the end of their runs in February.

Mouledoux noted, however, that the apparent box-office uptick results partly from “quite conservative original projections before the first of the year.”

The Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach has not noticed a difference in business for “Painting Churches.”

The Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana described ticket sales for “A Lion in Winter” as “booming”; attendance at the storefront theater, which seats 52 people for this show, is reported to be more than double what it was for “Three Cuckolds” in the fall.

The Grove Shakespeare Festival is between seasons.

A spokesman for the Orange County Performing Arts Center said there has not been a musical on stage there since December, when “Annie” did “very well.”

Earlier in the season, however, Center President Thomas R. Kendrick linked the box-office failure of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” at least in part, with the friction in the Middle East.

The Los Angeles tally got a boost from the simultaneous presence of three major musicals--”The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” as well as the fact that all of the major theaters in Hollywood--the Pantages, the Doolittle and the Fonda--are currently lit. “Phantom’s” gross from last week was $712,414, while “Les Miz” took in $563,352 and “Robbins” $391,047.

Furthermore, the Variety list of seven major shows hardly covered the entire Los Angeles gross. Some of the city’s leading theaters--Los Angeles Theatre Center, the Pasadena Playhouse and the Westwood Playhouse--do not report weekly grosses, nor do its many smaller theaters.

Because the Theatre Center was in one of its rare weeks when only one show was playing (and that one in previews), its report wouldn’t have added much to the total gross. But the Westwood and the Pasadena playhouses were occupied by “Yiddle With a Fiddle” and “Double Cross,” respectively.

The most obvious theatrical casualty of the war in Los Angeles was the booking of “Sarafina!” at the Orpheum Theatre, which was due to begin Jan. 30. Citing a plunge in advance sales as soon as the war began, its producers pulled the plug one week before its opening, adding that they hoped to bring the show to Los Angeles later in the year.

In New York, the drop in attendance was attributed “more to the closing of shows than to the war” by Harvey Sabinson, executive director of the League of American Theaters and Producers.

“In the first few days of the war, there surely was an effect on the theater, but that has worn off as people found out they weren’t getting all that much news sitting home and watching television,” Sabinson told United Press International.

While the number of shows on Broadway dropped from 20 to 17 last week, the closings were probably not war-related. “Black and Blue” had played for two years, “Shogun” received bad reviews and “Peter Pan” was scheduled only for a limited run. “The drop averages out to only a 4% if you take into account the audience loss due to closings,” said Sabinson.

Compared with Broadway’s 20% drop, 25 shows touring the nation reported only 6.9% less business last week; there were three fewer of these productions on Variety’s list than in the previous week.

The relative strength of the Los Angeles and the “road” box offices, compared with Broadway’s and London’s, may be due to their reliance on local theatergoers instead of tourists--and the fact that more people are staying close to home because of the war.

“In New York and London, theater is promoted as a reason for tourism,” noted Karen Rushfield, executive director of Theatre L.A., a theater service organization. “That isn’t the case here. Because of the distances involved and the lack of information for tourists, tourists here probably don’t get much beyond the Music Center.”