Simon’s ‘Yonkers’ One of Six Ahmanson Possibilities

The Ahmanson at the Doolittle’s 1991-92 season is taking shape.

Subscribers received a renewal brochure recently that promised a four-play Doolittle season to be drawn from Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers,” August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” Sir Peter Hall’s London revival of Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming,” Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men,” Julie Harris in William Luce’s “Lucifer’s Child” and “A Great American Classic with A Star Studded Cast.”

Tickets to “City of Angels” at the Shubert Theatre are also part of the package. “Early bird” subscribers, whose renewals were due last Thursday, will get “Angels” tickets for July or August, while later subscribers won’t get into the show before September.

Of the shows that are candidates for the Doolittle, the Broadway-toasted “Lost in Yonkers” is closest to a done deal--but it will probably occupy the final slot of the season. Leonard Soloway, general manager of the “Yonkers” tour, has penciled the Doolittle into his itinerary for July 12-Sept. 27, 1992.

That’s eight months after the “Yonkers” tour opens. Why is L.A. so far down the pike?

“In order to get our best cast,” Soloway said. “If L.A. were first, we might not be able to get the (hoped-for) actors to go on with the tour after L.A.” Hollywood employment opportunities are often seen as the carrot that lures prominent actors out on long national tours. But Soloway added that the tour has not yet been cast.

Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” is “almost etched in stone” as part of the Doolittle season, said one source at the theater, though it’s not expected before 1992. It’s playing at the Old Globe in San Diego through April 21, but reviews were sufficiently mixed that changes are likely before the play arrives in Los Angeles.

Hall’s revival of “The Homecoming” is another strong contender, perhaps even as the opening show of the season, say sources. The revival of Pinter’s dark comedy opened in January on London’s West End, and is booked there at least through May. The plan is to import the production “intact,” according to the subscriber brochure; that would presumably include actors Warren Mitchell (who is best known for portraying the TV character on which Archie Bunker was based), Cherie Lunghi, Nicholas Woodeson, Douglas McFerran, Greg Hicks, and one player, John Normington, from the original 1965 cast, which Hall also directed.

“Lucifer’s Child” opened on Broadway Thursday. Its producer, Ronald S. Lee, said earlier in the week that he had to gauge Broadway reaction before committing to a tour for the one-woman show about writer Isak Dinesen (“Out of Africa”), starring Julie Harris and directed by L.A.’s Tony Abatemarco.

“A Few Good Men,” a military courtroom drama that played on Broadway in 1989-90, will open a 30-week national tour this fall, and the tour’s general manager Stuart Thompson said he would like to open in Los Angeles. If the Doolittle doesn’t book his show, he probably could find another Los Angeles venue for it, he added.

‘Angels’ Watch: When “City of Angels” opens at the Shubert Theatre on June 12, the double role of Hollywood producers Buddy Fidler and Irwin S. Irving will be played by Charles Levin, not the original cast’s Tony-nominated Rene Auberjonois.

Auberjonois, well-known on Los Angeles stages (as well as a former cast member of the TV series “Benson”), wanted to recreate his “Angels” role in the City of Angels itself, he said. And the producers of the local staging (who were not involved in the New York production) “called my agent and expressed their hope that I would do it . . . But then they discovered that Chuck Levin had the right of first refusal to do it in L.A.” (Levin replaced Auberjonois in the New York cast last fall.)

Asked why an L.A. option hadn’t been included in Auberjonois’ original contract, his agent Peter Strain replied, “it was never a subject of discussion.”

The co-producer of the Los Angeles staging, Barry Weissler, wouldn’t discuss specific casting, saying only “I wanted the best cast we could get--and we’ve got it.” That cast includes two actors who won Tonys for their performances, James Naughton and Randy Graff, as well as Stephen Bogardus co-starring as the screenwriter Stine.

Offstage at PEN: When PEN Center USA West, the prominent writers’ organization, presented its annual awards Friday, honors went to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature, journalism, screenplays and translation--but not to any playwrights. The theater award was eliminated this year.

PEN member and playwright/drama critic Richard Stayton took the organization to task. In a letter to PEN president Carolyn See, he wrote that theater is 3,000 years older than any of the other categories except poetry. He cited the efforts of playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and Vaclav Havel on the free speech barricades and suggested four playwrights as award-worthy for their work in Southern California theaters last year.

By honoring screenplays while slighting plays, PEN had “gone Hollywood,” Stayton suggested.

“It was an embarrassing oversight,” agreed See, talking to Stage Watch. “The awards have been in a state of transition. There were too many. We got a little anorectic and sliced out too many. We fully intend to rectify it next year.”