New Run for Play About Desire to Fly

The desire to fly seems to be born in the soul of mankind. That doesn’t mean in a 747, but all by yourself. Icarus tried it in Greek mythology, and Da Vinci tried on a Renaissance hilltop. Most of us do it in dreams, and it has become a useful metaphor for playwrights and screenwriters.

Lee Blessing, perhaps best known for his Broadway success “A Walk in the Woods,” uses the image throughout his play “Eleemosynary.” The play is about three generations of women who approach the act of flying from different perspectives. The women are from the same family, and for each one of them flight is symbolic of fleeing the nest. But each in turn finds strings attached to her wings by the older generation.

Opening at the Ventura Court Theatre in Studio City Friday, this is the critically and publicly acclaimed production that ran in the fall at Hollywood’s West Coast Ensemble. The staff, director Peter Grego, the three actresses--Bobbi Holtzman, D. J. Harner and Meredith Bishop--felt it wasn’t yet time to let the play float away.

“It wasn’t over,” Holtzman said.

Harner said: “We just became so wrapped up in the characters that we felt we wanted to share it with many more people.”

When actors and directors feel they’ve created something important in the process of staging a production, accolades that come later feel like icing on the cake. So it was with this production, said Grego.

“That part of the journey was enough, so it was more than doubly fun to have it just about unanimously well-received by the critics and audiences,” he said. “But it wasn’t quite ready to be put to bed.”

The title, which by the way means “charitable,” is the word with which the granddaughter wins a national spelling bee. It is her own act of “flying” that she hopes will reunite the three generations.

“The whole situation,” Harner said, “is a metaphor for parents who encourage their children to fly and be the best they can be. But there’s always that underlying message that it has to be the way they want you to do it, not the way you want to do it.”

* “Eleemosynary,” Ventura Court Theatre, 12417 Ventura Court, Studio City. 8 p.m Thursday-Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday. Ends Feb 16. $12-$16. (213) 466-1767 or (818) 953-9993.

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Right Up Their Alley: Actors Alley provided free theater for a long time through its Actors Alley, Too series on Monday through Thursday nights. Quake repairs at their new location have made it possible for the group to open its first full season of Actors Alley, Too, beginning with plays by in-house playwright Sam Ingraffia, “Pearl Harbor Day in Muncie” and “Pasquini the Magnificent.”

The series’ debut at the El Portal venue coincides with the directorial debut of Actors Alley stalwart Joe Garcia. He is the award-winning actor for the group’s “The Puppetmaster of Lodz” and “Only the Dead Know Burbank.”

Getting his feet wet in a new field has been easier, Garcia said, “because Ingraffia has a way of writing words that come out of people’s mouths really easy. And they’re both really very human pieces about how people deal with their losses. One of the two men in ‘Muncie’ has dealt with the loss of a wife and child through divorce, the other a son in Vietnam. In ‘Pasquini,’ a woman has lost her husband to a younger woman. They’re about people having faith in human nature, as well. Everybody is not mean.”

Now that he is directing, Garcia said he has picked up a valuable lesson: Most plays involve more than one actor.

He added with a grin: “You have to keep everybody glittering at the same time”

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Plays in Revival: Shows in small theaters usually take a short hiatus during the holiday season, and that’s sometimes their final curtain.

But several Valley shows can’t be kept down. They’re all popular with critics and the public alike, and the new year provides a fresh opportunity to see them.

In for an indefinite run, and pretty much selling out as it goes along, is the John Rubinstein-directed revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” at the Interact Theatre. Rubinstein appears in it, along with Amanda Carlin, “the definitive Wicked Witch,” according to The Times, and “General Hospital’s” Matt Ashworth.

A classy revival of Sam Shepard’s early sci-fi drama “The Unseen Hand” is returning to the Eclectic Company Theatre. A biking accident actually caused this closure, but the actor is well and back to spooking his way through Shepardland.

And Joyce Carol Oates’ series of monologues about women in trouble, “I Stand Before You Naked,” takes another bow at American Renegade Theatre.

* “Into the Woods,” at Interact Theatre, indefinite run. (213) 466-1767. “The Unseen Hand,” at Eclectic Company Theatre, through Jan. 25. (213) 957-0868. “I Stand Before You Naked,” at American Renegade Theatre, through Jan. 18. (818) 763-4430.

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‘Box’ to Reopen: “Box 27,” the critically praised drama about gays in the military asking and telling, will be reopening at the end of January at Actors Forum Theatre. Artistic director Audrey Marlyn Singer says that following the limited run the entire production will be moving to the Celebration Bookstore and Theatre in Palm Springs for two weekends beginning March 7.

* “Box 27” reopens at Actors Forum Theatre on Feb. 13. (818) 506-0600.