THE WICKED STAGE

by Rob Kendt

Heard the name of playwright Erik Ehn from two different sources last week: First from Mitchell Gossett, the actor, part-time talent manager, and artistic director of Bottom's Dream, the edgy, bare-bones theatre company that stages about one show a year, typically a new "language" play. The last was Mac Wellman's Terminal Hip, in which Gossett was reportedly awe inspiring (part of Edge of the World Theater Fest, it ran too briefly for me to catch it). Before that was the world premiere of Ehn's spare, haunting Chokecherry, with Gossett, Bonita Friedericy (dearly missed on L.A. stages lately, gotta say), and Jennifer Griffin comprising one of the strongest ensembles of last year. Gossett wrote to tell us that the Bottom's Dreamers will soon join the San Francisco-based Ehn at the Audrey Skirball-Kenis writers' retreat to develop parts "two and three of the Chokecherry trilogy." I didn't know it was a trilogy, but I'm not surprised. Ehn is always hatching plays in a series; years ago Bottom's Dream commissioned some short plays from Ehn on the theme of eroticism, and he came up with dozens, along with countless dirty limericks; they picked a few and staged them under the title Erotic Curtsies. Chokecherry is a Dante-inspired musing on pain in which a sympathetic teacher descends into the underworld with an abused, disabled student. It's as weird as it sounds, only more so. I can't wait to see more.

The second time I heard Ehn's name was from Cornerstone Theater Co. artistic associate Mark Valdez, who's putting together some performances in June to inaugurate Cornerstone's Downtown Loft District office/rehearsal/scene shop complex as an official performance space, as part of which he'll have performers do parts of Ehn's series on the saints. This has something to do with Cornerstone's next residency theme--working with communities of faith--though I can imagine that Ehn's take on saints, Christian or otherwise, is likely heterodox. This, after all, is the playwright whose Curtsies' piece "Three-Day Jesus" imagined the young savior in a bloody S&M catharsis in his father's woodshop.

• Speaking of faith, it's heartening to see the triple threat Barbara Passolt not only on local stages but also singing at the church I go to, Hope Lutheran in Hollywood. I still cherish the Saturday night/Sunday morning contrast of seeing her in Colony Studio Theatre's definitive 1999 production of Sondheim's Putting It Together one night--in which she perfectly captured the bitter, damaged pride and frayed nerves of such songs as "Could I Leave You" and "Getting Married Today"--and then seeing her belt out a gospel number the next morning at worship. It was a very Hank Williams honky-tonkin'-I-saw-the-light moment. I just wish I'd made the trek down to Laguna Playhouse last year for Enter the Guardsman, the lead of which Barbara calls her favorite role in recent memory.

• Another show I wish I'd seen: The Night of the Iguana at the Fountain. I heard mixed things about it, among them that, of course, it's not one of Tennessee Williams' best. But I did want to see how it worked in that small space--even though, as I admitted to director Simon Levy, I would be coming in with an unfair bias, after having seen Penny Metropulos' magnificent production last year at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which made the case that it is one of Williams' essential masterworks. The night I was scheduled, the show's Shannon, Larry Poindexter, was out with an injury, and I couldn't find another free night to see it.

I did, however, recently get a dose of Tennessee's vision, courtesy of the show's Maxine, Karen Kondazian. Some weeks ago she stopped by the office to drop off her interview with critic John Lahr, who has taken over the Williams biography project from the late Lyle Leverich (his brilliant book Tom ends with the success of The Glass Menagerie). From her purse she produced a package of tissue, unwrapped it--and handed me a large pair of glasses. These, she said, had been given her by Leverich before he died, as a souvenir; these huge lenses, with their shapeless, very late-1970s style, apparently had belonged to Williams. I tried them on and the world looked a lot bigger and woozier, which only seemed fitting. Of course, it would have been better if I'd also seen the show, but to literally see the world as Tennessee did, even for a moment, was a pretty fine consolation prize, I'd say.