May 31, 2001

 

THE WICKED STAGE

 

by Rob Kendt

           

 

The story goes that when musical theatre composer Adam Guettel was approached by the makers of The Full Monty to do the music, he turned them on to a friend and colleague, the pop songwriter David Yazbek, who'd never written for the stage. When Yazbek wondered to Guettel if he should go to a musical theatre workshop to hone his skills, Guettel told him to avoid that route at all costsÑthat the armchair showtune experts of the workshop world would pound Yazbek's original voice out of him. Obviously this was the right advice for Yazbek, whose score is nominated for a Tony. But, though I know all too well what Guettel was talking about, it's not entirely fair to the reputation of musical theatre workshops, which have launched many a career and brought together many a winning tuner team (Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty).

 

When I started at this job back in '93, I was myself a member of the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, the venerable West Coast offshoot of the New York original, founded by the late conductor/teacher to nurture composers, lyricists, and librettists in the art of creating musicals for the stage. At the time I left the workshop (mainly because of the workload here), Clyde Derrick was working on Angel's Flight, which just opened recently; Jan Powell and Ken Stone were working on various accomplished projects (their most recent is the reportedly brilliant Tom Dooley), and longtime members Doug Haverty and Adryan Russ would soon head East to mount Inside Out Off-Broadway. Years passed and the workshop moved from its longtime digs in Hollywood's Pacific Theatre Building to a space on Brand Blvd. in Glendale, and last year I was persuaded to sit on the board. I'm afraid I haven't been a very good board memberÑand to be frank I've often been ambivalent about the workshop and its aesthetic. Its current director, John Sparks, a passionate, learned, acerbic man, once told my class, "I not only hate Tommy but I hate anyone who likes Tommy," and extolled such fare as The Will Rogers Follies. At the time these seemed clear invitations for me to show myself the door.

 

But the workshop doesn't turn away talent, nor does it snub rock or pop musicians, as I discovered recently to my delight: Berton Averre, lead guitarist of The Knack, has been developing a Tarzan-type musical, Jungle Man, reportedly headed for Off-Broadway. Even more exciting, to me personally, local singer/songwriter Kevin Ray, who I've heard on the local open mike circuit and who recently gave a stunning show at the Gardenia, is developing a new musical about the Central Ave. jazz scene in the 1940s and '50s in the Lehman Engel workshop. So it is with renewed enthusiasm that I here plug the workshop's upcoming benefit at the Cinegrill, June 9 at 7:30 p.m., which will feature, among other performers, Lea Thompson, Amy Pietz, Kirby Tepper, Valerie Perri, Eydie Alyson, Lee Lessack, and the slick husband-and-wife duo Alan Chapman and Karen Benjamin. Call (818) 502-3309 for information. Tax-deductible tickets are $30. The good cause worth supporting here is the handing down of musical theatre know-how from one generation to another; tastes are clearly another matter.

 

¥ Some weeks ago in this space I lamented the relatively unexciting state of SoCal theatre thus far this year. But after seeing an almost non-stop stream of the kind of stage work that makes me glad to have this job, I must eat crow, and crow about the greatness of a theatre scene that can include in it a knockout in-the-round staging of such Old Left Americana as They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (at Greenway Court Alliance through June 2) as well as the quiet, urbane intelligence of Three Days of Rain (recently closed at Evidence Room); that can encompass the beautifully ugly, sweetly cheesy, earnest and beatific apocalyptic fable Bing (at Theatre of NOTE through June 30), as well as the divine, perfectly chaotic period lunacy of Hay Fever (at A Noise Within through June 2); that gave us the witty, tormented cynicism of Anatol (recently closed at the Powerhouse) as well as the Britten-esque chamber-opera weirdness of The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater (closed some time ago at [Inside] the Ford). Each of these productions was distinguished for me by the self-contained but deeply resonant world it created, and each had the kind of totally committed, go-for-broke performances that separate polite theatre from great art. From where I sit, theatre in the Greater Los Angeles area seems greater than usual these days.