‘Play’s’ Keene Curtis Is Replaced for Having a Neat Idea

Are theater critics sophisticates or slobs?

According to Keene Curtis, this was the great debate that resulted in his departure from the cast of “It’s Only a Play,” the Terrence McNally comedy that’s due to open at the Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood on April 16.

Curtis, who strode over the Doolittle stage with a magisterial air in “The Cocktail Hour” in 1990, said he was modeling his interpretation of the critic in “It’s Only a Play” on “the George Sanders type--acerbic but sophisticated.”

But director John Tillinger and writer McNally thought of the critic in somewhat less flattering terms, according to Curtis.

They saw him as an ill-mannered wretch, with “stains on his shirts. . . . They said he has been to college, but he has no social graces.”

Curtis tried to make the man more “gross,” but “I wasn’t happy about it. I thought I was pushing. I may have been good at it, but it would have been effortful.”

So, in a switch Curtis called “amicable,” he was replaced by Paul Benedict, who had already played the role in a Manhattan Theatre Club production in 1985.

Tillinger and McNally were not available for comment.

Incidentally, “stains on shirts” are indeed an occupational hazard among theater critics, stemming from the attempt to take notes with a pen in a darkened theater.

IT’S REALLY REILLY: The burning issue of how to interpret the critic isn’t the only question mark hanging over “It’s Only a Play.”

There also is the Charles Nelson Reilly issue.

In two printed editions of the play, Charles Nelson Reilly is mentioned in a review that’s read to the opening-night party for a Broadway play. The author of the review compares Reilly favorably to another actor, citing Reilly’s “more masculine presence and yet strangely cutting sensitivity.”

Later, the actor who’s being denigrated sputters Reilly’s name repeatedly, as if he can’t believe the humiliation. “He will never really get over this,” wrote McNally in his stage directions.

And who will play this wounded actor, so offended at being compared with Reilly, at the Doolittle?

Charles Nelson Reilly, of course.

As of press time, a theater spokesman said that McNally hadn’t decided whether to keep those references to Reilly in the play.

DOOLITTLE DISCOUNTS: The many jokes about theater people in “It’s Only a Play” will probably be enjoyed the most by other theater people. Anyone who has worked at Center Theatre Group can see a dress rehearsal of the play for free, next Sunday at 8 p.m.

It’s part of CTG’s 25th anniversary festivities, and the invitation is extended to actors, writers, stagehands, janitors, accountants--anyone who has ever received a paycheck from the Ahmanson Theatre or the Mark Taper Forum. Reservations are required; call (213) 972-7372.

Meanwhile, the public can buy $20 tickets to the April 7-10 previews of “It’s Only a Play.” The

price goes up to $28-$34 for remaining previews and up to $31-$42 after the previews.

The $20 tickets for the first previews are part of a little-known program to try to boost attendance at previews, instituted by CTG in 1990. “It’s an enticement,” said a theater spokeswoman. “We don’t have a large preview subscription audience.” Does it also reflect the fact that most shows improve over the preview period?

“We like to think ours are letter-perfect to begin with,” she replied, ever the diplomat.

Presumably the stained-shirt brigade will be the judges of that.

“SEA” CHANGE: John Steppling’s latest play, “The Sea of Cortez,” was one of the casualties of the collapse of Los Angeles Theatre Center in October. It had been scheduled for the spring season.

Now it will open at the 99-seat Cast-at-the-Circle Theatre in Hollywood on April 24, with most of the same cast that would have done the show at LATC. Steppling will co-direct with David Schweizer, formerly an LATC regular.

REMEMBERING LEVY: Franklin Levy, who died on March 17, will be remembered at a memorial tribute at the Pasadena Playhouse, April 13 at 3 p.m.

As the primary hands-on producer among the partners who made up Catalina Production Group, Levy was the L.A. theatrical community’s principal maven and model on the subject of how to use movie/TV money to put on plays--and then how to steer some of that stage talent back into movies and TV.

In remarks made several years ago, Levy said he never understood why more of this “cross-fertilization” didn’t take place. But he acknowledged that most of his colleagues in “the Industry” didn’t love theater as much as he did.

“A boring movie is better than a boring play to them,” he said, “because they can talk or walk out of it. The idea of being at a boring play is like death to these people at the studios.”

But Levy found theater a “therapeutic” alternative to the Hollywood bureaucracy. “I love to be able to go down to the theater (the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood) and say yes or no. The simplicity of theater is wonderful.”

The financial losses were not so wonderful, he admitted. “Economically, it doesn’t make any sense. But you still have to do it because you care for it.”

The lease on the Coast Playhouse, meanwhile, has been turned over to actor David Marshall Grant--who starred in the Catalina production of “Bent” there--and his partner, Don Fairbanks. Grant said he’ll rely on rental shows for his financing at first, but eventually he and Fairbanks hope to do their own productions. John Fleck’s “A Snowball’s Chance in Hell” is playing there now, after moving from the Taper, Too.

Grant remembered Levy as a producer “who was paying actors out of fairness” long before the Equity Waiver system was changed, resulting in required minimum payments at theaters like the Coast.