NICE SHOW. NOW WHAT?
Potiker is more than just a new facility
by Martin Jones Westlin
The voice of actor Joan van Ark (Dallas, Knots Landing) bellowed
dispassionately from the loudspeakers of the new Sheila and Hughes
Potiker Theatre, reminding patrons that the facility features a robotic
dog
programmed to eat their faces off should they fail to silence their electronic
gadgets before the show. Van Ark probably thinks she’s kidding—but, after
all, the squeaky-new La Jolla Playhouse facility is a marvel of high-tech
sight, sound and sorcery. Better check the ol’ cell phone again, just to
be
safe. Once that’s out of the way, sit back and enjoy Private Fittings,
a
world-premier adaptation of Georges Feydeau’s Tailleur pour Dames, which
runs through March 27 and features an English-translation book by Mark
O’Donnell (Hairspray). There is absolutely nothing to recommend this show
beyond the fact that it’s the Potiker’s maiden entry—but for farce fans,
that
doesn’t matter. For them, the evening is marked by the trademark
slamming doors, mistaken identities, jilted wives, long-lost husbands,
drawing-room innuendo, more slamming doors, riotously cute scene
changes and a compact conclusion. It’s fun to watch Eric (Kyle Fabel)
frantically cover his tracks as he woos his dumb-blonde paramour Suzanne
(Jessica Boevers). It’s even more fun to watch bestselling author Harriet
(van Ark, who at 61 sports the yummiest legs this side of Betty Grable)
verbally bitch-slap Eric into submission as daughter Yvonne (a totally
miscast Stana Katic) looks on. It’s not fun at all to experience otherwise
clever repartée embedded in a bunch of stupid clichés (“I
didn’t write ‘Bitch
Your Way to Fitness’ for nothing,” growls Harriet; “Everything I eat goes
to
my wrists,” grovels Eric). But there’s another issue at work, less apparent
amid director Des McAnuff’s vivacious take on the play. It involves the
Playhouse in a vital community role, one it has yet to assume. The Potiker
is
a 6,500-square-foot black box that boasts 450 of the most comfortable
seats in the cosmos. It’s the flagship space in the cumbersomely named
Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for La Jolla Playhouse. Built for $16.5 million
over 18 months, the center was the site of a Jan. 15 open house, delayed
90 days amid construction snafus that caused the 2004 subscription
season to slop over into this year (Fittings is actually the final entry
for
2004). The center, which Playhouse artistic director McAnuff calls a “theater
village,” features rehearsal spaces, tech shops, a state-of-the-art sound
booth, sparkling administrative offices and, presumably, a mechanical
canine primed to kill. When a restaurant and adjacent parkland open this
summer, the center will encompass 50,000 square feet. But while
Playhouse personnel have every right to crow their excitement, the term
“theater village” bears scrutiny. A village is only as vital as its diversity—and
the Playhouse long ago gained a reputation as an address where people
and scripts are imported and exported as if the rest of San Diego’s theater
community didn’t exist. This city has a way to go before it can boast a
theater personality of its own—but a grand new resource like the Potiker,
and routine interchange with its resident mentors and custodians, would
certainly constitute a step in the right direction. (San Diego actor Ron
Choularton in that space as the Clerk in Gogol’s stage-adapted Diary of
a
Madman? The prospect is too picture-perfect to comprehend.) With Private
Fittings, La Jolla Playhouse ushers in its next level with a show as new
and
user-friendly as the Potiker itself. Let’s see if it can—or will—parlay
this
success into communication with its scores of hungry neighbors to the
south. This review is based on the opening-night performance of Feb. 27.
Private Fittings runs through March 27 at the Sheila and Hughes Potiker
Theatre (2910 La Jolla Village Drive in La Jolla). $39-$57. 858-550-1010.