Reality theater that rankles

The news that La Jolla Playhouse is developing a theatrical production loosely based on the story of serial murderer Andrew Cunanan has created some strange bedfellows.

Among those shocked are members of gay groups, especially in Florida, where Cunanan killed fashion mogul Gianni Versace before committing suicide in 1997.

“Cunanan was sick, and do you celebrate that? People’s lives were gone, and do you celebrate that?” Bill Nelson of Fort Lauderdale rhetorically asked a reporter for the south Florida Sun-Sentinel.

“The drugs, the circuit parties, all of those images. That wasn’t what was happening in all of our community. There were people marching, getting thrown out of their homes and schools just trying to get acknowledged as individuals. Those are our heroes.”

As if plays should always be written about heroes.

But in the race to see who is more righteously indignant over the issue, Nelson faces stiff competition from U.S. Rep. Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar). For his website’s “Outrage of the Week,” he selected a $35,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant that will help develop the La Jolla production.

“The production, titled ‘Disposable,’ will glamorize the life of Andrew Cunanan, who killed scores of people,” claims the website. “The NEA is notorious for wasting taxpayer money on such projects and Congressman Miller is working to set stricter guidelines for the agency.”

Would Miller’s “stricter guidelines” allow grants for plays about murderers as long as the characters weren’t glamorized and had killed, say, only five people instead of scores?

Well, “Disposable” would qualify under such guidelines. According to La Jolla artistic director Des McAnuff, the creators of “Disposable” have no intention of glamorizing or celebrating Cunanan -- who actually is blamed for five murders, not “scores.”

The play will not even mention Cunanan by name. The play’s fictional murderer is named Danny Ramirez, he said.

“It’s unfortunate that people will say that it’s going to glamorize someone who’s not even in the play,” said NEA communications director Felicia Knight.

She acknowledged, however, that “a misstatement on our part” may have been responsible for some of the alarms spread about the play’s intent. The NEA’s big goof? Its announcement described the production as a “musical,” not as a “music drama.” When people think of musicals, they think of “42nd Street” and “The Music Man,” Knight said, while “a music drama weighs more heavily on the drama as opposed to the music.”

McAnuff drew a similar distinction between “musicals” and “music theater.” Like previous La Jolla productions such as “Beauty” and “Peter and Wendy,” “Disposable” is intended to be “music theater,” which he called “a form that doesn’t conform to the conventions of European opera and American musical theater.”

OK, so it’s not a musical. This is a case of semantic hairsplitting. Even if “Disposable” were a musical, no law would prohibit it from addressing the subject of a mass murderer. Two of the best musicals of recent decades were “Sweeney Todd,” about another serial killer, and “Assassins,” about a series of presidential assailants.

Going back in history, “The Music Man” was produced in the same season as “West Side Story,” which is in part about gang warfare and, yes, murder (as was its source material, “Romeo and Juliet”).

Indeed, it’s a truism that even before “West Side Story,” Rodgers and Hammerstein permanently opened up the American musical to serious and tragic subject matter with “Carousel” and “South Pacific.” It’s amazing that in 2004 some people automatically think of all musicals as light and feathery. Maybe recent opinion has been unduly influenced by the notion in “The Producers” that a musical about a madman must be a big joke.

No one insists on putting the same aesthetic shackles on nonmusical drama. McAnuff recalled that La Jolla presented another play about a serial killer and the media manipulation surrounding him, Lee Blessing’s “Down the Road,” in 1989 with no particular controversy.

It’s true that unlike some of the aforementioned examples, “Disposable” will be derived from a relatively recent, real-life horror story. Paul Simon ran up against similar protests when his musical “The Capeman,” based on a real-life 1959 gang killing in New York, opened on Broadway in 1998 -- nearly 40 years later.

Cunanan attended school in La Jolla and was a known figure within segments of San Diego’s gay community. It’s understandable that some who knew him personally might be wary of a fictionalized play based on his story.

Yet the local connections make the reasons for La Jolla to tackle this subject even more compelling. It’s important for serious theater companies, which are keenly local institutions in many ways, to address local subjects from time to time.

Some complaints about “Disposable,” such as those in a tirade by conservative blogger Neal Boortz, are based on an opposition to all government funding for the arts. We won’t revisit this endlessly debated argument here.

Still, as long as American society approves of some government funding of the arts, it’s absurd to get riled up about a nascent production simply because it’s about a murderer. The list of acclaimed plays about murderers includes “Macbeth,” “Othello” and “Richard III,” to name just three. While it’s unlikely that “Disposable” will ever join that list, it’s worth a shot.