Antaeus Troupe Makes Classical Rediscoveries

Most classical companies present awfully familiar fare. Not Antaeus.

The spring season for this company consists of “The Liar,” by Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza, billed as the first playwright born in the Americas, and Arthur Miller’s first Broadway play, “The Man Who Had All the Luck,” which closed after only four performances in 1944.

“The Liar,” opening Saturday at the 49-seat Secret Rose in NoHo, is a comedy by a native-born Mexican who emigrated to Spain in 1600. Originally known as “El Mentiroso” but finally published as “La Verdad Sospechosa,” the work inspired Pierre Corneille and Carlo Goldoni to write their own versions of the same story.

The company’s managing director, Dakin Matthews, translated the script--he’s more fluent as a reader of 17th century Spanish than he is as a speaker of contemporary Spanish, he said, adding that this skill “comes in handy on the carriage, but it’s not very helpful on the bus.”

Antaeus will take “The Liar” to the International Siglo de Oro festival in El Paso in March, where Antaeus expects to be the only company performing in English.

Miller’s “The Man Who Had All the Luck” will follow in April at a theater still to be determined. It’s a story about a lucky guy in a Midwestern town and his “success guilt,” in Matthews’ words. Willy Loman’s “failure guilt” proved to be more marketable for Miller.

Antaeus had wanted to open these shows in its own NoHo theater, in a building Matthews bought with some of his earnings as a TV and film actor. But the company’s hope to receive a temporary permit for public performances vanished when the fire marshal who inspected the building “just laughed at us,” Matthews said. He added that the building probably won’t open now “until I get another series” to pay for it.

THE JAMES BLACKMAN SHOW: When James Blackman planned his opening-night curtain remarks for the first production of Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities, which he co-founded in 1992, he wrote a speech “as serious as a heart attack,” he recalled, with words like “paradigm.” But when he got on stage, he sensed the crowd wanted something lighter. He started making wisecracks.

A tradition was born, in which executive director/producer Blackman delivers comedy routines before performances. One such talk last year before one of the shorter productions clocked in at 29 minutes, prompting the stage manager to remark that Blackman was “off his leash.” To prevent him from forcing the next, longer show into overtime, Blackman was offered his own one-night show.

On Jan. 22, Blackman delivered “Off His Leash!,” a full-length solo comedy routine, heavily autobiographical, as a benefit for the company. The event was advertised with a “mature content” label, and Blackman began by saying that he and the Redondo Beach officials who run the theater had wanted to do a “tasteful” show but couldn’t quite pull it off--so, he declared, “[expletive] it!”

Thus began what was surely the most profane speech ever spoken by an L.A. theater producer of an ostensibly conservative company to his supporters, 575 of whom showed up. It included a memory of Manhattan Beach in the ‘70s as a place where one could obtain “a really good bag of weed for 25 bucks” crowding up against a later claim, from Blackman’s days in Washington, that he inadvertently helped come up with Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. But the visual high point of the evening was a disco routine in which Blackman, who describes himself as weighing 350 pounds, lifted a woman partner over his head, followed by much huffing and puffing and his removal of his pants (he was wearing black shorts underneath).

Blackman took verbal jabs at hecklers in the audience, his own mother, the flight attendants on the old PSA airline, the cities of San Jose and Washington and a variety of national politicians, sparing only Ronald Reagan. But he avoided mentioning a group of individuals who have criticized his management of the company--the leash may have been loose, but it was still visible.

SANTA BARBARA SURVIVES: Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera reached its goal of raising $1 million by mid-January (Theater Notes, Jan. 16) and so is off death row--at least until the end of the year, by which point it has vowed to raise another $1.5 million.