L.A. Directors Make a Difference

As the director of the original Pasadena Playhouse production of “Twilight of the Golds,” I read with more than passing interest the quote from writer Jonathan Tolins on the abrupt New York closing of what, in Los Angeles, was hailed as an extraordinary play (“Twilight of ‘Twilight,’ ” Stage Watch, Calendar, Nov. 14).

Tolins complained about the meanness of New York reviewers, the implication being that Big Apple reviewers are parochial sharks who can’t wait to get their nasty jaws on a play originated in rival Los Angeles waters. This may or may not be true, but it does not explain why “Twilight” also got savaged by the major papers in Washington and San Francisco prior to its New York opening.

Are they all mean? Or is there something else going on here that should be addressed? What was different about the play that ran here to ubiquitous praise and the national run that was uniformly belittled?

The script was not significantly changed. The direction was.

The writer changed directors, who in turn changed the cast (Jennifer Grey replaced the enormously talented Jodi Thelans) and the new director changed the Golds from a loving and accessible family to what the Washington Post called “weak, bad people . . . materialistic” and “stereotypically Upper West Side Jewish.” The production was seriously affected--clearly not for the better.

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It is not the first time a successful production originating in Los Angeles has changed directors when it moved East. Conventional wisdom has it that you need an East Coast “name” to inoculate yourself against the mean New Yorkers. But coming out of Chicago theater--the city where the concept “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was coined--I have a hard time accepting the notion that any coast’s name director could have made a significant improvement on what I had done with “Twilight of the Golds.” Change, yes. Improvement, no.

I do understand a young playwright who gets visions of sugar plums dancing in his head after a thunderous reception in Los Angeles. Sugar plums tend to obscure one’s vision. But the issue is more than one writer’s insecurity. It is this theater community’s seeming inability to acknowledge the world-class caliber of its own directors.

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Perhaps it’s because we work in isolation with the actors in rehearsals for weeks and emerge with a formed creation. Outsiders don’t see the process and, therefore, can’t quite figure out what the director does.

Perhaps it’s because directors work so closely in collaboration with producers, writers and designers and collaboration demands ego-free zones where ideas can be shared, rejected or digested. Or perhaps it’s that theater directors in Los Angeles are seen in less bright colors than their East Coast brethren. After all, this is a film and television town.

It’s a little like looking at the color white--all by itself white is bright, clean and sharp. But when you place white next to another vivid color, like red, it picks up a pink cast. Los Angeles directors appear diminished next to our more vivid, well-known film directors.

Whatever the reasons for this fear of transferring a Los Angeles production to New York without extensive tinkering, producers and writers with hit shows here need to stop with this second city mentality. We Los Angeles directors do make a difference.

I’ve spent years trying to explain what a director does. The elitist dybbuk in me says something about creating and managing moments of time and space on stage, about lifting the notes off the writer’s page and giving them sound.

The bottom line is this: The director is an emotional usher with an illuminating flashlight saying to playwright and actor: This way to your play, this way to your character. Some directors simply carry brighter flashlights than others and it doesn’t matter which coast we are on.