NoHo play is Crowe-ing for attention

Plays at tiny North Hollywood theaters seldom receive international publicity.

Thanks to Russell Crowe, however, “Killing Russell Crowe” at the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre has received attention from nearly 20 newspapers and websites based in at least four countries.

Crowe, who hasn’t seen the play, complained about it to two Australian columnists recently. His biggest gripe wasn’t the title but the fact that he doesn’t pay for a drink or tip the bartender at the fictional New York bar depicted in the play.

“The reckless accusation that I do not tip drain[s] the last drops of credibility from this desperate plea for attention,” Crowe told the Sunday Telegraph. “It is with generosity I offer the author [Jeremy Kehoe] this tip: ‘Take yourself outside and give yourself two uppercuts.’ ”

Actually, that suggestion somewhat resembles what happens at the end of the play: After the bartender and a customer have been fantasizing about killing Crowe as a representative of the privileged classes, Crowe shows up. He lifts a drink from the bar, and the bartender and customer follow him outside to confront him. The audience hears sounds of an offstage fight, and then the two return, bruised -- Crowe has beaten them up.

But Kehoe maintains that Crowe “is not perceived as evil. He’s a symbol of someone who operates with a different set of rules. He’s a dose of reality for these two dreamers.”

In a second interview on the subject, Crowe -- whose representatives declined requests for a Times chat -- told Australia’s Herald Sun that “somebody who writes a play about American iconography and power systems, and uses somebody born in New Zealand and lives in Australia as their icon, is a tosspot.”

Has the controversy attracted vast crowds to NoHo? Is the show a “hit,” as reported in the Hindustan Times?

Not quite. The theater seats only 96 and is usually less than half full, Kehoe says. But he did detect a slight rise in sales after Crowe’s comments.

-- Don Shirley