Putting the Critics Onstage : In ‘A Couple of Guys at the Movies,’ playwright Phil Doran examines the politics of partnerships

Sitting in front of the tube one night, writer Phil Doran found the knot that might tie together a story he’d been thinking about. He was watching two critics discussing films.

“It’s not them ,” he says with a chuckle, referring to the two unnamed TV personalities. But the two main characters in his play “A Couple of Guys at the Movies” just happen to be television critics. Their relationship is fictional, but the world of “partnership politics,” as Doran calls it, is one he’s familiar with, and one he’s been wanting to explore for some time.

Doran, now co-executive producer of the hit TV series “Who’s the Boss?,” has been associated with some big guns for the little screen. He was also co-executive producer for ABC’s “Free Spirit” and “The Robert Guillaume Show,” creator-producer of “Carter Country,” also for ABC, and served three seasons as story editor on “All In The Family.” He was supervising producer for ABC’s “Too Close for Comfort” and NBC’s “Sanford and Son,” and wrote for “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Hot L Baltimore.”

“I worked with a writing partner for a number of years,” says Doran, whose comedy-drama about critics opens Friday at the Tamarind Theatre. “I always recognized the fact,” he admits, “that it’s like a marriage. It was an unusual partnership in that we were friends. A partnership, like a marriage, can be great, or it can be hell.”

His own former writing partnership may have been friendly, but, Doran says, “I began to realize what it would be like if you had two guys working together, stuck together, eight days a week, 20 hours a day, day after day. And they really didn’t like each other. But they had to work together, and made each other’s flesh crawl. Here they have the goose that laid the golden egg, and they can’t go anyplace with it.”

The partnership politics continued to fascinate him. “I thought it was a fun area. It was more or less about opinions, and everybody’s opinion is right. Here you have two guys doing the same job, and obviously in competition with each other. The play, in its most internal sense, is about power.”

One of the Tamarind Theatre’s owners, Jody Kiel (the other is Kiel’s old school chum from Florida State University, Max Croft), says he was attracted by the script when he first read it.

“I get about 10 scripts a week,” he recalls, “and a lot of them really aren’t that good. This was amusing reading. I found myself laughing out loud. It was intelligently written, with whole words with many syllables in them. It was witty without resorting to foul language.”

Actor Henry Polic II was attracted because, although the play wasn’t written with him in mind, “It was written for me. “

This isn’t Polic’s first connection with the Tamarind. He has directed a couple of shows there, but this is the first time he’ll be acting at the theater. “It’s a broad-ranged piece in terms of the character. In the stuff I’ve done on television, I’ve been by and large a supporting actor. This is a leading role, and it’s a challenge, getting me to stretch a little bit.”

Polic was, for six years, Uncle Jerry on the hit series “Webster” and was last seen on a Southern California stage in Long Beach Civic Light Opera’s “Pal Joey.”

Speaking of “A Couple of Guys,” he says: “This is a comic satire with dramatic overtones. There are some very serious issues that are dealt with here. It deals with what critics are all about, how their life is affected by what they do, and how their lives are affected by criticism in general. They set themselves up as arbiters of taste. In this critic’s case, it backfires on him.

Polic has his own views on how an actor reads a critic. “I read reviews,” he says, “with the idea that they are going to help guide me through a process, and most of them do. A really good critic educates and teaches. The people who continue to be good critics become good critics because they have a great sense of truth and honesty about what they’re reviewing. There’s an interesting line in the play: ‘The function of the critic is to keep artists within the bounds of the reality his vision has created.’ When I first read that, I went ‘whoaaa!’ I’ll never read a review the same way, or look at a critic the same way again.”

Also in the cast is Gary Kroeger, who plays the other “Guy at the Movies.” Kroeger is remembered for a three-year stint on “Saturday Night Live” and as host of “Comic Strip Live.”

“I play the female producer,” says Paige O’Hara. She adds “the female,” she says, “because producers are usually male,” and she likes the fact that Doran made this one female. O’Hara comes from a theater background, including “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “Show Boat” on Broadway. Her voice is being acclaimed at the moment as that of Beauty in the animated “Beauty and the Beast.” She says she’s happy to be back in front of a live audience.

“We need more shows!” she says with a wide grin. “We need more theater!”

She echoes the feelings of the Tamarind Theatre’s two owners. Croft, who was at one time managing director of Pacific Theatre Ensemble, and Kiel have kept the Tamarind active for four years now by virtue of a full program of early-week and weekend productions, late shows and matinees.

They’re not shy about expanding. Their next move is ready to go--a theater complex in Orlando, in Kiel and Croft’s home state of Florida.

“There’ll be two 500-seat theaters, with a restaurant,” says Croft, “and we’re working with the ballet, opera and a lot of theater groups in town. We’re going to be developing projects here at the Tamarind and then take them to our bigger house in Orlando. And maybe the other way around too. We’ll see.”

The opening of this Orlando complex may be exciting for them, but probably not as sentimental as their discovery of the Tamarind space. Kiel remembers the first time they looked at it, over four years ago. “We came down here in the pouring rain, which was auspicious, because it rarely rains in California, and walked into this space and found enormous potential. We liked the area, and thought it would be nice if the area started to revitalize itself and we were a part of that.”

The block has revitalized itself into a sort of mini restaurant row surrounding the theater. Playwright Doran, who remembers walking into the theater for the first time to discuss the production, admits, “I had a good feeling about the place. Some places have a certain charm, good vibrations. It reminded me of a theater in Greenwich Village. The whole block is like that.”