Glendale’s A Noise Within Varies the Dickens Holiday Menu

A Noise Within, the classical theater company in Glendale, is doing some Dickens counter-programming this holiday season, forgoing “A Christmas Carol” to revive its “Great Expectations,” which won four awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle in 1996.

Donald Sage Mackay and Deborah Strang, who both won LACC awards, return as Pip and Miss Havisham. There are some changes, though. Ann Marie Lee and Stephen Rockwell, both Noise Within resident actors, have been added to the cast. Angela Balogh Calin has created new costumes.

“Great Expectations” runs nearly three hours, including intermission, but The Times’ Don Shirley, reviewing the 1996 production, wrote that “More than 50 scenes are connected by simple set changes that fly by while the narrator of the moment keeps the audience preoccupied.. . . the performance never lags.”

“A Christmas Carol,” by the way, is also playing in Glendale. The community Glendale Centre Theatre ([818] 244-8481)is staging its 34th annual production, a musical version adapted by Ted Lehman. And the Woodland Hills Theatre ([818] 884-1907) is doing a concert reading of a new “Tale of Two Cities” adaptation, for those looking for a complete Dickens fix.

* “Great Expectations,” A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. Thursday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Dec. 21. $22-$27. (818) 546-1924.

Ovations: Another round of Ovations have come and gone, this time with little effect on Valley theaters.

No one seems bitter, but it didn’t escape notice that very few Valley plays received Ovation nominations this season. Only Robert Cornthwaite won for his translation/adaptation of “So It Is . . . If So It Seems to You” at A Noise Within.

Theatre LA, the organization that oversees the awards, has made every effort to make the Ovations fair to smaller theaters like the Valley’s, resulting in a voting process as complicated as the federal tax code. Still, for 99-seat-plan theater, the name of the game is get the voters. If eight of the 100 Ovations voters don’t make it to your play, it’s ineligible for nomination. Period.

It’s not easy getting voters out to smaller theaters, regardless of geography, said Maria Gobetti, artistic director of the Victory Theatre in Burbank. “Catch a Falling Star”--which won an Ovation for writing in 1995--ran for four months at the Victory. It got its mandatory eighth Ovation voter in the audience the night it closed.

“I think you just have to be persistent,” Gobetti said. “You really have to keep on it.”

Even if you get the vote out, that’s no guarantee. The Alliance Repertory Company had a huge success with “The Adjustment” in 1996. It ran more than six months and just finished a run off-Broadway.

“We had 22 voters come see the show, which is supposedly pretty good,” said Robin Middleton, the Alliance’s publicist and an Ovation voter herself. Still, the show got no nominations. This year the Alliance registered two shows and didn’t get eight voters to either of them.

Breaking it down for 1997: 250 plays registered for Ovations with Theatre LA. Of those, 47 were in the San Fernando or San Gabriel valleys. Of those, only 33 got enough Ovation voters to attend.

Those 33 got a total of seven nominations. Four of those were for “Tin Pan Alley Rag” at the Pasadena Playhouse, a large theater. Besides Cornthwaite, playwright Mark Lee was nominated for “American Romance,” and actor Eddie Jones for his role in “The Root” at Interact Theatre.

This is not to suggest that the process is particularly unfair to the Valley. Ovation voters have to go to more far-flung reaches--like Long Beach or Orange County. And this year, 26 of the 100 voters lived in the Valley. Only two voters live in 90028--the ZIP Code for the Hollywood theater district.

“I think, frankly, it has a lot more to do with theaters’ reputations than the location, unless it’s in some really difficult place to get to,” said Theatre LA’s executive director, William Freimuth. “When somebody is not getting their eight voters, they haven’t done their part to let the voters know and get them an invitation, or they aren’t being accommodating.”

But hits will draw the voters. Interact is off the beaten path in North Hollywood, but that didn’t keep it from winning four Ovations for “Counsellor-at-Law” in 1995. It’s the shows without rave reviews that will have a tough time.

As a voter, Middleton concedes that she’s most likely to make it to shows near her Studio City home. As a publicist, though, she fights that very inertia. “Unless you have a hit show,” she said, “they’re not going to come.”

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Quick Takes: If you missed “A Weekend With Samuel Beckett” last month, you won’t be waiting indefinitely for another chance to see it. The performance--which was a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Rick Cluchey’s San Quentin Drama Workshop--may get a short revival in Cal State Northridge’s Little Theatre in February under the new title “Beckett’s Women.”. . . Theatre East, 12655 Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, starts its first subscription season tonight with a world premiere of “Just Play Along,” a farce by Italian playwright Eduardo de Filippo. The rest of the season includes Ivan Mechell’s “The Cemetery Club” and Terrence McNally’s “It’s Only a Play.”