THE WICKED STAGE

by Rob Kendt

After that brutal year (the 1999-2000 season) at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State L.A., A Noise Within continues apace in its beloved old Glendale digs, up those old stone flights in the former Masonic temple building at Colorado and Brand. I've been particularly impressed over the years that, in addition to its reliable stable of resident and associate directors--artistic co-directors Geoff Elliott, Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, and Art Manke, usual suspects Sabin Epstein and Dan Kern--ANW has been able to attract interesting guest directors, such as Walton Jones, who helmed the company's first full-on musical, The Threepenny Opera, in '97. This week's opening of the Bard's Comedy of Errors heralds another auspicious visit, that of the impish Danny Scheie, a Bay Area-based director and performer who worked at Shakespeare Santa Cruz for 10 years, many of them as its artistic head, and who's known to L.A. theatre audiences for his successful 1999 import from the Bay, The Last Hairdresser, which played to acclaim at the Zephyr.

• Kelsey Grammer recently headlined a reading of Stephen Jeffreys' 1995 comedy The Libertine at the Mark Taper Forum, apparently for consideration for a future mainstage production. The play's U.S. premiere was Steppenwolf's 1996 production, starring John Malkovich as the Earl of Rochester, a rogue wit brought down to earth by an enterprising actress, played in Chicago by Martha Plimpton, and played at the Taper reading by Julia Campbell.

• The authors of the musical Heading East did just that last week: They were in New York to accept this year's Richard Rodgers award, which earmarks a $35,000 grant for developing a new musical. Leon Ko and Robert Lee's musical about 150 years of Chinese-American assimilation was originally commissioned by Beulah Quo of the California Asian-Pacific American Experience (CAPAE) to help commemorate California's sesquicentennial, and premiered in a first-rate production at East West Players in 1998, before touring the state. A cast album is available on Dink Records.

• Jerri Manthey, the bossy, annoying aspiring actress on Survivor, aspires no longer: She will appear in Lady Macbeth Gets a Divorce, a new play by Dr. John Menkes opening this week at Beverly Hills Playhouse.