The Big One blew in from Broadway with the kind of whirlwind force that plopped Dorothy down in Oz and has settled in without apparent damage to the Pantages Theatre's splendiferously restored luxe. Overwhelming may be the word for it. Generous to a fault, it lives up to all its hype. If anything went wrong on opening night, who noticed?
Granted, Nathan Lane has put his stamp on the character of Max Bialystock and can't be beat for playing nasty characters. He seems to have a flair for it, who knows? Jason Alexander, I assume, gives Bialystock a gentler edge. I liked him very much. Alexander's mute reactive moments are gems and, for me, among the show's highlights.
Of which there are many: Martin Short's sweetly sappy smirk as Leo Bloom; Angie Schworer as full-blown Swedish sexpot Ulla, Everyman's impossibly perfect dream girl. Josh Prince's swishily sinuous Carmen Ghia and Gary Beach's androgynous director Roger/Hitler would be at home in La Cage aux Folles. Bialystock's stable of senescent, concupiscent old biddies are, well, a mixed blessing. So on and on, until any more would be too much.
All arises from the irrepressibly inventive comic genius of Mel Brooks, who is properly eulogized in critic Kenneth Tynan's book Show People, "Frolics and detours of a short little Hebrew man." Short little Hebrew man is Brooks' self-description. Tynan writes of him, "Mel Brooks was the most original comic improviser I had ever seen… never at a loss"—and Tynan's comment on The (film) Producers still hits the nail on the head: "In order to enjoy The Producers you have to cultivate a touch for grotesque and deliberate overstatement." The Producers and its Pantages venue make a peach of a pair. As cruelty is a constant component of humor, a thread of cruelty runs through this show, which is all at once overwhelming, stupefying, and energizing. And, of course, quintessentially Jewish.
Well Made and Well Met
Also quintessentially Jewish, but at the opposite end of the spectrum, is Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man, a well-made play. The well-made play seems to have lost appeal among the cognoscenti but remains a turn-on for rank-and-file audiences. For a prime example we recommend a visit to the relatively new L.A. Jewish Theatre, hidden away in a retro Hollywood bungalow behind the Old Spaghetti Factory on Sunset Boulevard, where its current production of The Tenth Man offers a sterling example of what a well-made play used to be and still is. It's a textbook example, and as its director, Gene Warech, comments, "Nobody knows that better than me." Though aged by half a century and more, Chayefsky's play speaks directly and forcefully to today's audiences. Judging by the full-house reaction the Saturday night we saw it, today's audiences are loving it. It's playing to SRO houses and is pretty much sold out through its June 15 closing.
Ethnically, artistically, intellectually, everyway including emotionally, Warech proves the right director for Chayefsky's ethnically rich, multi-textured drama steeped in the Jewish lore and tradition Warech appreciates, understands, and respects. I first met Warech, a man of many facets, in the late 1960s when he came into the editorial office of The Gardena Valley News to submit his review of a South Bay Area little theatre production. It was good; I was impressed. Warech's day job then and until his recent retirement was as an engineer for TRW. His enduring passion was and is theatre, in which he has had plenty of hands-on experience as actor, producer, director, and critic. He directed sterling productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Man of La Mancha, with his wife, Lynne, in leading roles, in the seemingly impossibly small Showcase Theatre in Hawthorne. The South Bay area those days had a thriving theatrical community that provided my first intoxicating taste of Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera, and much else besides.
Warech's Tenth Man cast of excellent actors is enriched by a gallery of veteran thespians with great time-etched faces playing old Jewish men whose lives center on a small, run-down New York synagogue. L.A. Jewish Theatre's mentor Jorge Albertella has created wonders in a small space with his ingenious two-level set design that accommodates a lot of dramatic intensity, including a young girl's demonic possession by a nasty dybbuk, a romantic love story, and a double exorcism that packs a surprise wallop. Warech was exactly the right director to stage this play. Madeleine Shaner was the right critic to review it (BSW, 5/8/03). As Shaner notes, "Plays that deal with Jewish spiritual life often don't make it through the Sabbath. Paddy Chayefsky's play, originally produced on Broadway in 1959, has made it through the centennial"—and, we might add, undimmed into the new millennium.
Warech and Shaner, one senses, feel the pulse of this play's Jewishness in blood and bones, and one senses, as well, that this small L.A. Jewish Theatre fills a need with outreach to a community, especially with this revival of Chayefsky's play. It's good news that it gives welcome stage time to several seasoned old-time thespians as the synagogues' codgers: Barry Ashley, John F. Briganti, Leon Cohen, Larry Gelman, Paul Kimmel, Ed Riccard, Ron Rudolph, and Melvin Weiss.
Equity Turns 90
Actors' Equity began its 90th year as advocate and watchdog for the working actor. On May 26, 1913, in New York City's Pabst Grand Circle Hotel near Columbus Circle, 112 assorted actors and performers met, adopted a constitution, elected a president—Equity's first, Francis Wilson—and gave birth to Actors' Equity.
In union there is strength, so it's said. The history of the actors union offers compelling testament to this axiom while it illustrates the wisdom of another: Find a need and fill it. Somebody had to do it. Equity spokesman David Lotz puts it thus: "When we were founded in 1913, conditions were very poor for all but a few…. There was no rehearsal pay. Actors paid for their own costumes and were stranded when shows closed out of town." A president of the Stage Hands Union reportedly told reporters that when he entered a theatre, "I didn't know which sub-cellar was for the actors and which was for the coal."
In the summer of 1919 the Producing Managers' Association refused Equity's demands for improved working conditions. The resultant actors strike closed theatres in New York and Chicago, and threatened the existence of the fledgling union. Frank Bacon, playwright and star of his struck show, Lightnin', is quoted as saying, "I'm an actor, author and manager… but, when this strike began, my wife said, 'We'll stick to our own people. I can still cook on a one-burner coal-oil stove if necessary.' We're sticking." The strike tested the new union's mettle, but Equity emerged from the fray stronger than before. The union had 2,777 members when the strike began. After the strike it had grown to 14,000.
The history of the actors union is detailed in a glossy 12-page edition of Equity News, replete with production shots of Broadway hits and luminaries, rich with detail, colorful as theatre itself. Besides which this anniversary edition encapsulates national history, up to and including fateful events of 9/11. "The life of the city goes on," reads the caption on this page. Issues of concern in 2003 include the continued—somewhat threatened—existence of "live music on Broadway." In April AFTRA and SAG's proposed consolidation under the name Alliance of International Media Artists won "overwhelming" approval from union leaders.
Ellen Burstyn, Equity's 10th and first woman president, winner of both a Tony and an Academy Award in the same season, cites the union's diligence in protecting such actors' interests as minimum salaries, rehearsal pay, mandatory auditions, regulation of agents, and pension and health trust funds. Current president Patrick Quinn lauds Equity's "monumental" achievements and adds, "but all we've ever asked for are three simple things: a chance to prove our talent, to receive reasonable compensation for our work, and to be treated with fairness and dignity. It's called Equity."
Long since a national force of moment, Actors' Equity now represents more than 45,000 actors and stage managers, and continues to plug for better pay and working conditions and adequate health and pension plans, while, in the words of Equity executive director Alan Eisenberg, continuing to "foster and stimulate the art of live theatre."