‘Lazarus’ Can’t Raise the Missing

Gregory Howells, are you out there? Sherry Glaser wants to know.

Howells, a 42-year-old playwright and director who co-wrote the acclaimed “Family Secrets” with and for his actress wife, disappeared from a Carmel golf course on June 17.

His iron and putter were found near the tee of the 13th hole. He was within walking distance of a national forest, a busy highway and the Pacific Ocean.

Inside his car, authorities found his wallet and a manuscript of his latest play, “Lazarus.” In Howells’ treatment of the biblical story, Lazarus is raised from the dead halfway through the play, then crucified at the end.

Glaser directed the play’s first reading Tuesday, at the HBO Workspace in Hollywood. Before the show, she told The Times she was hoping Howells would use the long-scheduled reading to stage his own return from the presumed dead.

He didn’t show up, though. After the reading, Glaser said that “50% of me believes he’s dead. The other 50% believes he’s trying to figure it out.” Whether he’s alive or dead, she’s “90% sure” that his exit was his own choice, not foul play.

The message that came through to Glaser, as she listened to actors read her husband’s words, was “that he was doomed.” She drew a parallel between Howells and the play’s Lazarus, who gives up a prosperous, married life because “something else called him” (in Lazarus’ case, Jesus).

She saw another parallel, too: “The work that the play needs is the same as what [Howells’] life needs--more depth, more confrontation. If he came home now, he would have so much to be responsible for. I don’t think he could handle it--unless he had some kind of awakening.”

Glaser had earlier told the Associated Press that her husband was frustrated by the fact that she got most of the attention for “Family Secrets,” though he co-wrote it and directed or co-directed most of its incarnations (but not the breakthrough 1990 production at the Heliotrope Theatre in Los Angeles). Howells wasn’t always shunted aside, however--last year he was nominated for an Ovation Award for directing a revival of “Family Secrets” at La Mirada Theatre. Glaser was nominated for her performance.

On Tuesday, Glaser said the death of her father in January had sent her husband “reeling.” The two men were close, and Howells feared that he, like his father-in-law, had cancer. However, he never visited a doctor for a confirmation of the diagnosis, Glaser said.

Howells often was left to tend the couple’s two children while Glaser was working. He reportedly was impatient with domestic responsibilities. “He told me often, ‘Just let me go,’ ” Glaser said.

Still, Howells had been slated to direct the “Lazarus” reading Tuesday. “I told him, ‘This is your baby, and I’ll watch the [actual] baby,’ ” Glaser said. Now she plans to start revising “Lazarus” on her own--as well as continuing to work on her own new show “Oh My Goddess,” which she was performing in Carmel when Howells vanished.

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TAYLOR ON “TRIANGLE”: “Power to the people, I say!”

Renee Taylor was reacting to the fact that the New York staging of “Bermuda Avenue Triangle,” the comedy she co-wrote and co-stars in with her husband Joseph Bologna, survived the barbs of the major New York critics.

She credits “word of mouth” as the key to transcending those “devastating reviews”--which, by the way, she didn’t read.

“Bermuda” certainly developed word of mouth in the Los Angeles area, running for nine months in 1995 and 1996--first at the Tiffany Theater, then at the larger Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills.

Taylor had been warned to skip L.A., because of a purported backlash to L.A. successes among New York critics. Yet she said she remains glad that the L.A. run preceded New York’s--it cost $500,000 less to mount it here, and it enabled her to work on “The Nanny,” which is shot here.

She suspects that her “Nanny” credit may have influenced New York critics to dismiss her as a sitcom actress--despite her long theatrical career.

At any rate, those nasty New York reviews (which were supplemented with kinder ones in Time Out and the New York gay and lesbian press) apparently didn’t matter. None of the groups that had helped the show build a $300,000 advance canceled in the wake of the May reviews. The show has been selling out some performances, has begun paying back its five investors and has been extended through the end of August. Taylor hopes to keep the New York version going with new stars in the fall, when she and Bologna return to L.A. Here, they may re-mount “Bermuda” at the Canon or another mid-sized house.

The main difference between the New York production and the L.A. one: Third co-star Beatrice Arthur was replaced by Nanette Fabray in New York. Taylor said the timing of the move wasn’t right for Arthur, who was with the show for two years of development, including the premiere in Miami. “We had to rewrite about five lines for Nanette’s strength,” Taylor said. Fabray’s character is now of Irish descent instead of Italian and does a jig instead of a tarantella.