The Playwright’s the Thing for TV’s Dharma

Attention, Hollywood. This is how a casting couch should work: First, you sit on a couch. Then you do a reading. Then you get the part! That’s it. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. You know what we mean.

That’s how Jenna Elfman went from television’s It girl to the role of She, the temptress model in Milton Katselas’ new drama, “Visions & Lovers: Variations on a Theme,” which opened Sunday at the Skylight Theater. Not that Elfman will sit on any Joe’s couch. Katselas is, as she puts it, “my guy.” When Elfman won a Golden Globe and a TV Guide Award recently, the new playwright and veteran acting guru/director was the star of her thank-you list.

“My husband’s been studying with him for years,” she said during the opening-night snack-a-thon at the intimate Los Feliz theater. “And so I’ve been studying with Milton since ’91. He’s my mentor. I quit acting. He brought me back. I wouldn’t be acting if it wasn’t for him.”

Katselas says he spotted Elfman’s star potential during her first class with him.

“I thought she was a knockout,” he says. “[Her performance showed] freedom, courage, sexuality, humor. Beautiful. She’s something.”

By the way, in case you were wondering how itty-bitty actresses stay itty-bitty despite all those premiere snackfests, here’s one technique: smoking. Elfman was puffing away during the party onstage, exercising an unfortunate perk of stardom: No one will tell you to put it out.

On a funner fashion note, we love Elfman’s nutty new porcupine ‘do, no matter what those style storm troopers were saying at the Globes. Elfman said the look was designed for the play by John Villanueva, who does her hair on “Dharma and Greg.”

“It’s kind of modelly. It’s funky. And it’s good to have it off my face with all the rolling around we do. But I’m growing it out.”

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First of all, let us say that the best dressers are also the best dressed. At the Costume Designers Guild’s first awards gala Saturday, revelers reveled in something money often doesn’t buy--good taste.

“We perhaps inspire or perhaps instill fear that you should be well-dressed,” said Jacqueline Saint Anne, the Guild’s immediate past president, who was fetchingly turned out in a purple Chinese dress.

But mere fear and good taste do not a successful costume designer make. The greats have great imagination. Take Bob Mackie. In presenting him with the Rit Color Award for Achievement in Costume Design, Carol Burnett described Mackie’s creative process when he designed for her television show.

“Bob reads scripts like a comedy writer,” she said. “There were so many sketches that would have bombed, except that he put me in an outfit that made the character work.

“One time, we were doing a sketch with [the character] Mrs. Wiggins. Bob had this really tight black skirt, and he put me in this blouse with a push-up bra. He got the skirt off the rack. It was about 40 years old and had been worn by so many people it was sagging in the butt. I put it on, and I have a real flat [behind]. I said, ‘We’ll have to take this in.’ He said, ‘Stick your butt out, and fill up where it’s sagging.’ That gave me her character.”

Hats off to Mackie and the evening’s other honorees--Albert Wolsky, Van Broughton Ramsey, Judianna Makovsky and Paul Mazursky. Yes, Paul Mazursky. For excellence in costume design enabling. Inducted into the 1999 Hall of Fame were Edith Head, Travis Banton, Dorothy Jeakins, Irene Sharaff and Adrian.

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Irene Lacher’s Out & About column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on Page 2.