Exploring New Terrains of Comedy

“The two prevailing themes in my work are family and sex,� says Barry Yourgrau, whose one-man “Barry Yourgrau’s Brand New Show� opens tonight at Cafe Largo in West Hollywood.

The brand new show isn’t absolutely brand new. “I always retain a few chestnuts. But by and large, this is a new combination. One piece involves a father who returns from the Middle East in a very bizarre way. Another involves a mother as a tragic movie star. There’s also a sexual piece about a woman shrunk to the size of a miniature. And some gags about ghosts.�

Yourgrau classifies his work as “on the cusp between literature and drama. What I love to do is use comedy as access to terrain that’s normally off-limits to comedy.�

The South African native has just made his first movie--�Fat Man and Little Boy.� (He played Dr. Edmund Teller.) The experience “has really helped with my dramatic presentation,� he said, “having to use dialogue in a real setting with real people. It’s getting inside, as opposed to outside. You know: Don’t show emotion, have emotion.�

SOMEBODY CALL TED TURNER: “I’m doing it in black-and-white,� said director Jeremiah Morris of his staging of George Abbott and Philip Dunning’s “Broadway� (1925), opening Friday at Actors Alley in Sherman Oaks.

“We’ve got black-and-white sets, black-and-white costumes, all the shades of gray and silver used in those old black-and-white movies. Because my knowledge of the ‘20s is limited to the movies.�

The 20-character piece was originally produced on Broadway in 1926 by Jed Harris, with Abbott and Dunning co-directing. Set backstage at a ‘20s speak-easy, Morris describes the story’s colorful characters as “a bootlegger, chorus girls, a brash young song-and-dance man trying to make it, a Ruby Keeler-type ingenue and a gangster who gets his comeuppance in the end.�

THEATER BUZZ: Bill Irwin, who received a special New York Drama Critics Circle Award this year for his word-less “Largely New York,� is taking the Tony-nominated, 20-person show on the road. It will travel to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre in March, to Japan in April--and could go to L.A.’s Doolittle Theatre after those stops. “We’re interested,� confirmed Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson. “I love Bill; I saw his show in one of its earliest incarnations. We’re trying to find a way to bring it to L.A. But nothing is definite yet.�

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Bill Bushnell’s revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman� is playing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, with Philip Baker Hall as Willy.

Said The Times’ Dan Sullivan: “ ‘Salesman’ allows for more psychological complexity than is felt at LATC. There are only a few moments that seem on the brink of revealing something about the Lomans we didn’t know before.�

Cheered the Hollywood Reporter’s Ed Kaufman: “Bushnell and a stellar cast have created a stunning revival of ‘Salesman’ that brings the vision of Miller to our own ‘80s. This production proves the play still has impact and import, even more so today in our world of acquisitions and takeovers.�

From Maryl Jo Fox in the L.A. Weekly: “This production of Miller’s classic indictment is a stunning achievement, a seamlessly balanced effort that arguably ranks above Dustin Hoffman’s and even Lee J. Cobb’s star vehicles. Under Bushnell’s persuasive direction, a tenacious, almost miraculous ensemble-chemistry burns through these performers.�