BACK STAGE WEST
January 03, 2002
It's official:
The Fifth Annual Garland Awards, Back Stage West's way of giving back to the community
that gives us so much throughout the year, including comp tickets, will be held
at the Alex Theatre in Glendale in March. I've seen two great awards shows
there before: the L.A. Weekly Awards some years ago, hosted riotously by
members of the Actors' Gang, and the original peer-judged Ovation Awards in
1995, which still stands as the best Ovations show to date.
I have to confess
that our first Garlands show still remains my favorite, too: 'Twas an intimate
two-hour (I can prove itwe taped it) event in January, 1998, at the Coronet,
held just a week or two before the final Drama-Logue awards. We had a number
from Ragtime, we had
David Schwimmer and Noah Wyle and Michael Learned. We had the Butt Pirates of
the Carribean. We had Judith Marie-Bergan on crutches, making her way haltingly
to the stage to collect awards for The Magic Fire at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (Is
that play ever coming to L.A.?) We had Katy Selverstone jetting from New York
just for our little show. We had Ron Sossi recalling (not firsthand, we
presume) the Coronet's production of Brecht's Galileo with Charles Laughton. We had a loud
drunk in the alley outside the theatre seem to respond to a brassy showtune
with a curse about Barbra Streisand.
And we had
incomparably classy co-presenters in Jenna Cole and Francois Giroday, who stand
out in my memory as the quintessence of that modest but marvelous gathering
upon a winter's nighta pair of offhandedly glamorous theatre folks who
embodied (still do, last we checked) a certain dignity of bearing, of pride in
their work, too easily forgotten in this time, and in this place.
The Garlands have
gotten bigger and even betternow with 20 percent more vimbut it's that
original spirit of camaraderie that, we hope, animates every Garlands show,
including this fifth annual fte. Producing for me this year is the tireless
Raul Espinoza of That Certain Cervantes and National Repertory Theatre Foundation fame. Honorees
will be announced in our Jan. 24 issue, the show held Mar. 11. Save the dates
and see you there.
Michael
Phillips has traded the top critical post at the L.A. Times for the same post at the Chicago
Tribune, replacing
veteran critic Richard Christiansen. That marks just three years at the local
rag. Minneapolis native Phillips confessed that he's worked at "5 papers
in 15 years, and I don't want to keep moving. I would love it if this turned
out to be 'the job.' My wife and I are Midwesterners, so soul-killing grey
skies and ass-kicking cold won't faze us." And his one-year-old son?
"The chance to see John in a snowsuit sealed the deal. I don't want to
miss that." His parting shots for the city of angles? "The theatre
here, despite what I might call my L.A. issues, has always given me enough to
chew on, on all levels of the food chain." Among his favorites: Murray
Mednick's Joe & Betty: "A very tough and special, harsh little play." His
least favorite: "That thing with Jenna Elfman and Miguel Ferrer at the
Skylight Theatre." (He means Milton Katselas' Visions and Lovers.) "Despite the best efforts of the
two actors, it had the very creepy overtone of a vanity production ego tripwith
Scientology sign-up sheets in the lobby!" I'll miss Phillips' sharp wit
and independent voiceand I wonder when the Times will land a lead critic who thinks of
that post as "the job."