Noise Within Solves Code in Glendale

A Noise Within now expects to open its next season in mid-November.

When we last heard from the classical company, it had just left an unhappy one-year residency at the Luckman Theater at Cal State L.A. with the hope of returning to the city where it was born and bred, Glendale. The Glendale City Council had approved a plan to let the company use a downtown parking lot for a temporary structure, providing the structure met city codes.

That particular hurdle--the codes--has now been surmounted. Although plans have not been officially submitted, conversations with city officials have ended in agreement on what needs to be incorporated into those plans to meet the code requirements for fixed seating, sprinklers and other features, confirmed Jeanne Armstrong, Glendale’s director of development services.

The other big hurdle is money, but things are looking up with a $100,000 pledge from the company’s board chairman, Charles Redmond, and his wife, Elizabeth; $75,000 from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation; and $50,000 from the city. That takes the company about halfway toward its goal of buying the temporary structure. But if that goal isn’t reached in time, the company can lease with an option to buy, said A Noise Within artistic co-director Art Manke.

Because all of the turmoil has postponed artistic planning, the company will likely do only one or two plays in the fall before resuming its three-play seasons next spring, Manke said.

WESTSIDE THEATRICAL CHAIRS: Lou Moore, who announced that she was leaving the managing director job at the Geffen Playhouse several months ago, will be the executive director of the first Beverly Hills Cultural Center. Her successor at the Geffen will be Stephen Eich, who was the managing director of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago from 1979 to 1995.

First, Moore. She’ll oversee the conversion of a former post office on Beverly Hills’ Santa Monica Boulevard into an arts center with a 499-seat theater (almost exactly the same size as the Geffen).

“We searched the entire country,” said the Beverly Hills Cultural Center Foundation’s new president, Richard Rosenzweig. Moore “has had considerable experience starting theaters” (including the Geffen), “she knows the Westside, and she had a simpatico with the board.”

When the Beverly Hills project was approved by the City Council last spring, the plan was to present four or five productions a year, possibly drawing on the hometown acting talent. The center also will contain an exhibition hall, visitors’ center, cafe and store.

Moore, vacationing last week, was not available for comment, but Rosenzweig said the center will differ from the Geffen in several ways: It will be a more multipurpose facility; it’s likelier to present other productions instead of producing on its own; and it’s not as likely to follow the Geffen model of beginning “with avant-garde material.”

Rosenzweig, who is the executive vice president of Playboy Enterprises, declined to be specific about that “avant-garde” comment, although it’s true that the Geffen’s first full season in 1996 did open with a nude Howard Hesseman playing the Marquis de Sade in “Quills.”

On to Eich. His appointment may not be all that surprising, since his new Geffen job will reunite him with former Steppenwolf artistic director Randall Arney, who recently was named the Geffen artistic director, under producing director Gilbert Cates.

But even though the main Steppenwolf theater is almost exactly the same size as the Geffen (and the proposed Beverly Hills theater), Eich and Arney don’t plan to turn the Geffen into Steppenwolf West. The Chicago company was “born from a troupe who added an administrative structure,” while the Geffen started with the administration and has no troupe of its own.

Nonetheless, because of its location, the Geffen is surrounded by “very, very talented people who may not have thought of the theater as an outlet,” Eich said. It also has a growing audience, with single ticket sales up 59% and subscriptions rising almost 30% in 1999-2000, compared with the previous season.

Eich co-produced “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” at what was then the Westwood Playhouse, just before it began the Geffen, although that production was in part an import from the Steppenwolf. More recently, Eich co-produced Paul Simon’s “The Capeman” on Broadway.

LORETTA LIVES: Many observers thought the fledgling but celebrity-studded Loretta Theatre died along with its aborted plan to open its own venue on the Westside. But the Loretta will finally open its first full production on Sept. 18 at the Tiffany Theater. Beth Henley, better known as a playwright, will produce, assisted by Amy Madigan, better known as an actress. Glenne Headly and Laraine Newman are in the cast, and the play is “Detachments,” by Colleen Dodson-Baker.

Meanwhile, outside Loretta, Henley’s play “Signature” is slated for an Oct. 7 opening at the Actors’ Gang, produced by Veronica Brady and the Naked Angels. It’s set in L.A. in 2052.