The Glory Days

I won't be able to make this reunion, but maybe I'll send in some reminiscences of the late, lamented days of the Los Angeles Theatre Center when it had all four theatres running. I caught the tail end of that flowering, reviewing Jonathan Marc Sherman's Veins and Thumbtacks and The Joni Mitchell Project (an early jukebox musical with an extraordinary cast), among others. I also remember a ridiculous King Lear whose Norwegian lead's acquaintance with English was glancing, and Reza Abdoh's extreme, mesmerizing Bogeyman, which in the closing days of the Reagan-Bush interregnum had a kind of Weimar decadence. Like or hate what was onstage, I loved the place itself, and have many great memories of shows there after the producing company folded—Assassins, Harry Thaw Hates Everybody, various LA Weekly award shows, the very recent Waving Goodbye. I can only hope that this reunion gathering is not some kind of farewell to the place's continued operation in some fashion.