Scandals Elsewhere Fail to Dim ‘Glory’ Plays

It seems relatively tranquil in Garden Grove’s Schullerland as yet another “The Glory of Easter” sin-and-salvation spectacle opens tonight at the Crystal Cathedral.

Back again is a Passion play staged with all the reverence and technical razzle-dazzle that $1 million and 150 volunteer extras, assorted lambs, camels and tigers can muster.

Back again are a gently militant Jesus (played by Robert Miller), assorted disciples and “guest star” Carol Lawrence as a singing Mary--all but upstaged by the lightning, earthquake and flying-angel effects.

Theater as usual, it would seem, at the 2,900-seat Crystal Cathedral.

Not exactly. There is the shadow of TV evangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. The fall from grace of these evangelical celebrities has darkened the horizon of every TV ministry-built organization in America, including the Rev. Robert H. Schuller’s in Orange County. Although Schuller aides reported no decline in ticket sales for December’s “The Glory of Christmas” or this month’s “The Glory of Easter,” they admitted to a “temporary slump” in viewers for Schuller’s top-rated “Hour of Power” tele-sermons.

According to pageant producer-director Paul David Dunn, the fall’s seventh annual Christmas show posted the highest turnout yet--191,000. And the current Easter epic, he said, has already sold 40,000 tickets--matching last year’s pace, when 103,000 were sold, the most since the first spring pageant in 1984.

But Michael Nason, producer of Schuller’s “Hour of Power” broadcasts--the No. 1 TV ministry in national Nielsen ratings--reported a “backlash loss” from disclosures last year of Jim Bakker’s motel escapades and fiscal mismanagement.

“We figured a drop of 200,000 to 300,000 people” from a previously estimated 2.4 million viewers, Nason said.

Schuller, whose organization belongs to the middle-of-the-road Reformed Church in America, is not willing to be interviewed on either the Bakker affair or the sexual indiscretions of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart (who, like Bakker, is a member of the fundamentalist Assemblies of God).

Pageant star Lawrence, however, is. “It’s too easy to point fingers at others,” she said Wednesday before a “Glory of Easter” preview performance. “What he (Swaggart) did was certainly wrong, but why crucify the man because people found out he’s not that divine.”

And Dunn, who is Schuller’s son-in-law, said the focus of the Crystal Cathedral pageants “is the glory of Jesus Christ, not the shortcomings of followers.”

“People know this, so we still don’t anticipate any (ticket) declines.”

Dunn, a scholar-author on the Holy Land, has staged the Crystal Cathedral’s Nativity epic since 1985 and the Easter show since 1986. He replaced Conwell Worthington and Michael Coleman, a professional theatrical duo who have since said they were “forced out” under the church’s sweeping economy move.

Dunn admitted to cutting costs by relying on more “in-house” technical and staging personnel, but he said he has made “dramatic and historical fine-tuning” to the initial “Glory of Easter” versions.

He has retained the three-story set by Emmy Award-winner Charles Lisanby and costumes by Richard Bostard. However, a Gregory Peck-recorded narration was eliminated two years ago, more dancers and original music were added last year and spoken scenes have been expanded this year for Herod, Mary Magdalene and particularly Carol Lawrence’s Mary.

In fact, the new production’s big solo is Lawrence’s, a pop-ish post-Crucifixion aria of grief and hope titled “This They Cannot Take From Me.”

“I love doing this role,” said Lawrence, who played Mary in the Crystal Cathedral’s 1984 “The Glory of Christmas” and in a one-woman concert she has performed before religious groups for 10 years.

Lawrence, of course, has had considerable success with other angelic characters, particularly the ill-fated Maria in the original 1957 Broadway production of “West Side Story.”

But she has played ribald types, too, in other musicals, such as the vampish heroine of Broadway’s “Saratoga,” the happy hooker in a touring version of “Sweet Charity” and the leggy song-and-dance foil in an Atlantic City casino’s “Sugar Babies.”

In light of the concerns over moral purity--underscored by the recent Bakker-Swaggart scandals--and her somewhat bawdier roles, would some people now object to her playing Mary?

“I suppose there are people who do feel that way,” Lawrence said, “but I haven’t heard of anybody coming out and making formal objections.”

Besides, “most people will understand the situation,” said Lawrence, who said she is a “born-again” Christian and an activist in World Vision, a movement which feeds the hungry in Third World nations.

Most people, she said, “know my personal concerns and causes. They know those other roles are just that--parts I take as an actress.”

‘THE GLORY OF EASTER’

Performances at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. nightly through April 3, except Mondays and on Tuesday, March 15, and Tuesday, March 22.

Crystal Cathedral, 12141 Lewis St., Garden Grove

$14, $18, $25.

Information: (714) 544-5679