‘Dancing’--Agoraphobic Love Story

As John Banach’s “Naked Dancing” (opening this weekend at the Colony Studio Theatre in Silver Lake) begins, Annie hasn’t been out of the house in five years. Now her parents have decided to cure her agoraphobia by forcing her out. They’ve taken her food, pulled the fuses, disconnected the phone. Annie has just spent three days in darkness, without food. Now Frank--who pretends to be someone he’s not--shows up. . . .

The writer (who promises that despite the dark subject matter, “You will laugh throughout”), is on particularly familiar turf here.

“My mother’s agoraphobic, my girlfriend, my best friend and two of my (acting-writing) students,” noted Banach, who won the 1988 Beverly Hills Theatre Guild-Julie Harris Playwright Award for the work. “It intrigued me, so I read a bunch of books, then started writing. Originally, it was a story about a disease. But over the two years it took to write, it turned into a love story. Disease is just the backdrop--and a metaphor for fear and alienation in today’s society.”

COME TO THE CABARET: “Kander and Ebb: A Tribute” is the theme of this year’s AIDS Project L.A. benefit, Friday and Saturday at the Embassy Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Performing will be, among others, Lucie Arnaz, Jane Carr, Patrick Cassidy, Carole Cook, Peter Frechette, Dale Kristien, Lu Leonard and Donna McKechnie. Tickets cost $10-$50. Information: (213) 962-1600.

The Kander/Ebb repertoire includes “Cabaret,” “Chicago,” “Zorba,” and “Flora, the Red Menace,” a revival of which opens Feb. 11 at Pasadena Playhouse.

WEIRD WORSHIP: “We make fun of all kinds of worship, but especially celebrity worship,” Bill Schreiner explained of the title of the Groundlings’ newest revue, “Worship the Groundling You Walk On,” opening Friday at the Groundling Theatre in West Hollywood. “I can’t tell you everything we do,” added the director. “There are some funny things that have to do with (the titular) ‘walking on’ in the lobby.”

Inside, a tried-and-true format offers 12-14 sketches and 2-3 improvs by a dozen performers.

“We find the audience warms to the improv if they experience it early in the first act,” noted Schreiner (director of the film “A Sinful Life.”). “We’re educating them how to play the game, be involved. So at the end of the evening, they’ve had their initial participation, they know the lay of the land--and they’re willing to be more adventurous. That’s also true of the actors. The more you laugh, the more the stress goes away--and the more willing you are to laugh.”

Skits include “Barbies,” (two women play out their doll fantasies), “Fishing” (for compliments) and “The Home-Surprise Shopping Network” (audience members contribute the items--and the Groundlings have to sell them).

THEATER BUZZ: Call it safe mikes. When Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Starlight Express” arrives at the Pantages Feb. 22, the baggage will include a full supply of condoms--for the cast’s microphones, of course. As skating-and-singing “trains,” the two dozen-plus performers utilize cordless microphones (designed just for them), which extend from their helmets and curve around their mouths.

Condoms, according to a “Starlight” spokesman, are the most effective sheath for the delicate mikes off-duty.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: August Strindberg’s “Dance with Death” is playing at Los Angeles Theatre Center. Alan Mandell directs Mitchell Ryan and Marian Mercer as the battling marrieds Edgar and Alice, with H. Richard Greene as their old friend Kurt.

Noted Sylvie Drake in The Times: “The moves are correct under Mandell’s direction, but their calibration is off and the relationships labored. Connections often miss. . . . Only Ryan in the play’s most powerful and complex role, succeeds. . . .”

Said the Orange County Register’s Thomas O’Connor: “Instead of Sweden, this might be a desolate Irish coastal island, for the director has given the whole a deftly, darkly ironic style of playing, straight out of Samuel Beckett.”

Wrote Polly Warfield in Drama-Logue: “Mandell mines the rich vein of quirky humor in Strindberg’s play, he expresses its rhythms, strengths and subtleties and the justice of its contradictions. It emerges as the classic it is.”