Content area
Full Text
Three unconventional productions, "In Trousers," "In the Belly of the Beast" and "Tamara," lead the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle list of 1984 award nominees announced today.
At the head is William Finn's musical, "In Trousers," the "prequel" to Finn's "March of the Falsettos" (which also did well two years ago), in which we saw what Marvin experienced with girls before he decided on boys. "In Trousers," which earned seven nominations for distinguished achievement (the organization doesn't award "bests"), was also produced at an Equity Waiver house, the Callboard.
"In the Belly of the Beast" at the Mark Taper Forum's Taper, Too was next, with six nominations. Director Robert Woodruff did some tinkering with Adrian Hall's script, which was drawn from the anthologized letters of convicted murderer Jack Henry Abbott, and buttonholed us with a truly terrible dilemma: When a misguided, unrepentantly dangerous man is made more so by the prison system, what hope is there for him? And what hope is there for civilized society to reabsorb him?
The production, which played last February, later went to the Sydney Festival in Australia, and in the interim it held such a powerful after-image for Taper staffers that when a slot opened up in the Mainstage season, it was voted in for a March 28 opening. Woodruff is staging it again, and Andrew Robinson is back as Abbott (both are up for awards).
"Tamara," probably the most unusual entry since "The James...