The Reprise Theater Company is currently presenting a superb production of Man of La Mancha. It's up at the Freud Playhouse at UCLA and it runs through March 1. Michael Michetti, who did such a good job staging their production of Li'l Abner last year, really outdid himself...and there are two especially interesting changes in the material.
One was to eliminate the overture. That sounds like a mistake since the overture is usually quite a treat...but without the overture, the orchestra doesn't start playing until Cervantes begins telling the story of Don Quixote. Therefore, all the music occurs more or less within his imagination and the effect is worth the sacrifice.
Then they changed some dialogue. Dale Wasserman, who wrote the book for the musical Man of La Mancha, had written it previously as a non-musical play for television called I, Don Quixote. With Mr. Wasserman's blessing, some lines from the TV play were interpolated into the Reprise production of the musical. (Mr. Wasserman literally gave his approval on his death bed. He passed away last December 21 at the age of 94.) It all worked. All of it.
Most of that was due to a superb cast. Brent Spiner is playing Cervantes and therefore Don Quixote. He's great in the part, just as he was great playing John Adams when I saw 1776 on Broadway a few years ago. What a shame that some people only think of this superb musical comedy talent as "that guy from Star Trek." Lee Wilkof is a great Sancho Panza...and I hear opera star Julia Migenes is wonderful as Dulcinea but we deliberately didn't see her.
Carolyn and I went to the matinee today and at matinees, Dulcinea is played to perfection by a lady named Valerie Perri. Let me tell you about Valerie Perri.
Thousands of years ago, when I was a story editor on Welcome Back, Kotter, the night receptionist — the lady who answered phones when we worked late — was Valerie Perri. She used to sing around the office and, ever-so-politely, invite us to see a little musical she was appearing in on weekends. I went and was blown away by her talent. (There was also another new performer in the show who was obviously star material — a then-unknown actress named Wendie Jo Sperber.)
When Valerie went on to better things, I was utterly unsurprised. Just a few years later, the biggest theatrical event in Los Angeles was a production of Evita that ran a long time at the Shubert Theater. They had a big star playing the title role at evening performances and this unknown named Valerie Perri playing the role at matinees. One of the local theater critics wrote a piece that said, approximately, "Hey, the lady playing Evita at matinees is better than the lady playing Evita in the evenings!" Before long, Valerie was the evening Evita in many other productions — Harold Prince personally cast her — and she went on to other roles and other plays. She now divides her life between raising handsome twin boys and performing in shows all around the country. You can find her schedule (and hear some of her singing) over on her website.
Aiding her in her great performance today was another friend of mine. Brad Ellis was the Musical Director of this production of Man of La Mancha. Everything sounded great and after, when I told Brad that, he said it was because Reprise splurged for a full orchestra, the same size the show had on Broadway, and it had "no garage band instruments." That means real horns, real violins, etc., and no synthesizers and such. That's probably one of the reasons the music was so magnificent but I also think Brad had a lot to do with that. Maybe one of these days, I'll post some audio here and let you listen to some of the songs we've written together. He's real good, too.
If you're in or around L.A. and want to catch Man of La Mancha before March 1, here's a link. I've raved enough.
Through the miracle that is TiVo, I've been catching up with Conan O'Brien's final week on Late Night. Some of it seems a little overdone, not because he doesn't deserve a big send-off but because he's not leaving. He's just moving to a better time slot. Still, I enjoyed this little ditty warbled by Nathan Lane...
Next Saturday evening while I'm in San Francisco for the WonderCon, I'm taking a bunch of friends to see Frank Ferrante perform his glorious Groucho simulation at the Jewish Community Center. And hey, why shouldn't an Italian guy play a Jew? Chico Marx was a Jewish guy playing an Italian.
Anyway, one of the friends I'm taking, Tom Galloway, sent me a link to this article about Frank. See? I'm not the only person who writes about him.
On Sunday, March 8, Frank's doing his show for one matinee performance at the La Mirada Theater in, of all places, La Mirada, California. That's as close to Los Angeles as he's been in years and he probably won't be Hackenbushing anywhere near L.A. again for quite some time. So a number of folks I know in town here (including me again) are going down to see him there. La Mirada isn't as far as it sounds. It's about midway between downtown L.A. and Disneyland and they have a very nice theater down there.
Here's a nice article about Teller of Penn & Teller. Most people think Teller is shorter than he is. He just looks short because Penn is so tall. Some people think he can't talk. He can, and is very articulate when he does. Some people even think what Penn and Teller do is not really magic. It most definitely is, and Teller is an excellent magician by any standard. As you'll see from the article, he's very serious about what he does.
I don't even know where to start with the current Screen Actors Guild situation. Their Negotiating Committee hit an impasse bargaining with the AMPTP. After many months, SAG's national board ousted that committee and its Head Negotiator, replacing them with something they called a "task force" and sent it in to try and get an acceptable deal. The task force made some major concessions and the AMPTP made some major concessions. But when the two sides failed to reach a deal, the talks collapsed. The Producers sent out what they called their "last, best, final" offer...and now the SAG national board has rejected it with a 73% vote.
So where does this leave things? Up a creek, sans paddle. The SAG national board doesn't want to put this offer to a vote of the membership. They don't want to ask for a strike authorization. The Producers are refusing to restart the talks. So whatever brief light there might have been down at the end of the tunnel has now been extinguished and no one seems to know what happens next.
The scenario some people are hoping for is something that might be called The Lew Wasserman Move. Lew Wasserman was an old-time Hollywood agent-mogul who more-or-less ran the town in the sixties. When things were at an impasse with some union, Lew was known to pick up the phone, make a few calls and broker a deal. Everyone seems to be hoping something of the sort will happen now...or at least, that's the fantasy. The reality is that today, at a time when entertainment companies are owned by international super-corporations, there's no one with the expansive power of a Lew Wasserman...no one who can call all the principals and say, with a note of Threat in his voice, "Hey, let's get this settled."
I have no idea where things go from here. It may depend on whether this new impasse causes the rival factions in SAG to bond and unite against their common enemy. Three days ago, this seemed about as likely as me winning Best Supporting Actress tonight. Now, that reconciliation is a remote possibility...and if the studios see they've overplayed their hand and are fixing a broken SAG, they may scurry to better the offer.
The big obstacle at the moment seems to be the expiration date of the three-year contract. SAG wants it to run out three years from when the old deal did. The AMPTP wants it to expire three years from when it gets signed. If SAG got its way, the union would be in a much better position for the next negotiation. If the AMPTP date prevails, SAG would again be last in line behind the other unions, most notably AFTRA which undercut them this time by going first. This is probably solvable if both sides put their mind to that goal. At the moment though, no one is trying to solve it. Jeez, what a mess.
Someone made this homemade, unauthorized commercial for the Trader Joe's market chain. The company could do a lot worse than to hire this guy to make ad spots for them...especially if they bought him a rhyming dictionary.
I like Trader Joe's but with reservations. One problem I have is how crowded it often seems, usually at the checkout counters but always just trying to get down the aisles. They always have so many new items that shoppers have to keep stopping to study labels, which makes it hard to navigate. I also don't like the Trader Joe's policy of discontinuing any item that I purchase twice.
They'll probably be surprised to hear that I've figured it out...but it's getting kinda obvious. Every time I find something I like, it's gone. That's why they no longer have those little 100 calorie packets of cheese crackers shaped like toucans. They were great and every time I went in to buy them, I either bought them out or was told they were already out. Well, of course then, they had to stop making them. That's apparently their master business plan: Get rid of whatever Evanier will buy. I've never purchased eggs at Trader Joe's but if I did, they'd stop carrying eggs.
My new favorite Trader Joe's item is a little microwavable meal that they just introduced. It's a 270 calorie package of whole wheat penne pasta and meatballs, and since I like it, it'll be gone by April.
Here's a song about some of the stuff they do have...
February 21, 2009
