Grammer Is Taper’s New ‘Richard II’

Kelsey Grammer, best known as Dr. Frasier Crane on “Cheers,” has replaced John Glover in the title role of “Richard II,” opening April 23 at the Mark Taper Forum.

Glover left, before rehearsals began, in order to shoot a yet-to-be-announced TV-movie, said a spokeswoman for the actor, who recently starred in “Henceforward . . . “ at the Taper.

Robert Egan, who’s directing “Richard II,” also used Grammer in his staging of “Measure for Measure” at the Taper in 1985.

This “Richard,” like last spring’s “Julius Caesar” at the Taper, will be multicultural to the max, more or less aligning the forces within the play along racial lines. Grammer is white, and Robert Jason--who plays Richard’s primary opponent Bolingbroke--is black. Most of Bolingbroke’s initial allies have been cast with blacks or Latinos. Two of the three women in the cast, Natsuko Ohama and Jeanne Sakata, are Japanese-American.

The play will use contemporary costumes but also will feature mannequins wearing period dress.

WEEKLY WINNERS: When the L.A. Weekly theater awards ceremony re-lit the Tom Bradley Theatre, in the Los Angeles Theatre Center building on Monday, the program began with a couple of comments about the fate of the once bustling municipal theater complex.

The newspaper’s theater editor Steven Mikulan expressed some skepticism about the determination of civic authorities to bring the building back to life: “They want to see (theater) happen in this space again--NOT!”

Co-emcee (and “NEA Four” performance artist) John Fleck led into a mocking rendition of the old Richard Harris hit, “MacArthur Park,” by comparing LATC to the cake that was left out in the rain in the song’s lyrics (“It took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have the recipe again”).

Fleck was then joined by back-up dancers Tina Preston and Harvey Perr, both nearly naked. Preston and Perr, veteran actors but not exactly nubile young sex objects, emerged from a giant fake cake--complete with “the sweet green icing flowing down.”

Preston and Perr later picked up awards for their performances in “Knockouts!,” a bill of one-acts at Theatre/Theater that took four of the 24 awards--more than any other show. Runners-up, with two awards each, were “Road to Nirvana,” “Spirochete,” “The Wedding” and “Willie and Esther.”

The top awards went to shows that won nothing else: “The Task” (Production of the Year), “The Killing of Sister George” (Revival of the Year), “Club Indigo: Memories in Blue” (Musical of the Year).

The Weekly awards are limited to shows in theaters of fewer than 100 seats.

“Club Indigo” was the only winner in both the Weekly competition and the broader-based Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards. The two other smaller theater productions that won LADCC awards--”Avenue A” and “Rage!”--garnered no nominations from the Weekly critics.