The Ballet’s the Thing at Ahmanson

The play isn’t the thing.

A revival of Ferenc Molnar’s comedy “The Play’s the Thing” was postponed last week to make room for an acclaimed new “Swan Lake” on the Ahmanson Theatre season, opening April 25. Yes, that’s “Swan Lake” the ballet--a fully danced, non-spoken, non-sung version, albeit with some unusual elements, such as bare-chested men playing the swans.

Aren’t some Ahmanson subscribers, who signed up for plays and musicals, going to be a bit disappointed to get a ballet?

“Although it is, strictly speaking, an evening of dance, I assure you it is also an evening of unrivaled theatricality and storytelling,” wrote artistic director/producer Gordon Davidson in a letter to subscribers.

He also told them that they’re getting a bargain. Their tickets were priced 20% below the price of single tickets for “Swan Lake,” which will be higher than regular Ahmanson prices because of “additional costs of presenting this work with orchestra.” Furthermore, they can order additional tickets at subscriber rates through March 13--and if they don’t like “Swan Lake,” subscribers can send back their ticket stubs for a full refund.

“Because it is a very unusual move for a theater subscription season, I have to acknowledge that there are some people who don’t like ballet and make allowances for that,” Davidson told The Times.

The choreographer of “Swan Lake,” Matthew Bourne, said in a New York Times interview last fall that “I wanted to do something that would relate to a modern audience--not necessarily a ballet audience, but a cinema or theater audience.” So he’s getting his wish at the Ahmanson, though whether the Ahmanson subscribers will get theirs remains to be seen.

As for “The Play’s the Thing,” it will be postponed “until a future season,” Davidson wrote. He later told The Times that he had not yet found a star for the Molnar play--at least not one of the commercial magnitude required on the Ahmanson stage, but the play is “something I can do any time. In an ideal world, I’d put it in repertory with something else.”

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MACBETH IN AMERICA: “I believe Macbeth has gone Catholic while Lady Macbeth has remained Druid,” said Colin Cox, beginning to explain his concept for “Macbeth,” a production of Will & Company opening this weekend at L.A. Theatre Center’s Tom Bradley Theatre.

But wait, there’s more. Cox also believes in “giving plays some relevance to an American audience, to the audience that comes from the empire of Califas [Chicano slang for California].”

So, he has taken what he sees as the conflict between Macbeth’s Catholicism and Lady Macbeth’s pantheism and reset it in central Mexico, hundreds of years ago, as the Native Americans were beginning to confront the Spanish invaders. Macbeth is a warrior who has begun to absorb the newcomers’ Catholicism.

Cox admits that the concept is “very anachronistic,” for his production’s Native Americans are supposed to be Toltecs--who were thriving during the 11th century, when the real Macbeth lived, but had died out before the Spanish arrived. However, the Aztecs who did encounter the Spanish had inherited parts of the Toltec culture, he said.

The play continues the theme Cox established for his staging of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” last year in the same theater. That one was set in the Arizona red rock country, as the Spanish conquistadors were confronting the indigenous people of that area.

Cox came up with the concept for this “Macbeth” and plays the title role, but he asked Ron Campbell--formerly a stalwart of the now-defunct LATC resident company--to direct it. Wendy Robie plays Lady Macbeth.

Asked how his company manages to produce Shakespeare on an Equity contract when so many L.A. theaters say they can’t afford to pay more than Equity’s token fees for sub-100-seat theaters, Cox cited his company’s income-producing program of educational outreach, grants, and the low rent of the LATC facilities in contrast to some of the other venues in town.

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SHORE TO SHORE: Del Shores is going the Justin Tanner route.

Just as Tanner stages his many plays in repertory at the Cast Theatre, Shores is adding at least two revivals of his Texas comedies to his long-running “Sordid Lives” franchise at Theatre/Theater.

“Daddy’s Dyin, Who’s Got the Will?” was slated to open Friday, 10 years to the day after the first production of it opened at the same venue. An earlier Shores opus, “Cheatin’ ” is scheduled to open on Feb. 19. Two-thirds of a trilogy, they might be followed later in the year by the remaining member of the threesome, “Daughters of the Lone Star State,” so it’s possible that a quartet of Shores plays will be there in repertory.

This edition of “Cheatin’ ” will feature an all-African American cast. Shores said that the producers of a black version of “Daddy’s Dyin’ ” sent him a videotape of their production a few years ago, and he was impressed. “I always wanted to try some nontraditional casting,” he added. He has changed a few of the cultural references; mentions of Luther Vandross and Anita Baker will replace the names of George Jones and Tammy Wynette.*