ANNE REINKING MOVES TO THE SOUND OF MUSIC

‘I guess the best way to describe it is an entertainment. A theatrical act, lots of singing and dancing, some narrative--hopefully a nice, friendly evening.” So said actress Anne Reinking (“Micki & Maude,” “All That Jazz”) of her “Music Moves Me,” which settles into the Westwood Playhouse on Tuesday.

“Alan Johnson is the director/choreographer,” she continued. “He also put together Shirley MacLaine’s show. I told him, ‘Alan, I’d like to move around, but I really don’t want to overdo it.’ He said, ‘Sure, Annie.’ And now I’m dancing so much!”

Reinking isn’t complaining: “There are a lot of nice things about doing your own show. You can give it a personal touch, try some new things, sing a few songs you’ve always been dying to do.” Her own range of material contains “everything from Cole Porter on up to Motown and contemporary work.”

As for the show’s title--”I was thinking, ‘Why do dancers move?’ Well basically when you dance, your script is the music. The reason you want to move is the music. You want to personify it, make it visual. So here the emphasis is very much on music and movement.

“Also, the show is something I can continue doing along with movies and television. And it’s mine , I own it. I can take it anywhere, and not have to worry if I’ll ever work again. There’s already a certain amount of insecurity in this business. So it’s a wonderful grace to have that independence--and you find yourself a stronger person because of it.

“But there’s a big difference between strength and being tough,” Reinking stressed. “A lot of people think that succeeding in this business means you become insensitive. Well, that’s not so.

“There are any number of reasons why some people make it and others stay in the chorus: Whether your particular style of performance is timely. Luck. A lot of people are very talented and have no drive. A lot are technically marvelous but have very little soul. Some people psyche themselves out; they have all the talent in the world, but emotionally they’re too delicate.”

The actress acknowledged that she arrived in New York “wanting to be a star on Broadway. . . . But there’s a basic naivete that’s really blissful; you can sort of ‘Mr. McGoo’ your way into a lot of things, ‘cause your lack of knowledge will make you unafraid. I’ve had luck and fortune, breaks from people who gave me chances and literally believed in me. That sort of faith you cling to.”

Faith helps when the critics are unkind. “Well you can just sit there and whip yourself with those little sentences. But a friend once told me, ‘If you’re a thoroughbred and you’re bitten on the backside by a horsefly, you’re still a thoroughbred. They can’t take away your identity. ‘ “

Seems that the plays of John Osborne are popping up all over town. First came the Alan Bates starrer “A Patriot for Me” at the Ahmanson, then Ian McShane in “Inadmissible Evidence” at the Matrix--and now “Look Back in Anger,” opening Thursday at Cast-at-the-Circle.

“This is the first of Osborne’s ‘angry young man’ plays,” offered actor Anthony Edwards, who’s serving as executive producer here. “It’s about a young married couple, Jim and Alice, and their friend Clifford who lives down the hall--and their relationships with each other. Very intense; very interesting.”

Enhancing that interest is a dramatic updating of the piece: from 1956 England to 1985 Los Angeles.

“Osborne specifically says in the beginning of the play that it’s set in the present,” Edwards noted. “Contemporizing it makes it so much more real.” In addition, director Forest Whitaker has introduced a racial element to this dark story of “manipulation, how people work each other, survive together. How they need each other. The things that never change.”

In staging the work, however, some adjustments were necessary: “Mostly small physical things,” Edwards explained, “references to pounds (sterling) or to parents who lived in the Edwardian era. So we changed the language a little bit, just to fit the environment.

“You really wouldn’t want to mess with it, ‘cause Osborne’s such a good writer. His words are almost like poetry.”

Another oldie but goodie is Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opening Tuesday on the Mainstage at South Coast Repertory.

“It’s a play we’ve always been attracted to but never done,” director David Emmes explained of his choice, “certainly one of the great classic comedies--a wonderfully kinetic spirit, marvelously crafted and funny.”

He feels that humor will always translate well.

“The play exists for itself ,” Emmes stated, “not so much as a reflection of any social or political milieu, but as a refection of the world of wit and manners. It is very much its own embodiment, part of that whole aesthetic movement that Wilde was a part of: art for art’s sake.”

In that artistic spirit, Emmes has moved up the action from 1895 to 1910, and introduced “modern sensibilities and methods to illumine that timeless wit--by keeping it true to the author, and at the same time, accessible from a contemporary point of view.”