When is a ‘world premiere’ not one?

According to a note in the program for Lorna Luft’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” closing today at the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills, the “original production premiered May 28, 1999 -- Atlantic City.” Articles in New Jersey newspapers at the time and that version’s press release also referred to its “world premiere” at the Atlantic City Hilton.

Since then, the show has been on tour, with 34 engagements in 28 cities and an engagement at the Cinegrill cabaret in Hollywood this year, according to Luft’s Web site.

How, then, was the Beverly Hills production of “Songs My Mother Taught Me” eligible for the Ovation Award nomination that writers Mitzie and Ken Welch received last week in the category of “world premiere of a musical”?

The New Jersey production was “a cabaret, not the two-act book musical,” said an Ovations spokesman. But whether the Canon production has much of a “book” is open to debate; the cover of the program says the show is “rewritten every night by Lorna Luft.”

Furthermore, the Atlantic City venue where the show had its first “world premiere” is a 1,100-seat theater, not a cozy cabaret. The press release for the Atlantic City engagement noted that it included a 19-piece ensemble, bigger than the 11-piece band at the Canon, and used film and video as well as stories and songs, like the version at the Canon.

-- Don Shirley