A User-Friendly Theater Gets a Boost

When Long Beach Civic Light Opera presented “A Musical Christmas Carol” last year, it was in the 840-seat Center Theater, instead of the mammoth Terrace Theater where the group’s productions usually take place. Though not part of the regular season, it was offered to subscribers as a bonus. One subscriber called with a surprising question:

In which city is the Center Theater located?

She didn’t realize that it’s in the same complex as the Terrace Theater, right there on the Long Beach waterfront. It was a measure of how invisible the more user-friendly Center Theater has been to most of the multitudes who pack the big house for LBCLO shows.

The organization’s producer Barry Brown wants to change all that. But budgetary restraints have so far stymied his long-term goal--a separate series of plays in the Center Theater.

So next season, he’s giving his subscribers a push in the direction of the smaller space by scheduling one of his regular subscription shows there. And not just any old show, but rather three new “mini-musicals” starring Carol Burnett, singing old standards. The show will play six weeks, instead of the usual three, in order to accommodate all of the subscribers in the Center Theater.

“I needed something extra special,” said Brown, “to soften the blow”--the blow being, in this case, the burden of walking a few extra steps to the Center Theater, as opposed to returning to familiar seats in the Terrace.

Brown speculated that the name of the Center Theater is part of its problem; there may be some confusion with the unrelated Center Theatre Group, the organization that is a resident company at the Music Center.

He doesn’t like the name of the Terrace all that much, either. He’d like to see the theaters named after musical legends such as Rodgers & Hammerstein, Cole Porter or Stephen Sondheim. But he has no control over the theaters’ names; he’s a tenant, not an owner.

Speaking of Rodgers & Hammerstein, next season’s first show will be a staged version of their 1945 movie musical, “State Fair.” Besides the movie score, which includes such hits as “It’s a Grand Night for Singing” and “It Might as Well Be Spring,” it also will include some outtakes from the duo: two songs that were cut from “Oklahoma!”; two that were cut from “Me and Juliet,” and one that was written for Mary Martin but never used. The project has been organized with a new book by Tom Briggs and Louis Mattioli, and will be directed and choreographed by Randy Skinner.

SOUTH BAY CLO: Soon there will be some new competition for LBCLO in southern Los Angeles County, as South Bay Civic Light Opera opens its first production, “Mame,” with Teri Ralston, on April 17.

The new group will use eight Actors’ Equity members in “Mame” and at least five in each production this season. It’s the beginning of a three-year process that will eventually take it to full participation in Equity’s new Western Civic Light Opera contract, which requires 15 Equity members per production.

Performances are at the 1,464-seat Aviation Park Auditorium in Redondo Beach. The organization is run by executive director James Blackman and artistic director Irv Kimber, who formerly worked at California Music Theatre and Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera.

QUOTABLE: Charles Nelson Reilly called to say he doesn’t mind the disparaging references to himself in his lines in “It’s Only a Play,” at the Doolittle Theatre: “Mary Garden, the opera star, told the young Maria Callas it doesn’t matter what they say about you as long as they’re talking about you. No one is talking about Charles Nelson Reilly, so what the hell, I might as well talk about him myself.”