‘Monday Night Live’ Is a One-Night Playhouse Hit

Monday night, the La Jolla Playhouse stage reserved for performances of “The Regard of Flight” was used to test the aerodynamics of small, rectangular gift boxes from Tiffany & Co.

Singer and actor Mandy Patinkin, in town for one night only to perform at the theater’s third annual “Monday Night Live” benefit, provoked the fusillade of flying blue boxes--weighted with sample bottles of Tiffany scents for men and women--by demanding during a Vaudeville routine that the audience rise, bellow and present him with gifts.

Patinkin, a tenor of such virtuosity that he could sing “Mother Macree” without blushing unduly, worked the crowd with a generous slice of his one-time Broadway act, “Dress Casual,” including old favorites that seemed almost astonishing in a contemporary setting, little ditties like “Doodle Do Do” and even “A Tisket, a Tasket, a Green and Yellow Basket.”

Ever since La Jolla Playhouse reopened in 1983, nearly every benefit given at or for the theater has seemed so engrossed with the idea of Theater that, for a few moments or longer, participants seem to be living in a scene stolen from that most theatrical of films, “All About Eve.” This same mood descended Monday when Patinkin, a tenor who seems to understand the tenor of the times, led an escape into “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along.”

“Monday Night Live” acknowledges in its name the fact that theaters are dark on Mondays only, the one night that performers and stages are freed for extracurricular activities. For Patinkin, it meant flying in for 36 hours between Sunday matinee and Tuesday evening performances on Broadway in “The Secret Garden”--and for the management and staff of La Jolla Playhouse, it meant not exactly taking the night off. The same was true for the majority of the audience, which was composed largely of seasoned veterans of the benefit gala circuit.

The mood of the preperformance reception and dinner was tempered by the death that day of Roger Revelle, the oceanographer, civic leader and “father” of UC-San Diego who was a founding board member of La Jolla Playhouse--he retained his seat continuously until his death--and who, with his wife, Ellen, was to have served as honorary chairman of “Monday Night Live.”

Playhouse managing director Alan Levey said at the outset of the event, “Roger would have wanted the evening to go forward with all undue haste, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Artistic director, recalling a dinner in late April that celebrated the one hundredth birthday of Playhouse benefactor Mandell Weiss, said that Revelle rose to speak and commented, “ ‘We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the past, and I think we should be discussing the future.’ The future really is Roger’s legacy.” Later, during the dinner, McAnuff asked the guests to observe one minute of silence in Revelle’s memory, and ordered all the lights except one to be darkened--in keeping with theatrical tradition.

The evening proceeded as planned by chairman Ann Mound, who during the reception said she had planned a tone, rather than a theme, for the event. “It’s ‘Monday Night Live,’ lots of fun and excitement and Mandy Patinkin and New York and that kind of thing, there’s no theme, it’s just fun,” she said. Mound added that the event would earn an impressive $120,000, “despite the economy.”

A few guests were victims of the notation “Dress Casual” in the invitation, which actually referred to the title of Patinkin’s act but misled several to come as they were. Whether in casual or the decreed cocktail attire, guests circulated on the outdoor terraces of the Mandell Weiss Theatre nibbling caterer John Baylin’s Vietnamese Spring rolls and curried oysters before taking their seats--at tables on the stage--for a dinner of pasta salad and salmon Provencale. Since the tables had to be broken down before the performance, entertainment during the meal was kept to a minimum, and centered largely on a toast to Mandell Weiss.

The guest list included Playhouse President Charmaine Kaplan and her husband, Maurice; Ann Ratner; Peggy and Peter Preuss; Estelle and Edward Herman; Joan and Irwin Jacobs; Martha and George Gafford; Ellen and Ronald Scott; Carolyn Yorston with Lew Gessay; Judith Harris and Robert Singer; Bea and Bob Epsten; David Rubel; Rose Lee and Harold Kvaas; Rita Atkinson; Elene and Herbert Solomon; Marie and Merrell Olesen; Audrey Geisel; Colette and Ivor Royston; Faiya and Mickey Fredman; Dorothea and David Garfield; Joy and James Furby; Dianne and Gary Carter; Jerrie Strom, and Nancy and Hap Chandler.

SAN DIEGO--Determined not to be eclipsed by the wayward antics of two heavenly bodies, Elsie Weston plunged ahead last Thursday with the annual fashion luncheon for the benefit of San Diego Opera, given in the main ballroom of the San Diego Marriott and featuring the fall collection of designer Carolyne Roehm.

As the celebrated solar eclipse that took place shortly before noon darkened the blue sky over the bayfront hotel, some 560 women streamed in and out of the foyer for quick glimpses of the goings on through special glasses and cardboard contraptions.

Not everyone chose to acknowledge the celestial happening for what it was. Opera director Ian Campbell, wearing a perfectly straight face but grinning somewhere behind his ears, rather gallantly said, “There wasn’t really an eclipse. What happened was that the brightest lights in San Diego all gathered in this ballroom.”

There was some agreement that there were heavenly bodies on the ramp during the Roehm show; should the fashions catch on, San Diego will be treated to bare knees and a very leggy look this autumn. The designer herself, wearing a short, green floral print, took the stage to announce, “If I weren’t a designer, I’d most like to be an opera singer. But today is as close as I’m likely to get in this life.”

Weston applauded Roehm for dispensing with the black clothes that have dominated the high fashion scene in recent years. “How delighted we are to have navy blue back,” she said. “We ladies who are going around the bend find navy much more flattering.” Even so, the show included a few black, lacy, negligee-like little nothings that, should they appear at a San Diego gala, would unquestionably cause a sensation.

Larry and Shelia Davis Lawrence served as honorary chairs of a committee that included Esther Burnham, Mary Lee Adamske, Helen McKinley, Pat Keating, Betty Bass, Alice Dutton, Georgette McGregor, Janie Pendleton, Canice Ciruzzi, Irene Allis, Mary Ellen Cain, Anne Gonzalez, Marion Bateson, Betty Lou Janney and Chris LaZich. Table patrons included Charlene Brown, Miriam Cuddihy, Lee Goldberg, Lael and Jay Kovtun, Mary Smyk, Iris Strauss and Renee Taubman.