Taken Seriously

Show-biz themes prevail at the Conejo Players Theater for the next few weeks, with Terrence McNally’s backstage comedy, “It’s Only a Play” (reviewed here last week), continuing evenings, and “Home Town Applause” playing weekend matinees almost throughout this month.

Although it’s frequently--and intentionally--funny, Linda Renye’s “Home Town Applause” is much more serious-minded than the McNally play. As the play begins, Vanessa Reed (Marcia Loring) is showing a vintage feature film to her new neighbor, Kevin (Andrew Denny), while both knock back numerous beers.

Forty or more years earlier, she explains, she acted with many major stars.

Although he’s never heard of Vanessa, Kevin is suitably impressed. Enter Holly (Tami Adams Moore), Vanessa’s serpent’s tooth of a daughter.

The two women do not get along and haven’t for a long time. “Why” is the chain that pulls the story along, with a few surprises, and it would be churlish to give away any more.

There are plenty of laughs, some fairly strong psychological stuff and a quartet of excellent performances under the hand of first-time director Tom Hand.

Vanessa and Holly are the showiest roles, played at full force by Loring and Moore.

One of the best scenes, in fact, is a relatively quiet mother-and-daughter encounter involving a $5 dress. But Denny and Maggie White--as the building’s landlord--deliver their important supporting roles with confidence and credibility. And it all comes in at under two fairly intense hours.

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“Home Town Applause” is the most recent in a series of plays received after the Conejo Players answered a questionnaire sent it by the Dramatists Guild in New York.

Executive director Dick Johnson estimates that 80 to 90 scripts arrived as a result of that survey, and that the group’s screening committee “seriously considered” eight to 10.

Two were produced last year: “Those Strange and Glorious Years” and “Shadow Hour.”

Making its West Coast debut here, “Home Town Applause” was first produced in Durango, Colo., in 1988, after winning second prize in a local playwriting competition; an off-off Broadway production came in 1991.

Tom Hand, who had acted in several earlier Conejo productions, was looking to direct and was offered “Home Town Applause.”

“I’m known as a person with an acting background who likes characters,” he explained the other day. “Dick said that if I wanted to, I could direct this one.”

During the development, Hand says, he spoke for several hours with Renye and--with her blessing--made some changes of his own, including what happens in the play’s last moment, which was considerably less dramatic in the original.

Renye, a former longtime Southern California resident speaking from her New York City apartment, said she approves of Hand’s change, resolving a situation with which she had been less than satisfied.

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Generally speaking, she added, her participation with the process ends when the script is finished.

“I write what I want, when I want to, and when it’s done, I’m finished,” she said. “I don’t need to see productions; I don’t need to control them.”

She notes that she started writing novels as a youngster and soon discovered that “dialogue interested me more than all the garbage,” moving her toward film scripts (“ . . . not enough dialogue; film is all about movement, rather than what happens between the people”) that were optioned, but not produced; and, ultimately, plays, now including seven full-length scripts.

DETAILS

“Home Town Applause” continues in Saturday and Sunday matinees through Feb. 19 at the Conejo Players Theater, 351 S. Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks. All shows are at 2:30 p.m., and tickets are $7 at the door on performance days only. For further information, call 495-3715.

“Anne Frank” Preview tonight: All tickets for this evening’s preview performance of “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Santa Paula Theater Center are priced at a bargain $6. The show’s regular run begins tomorrow. For reservations or further information, call 525-4645.

Todd Everett can be reached at teverett@concentric.net