A Sick Slant on Life From a Gothic Artist : Tony Tanner, the director who staged the Broadway debut of ‘Gorey Stories,’ presents the work in Hollywood 13 years later

Tony Tanner likes to compare “Gorey Stories” to frog legs.

“It’s short--a wonderful beginning course,” the director said of the anthology of songs and sketches, playing at West Coast Ensemble in Hollywood. The stories of Gothic artist-writer Edward Gorey were adapted by Stephen Currens, with music by David Aldrich; Tanner himself staged the Broadway debut of the piece more than 13 years ago. “It’s not roast beef and potatoes,” he said. “It’s caviar with champagne on the side.”

It’s also a little weird.

“Gorey’s drawings are very macabre and funny--they take a sick slant on life,” admitted West Coast Ensemble artistic director Les Hanson, who broached the idea of a revival to Tanner over dinner last year--unaware of the director’s previous involvement with the show. “I knew it had been done in New York and always wanted to do it, but couldn’t find the right director,” he said. “The approach is that life is grim, but we have to laugh. People should come prepared for something off the wall.”

The British-born Tanner originally discovered Gorey through his book “The Curious Sofa.”

“It was a very thin, softcover book--like a grown-up comic book,” recalled the director, 59. “A story, told in pictures, with little captions underneath. It was pornography, really, but very elegant, only suggestive. Alice was eating grapes in the park when Herbert, a very well-endowed young man, introduced himself to her. And you see Herbert flashing, but you don’t see any nudity. It was tasteful, sophisticated, hilariously funny--like nothing I’d ever seen.”

Some time later, Tanner was contacted by his friend, the late composer Howard Ashman, who alerted him to a Gorey anthology that had been mounted at the University of Kentucky at Lexington by Currens and Aldrich. Tanner summarily tightened the piece, added a second act, and staged it at the WPA Theatre in New York in early 1978. A “perfect” review from the New York Times’ Mel Gussow convinced the show’s producers to take it to Broadway.

“I was kicking and screaming all the way,” Tanner said of the move. “The Booth is too big a theater. People paying $27.50, or whatever the price was then, don’t want to be told to use their imagination. They want to see it. We opened and closed in one night. The Times was on strike so we didn’t get a review. The Post and the Daily News were ambiguous. We got raves from John Simon. Basically, it was killed by two television critics: Dennis Cunningham and Pia Lindstrom.”

So many years later, the pain is still palpable.

“The day after we opened, we got telephone calls from the theater to come pick up our makeup, because we weren’t going to be playing that night,” Tanner said dryly. “It’s one of those delightful experiences that really does make you want to go into selling cosmetics door-to-door.” Instead, he licked his wounds briefly, then returned to Broadway in 1981 with Amanda Plummer in “A Taste of Honey” and a Tony nomination for his 1982 staging of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

“When it’s wonderful, that juice, that golden liquor, sustains you for a very long time,” he said. Tanner admits he’s needed that emotional fortification with his move West three years ago: “It’s been very tough, trying to break into television and movies. I came without any connections; all my connections are back East. It’s like starting over--at a very advanced age. And I’m not good at running around town trying to get people interested in me and what I do.”

One person who was interested was WCE’s Hanson, who invited Tanner to perform his own revue, “Coming of Age,” at the theater in 1988. Now Tanner (who’s also appearing in “Gorey”) has extended his role at the theater to include running a Shakespeare workshop; WCE has slated that company for summer productions of “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet,” plus a musical version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” called “Dreams.”

Tanner got his own introduction to Shakespeare early on, from an English teacher at his dance school. “I wanted to be a tap dancer--I was, I am,” he said. “But this woman turned me on to Shakespeare, and the whole idea of acting.” After two years in the Army, he went off to Northern England and a repertory company that changed its bill weekly. “I could not have been on a lower possible rung,” he said lightly. “I played a lot of old men with beards, an Air Force colonel, St. Peter in oilskins, the front end of the cow.”

After three years, he moved up a rung to a rep company with two-week runs, and eventually wound up taking over for Anthony Newley in “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off” (he also appeared in the film version) and, later, the lead in “Half a Sixpence,” which brought him to Broadway in 1965. “I didn’t want to be a director,” he stressed. “I wanted to be a star. But the balance shifted, and directing jobs starting coming. And I really do love choreographing. I love moving people around to music.”