Fein’s Program Guide to Her ‘Channels’

Call it Judith Fein’s year.

With a grant from Opera America, she wrote the libretto (to Henry Mollicone’s music) for the opera “Lilith.” Before the writers’ strike, she’d been hired to write the screenplays for “Harriet the Spy” (Universal) and “Dirty Dancing 2” (Vestron). She has a development deal for “The Intimate Writings of Theodore Hammer” with Tri-Star. Her film, “Sisters,” which was selected by the Sundance Institute two summers ago, will go into production later this year. And, oh yes, her play “Channels” opens Friday at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.

“I was sitting in front of the computer thinking, ‘The computer is a model of the human mind, and the camera is a model of the human eye,’ ” Fein said of the play’s genesis. “Then it hit me: TV is a model of human emotions. That’s why people sit in front of the TV and keep changing channels; it’s like life. One moment they’re with their friends. The next moment they’re listening to news. The next moment they’re crying--switching from emotion to emotion.”

The story itself (which was inspired by a friend’s experiences) centers on a psychotic breakdown.

“I’ve presented it as if you’re watching it on TV,” Fein said. “So when the protagonist is with her boyfriend, it’s a sitcom. When she’s with her mother, it’s ‘Masterpiece Theatre.’ When she’s with her lover, a businessman, it feels like a game show. When she feels terrible guilt, she’s on ‘People’s Court’: both the defendant and the (plaintiff). And because she’s an anthropologist, the escape fantasy is like a ‘National Geographic’ documentary. Instead of scenes, you keep flipping through channels.”

Jules Aaron directs.

“Desperadoes” is the title of a lesbian trilogy by Atlanta playwright Rebecca Ranson, which opened this weekend at the Celebration Theatre.

“It follows the eight-year love affair of Holly and Marouka,” said Celebration artistic co-director Susan Bell, who’s directing a cast of 13. “It’s about obsessive love, why some people can’t say yes to love. Holly looks for love, but when she finds it, spends the rest of the play resisting it--until she destroys it. Holly is the kind of woman who feels sublimated and subjugated by love. Marouka feels that by loving someone she discovers who she is. So it’s push/pull all the way.”

And not unlike many straight relationships. “It’s a pretty universal thing between people,” Bell agreed. “Of course, it is a lesbian relationship, but it’s not about that. In Play 3, Holly questions whether she really is a lesbian. Is it defined by a sexual bond between two women, or is there more to it? A lot of straight women have emotional relationships with other women and aren’t lesbians. But the characters in Play 3 talk about Holly as not being lesbian because she’s not ‘political enough’--and has related to men in the past and present.”

“Desperadoes” will be performed on separate nights, except for today, when the three plays are presented back-to-back.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Randal Myler and Mark Harelik’s “Lost Highway: The Music and Legend of Hank Williams” opened recently at the Mark Taper, with Myler directing and Harelik playing the country singer/songwriter superstar.

The Times’ Sylvie Drake found the acting, directing “and sheer abundance of talent impressive” but felt “the creators haven’t decided what it should be: concert or play? Sunny or dark? How sunny, how dark? As a result, ‘Highway’ swings from one to the other, often arbitrarily, diluting both moods and trying to pick up the sag in dramatic tension with too many songs.”

Said Tom Jacobs in the Daily News: “As with their previous play, ‘The Immigrant,’ Harelik and Myler try too hard to be entertaining; their production doesn’t have much grit. Williams is described as distant and difficult, but we don’t see much evidence on stage. Oversimplification is inevitable in this sort of play, but Harelik and Myler too often reduce complicated questions to simple formulas.”

Noted Ed Kaufman in the Hollywood Reporter: “As a musical tribute, it works. . . . Yet as ‘legend,’ the show falls short. Williams, at best a talented and tuneful hillbilly composer-singer, is certainly not the stuff of legends. So when Myler and Harelik (who is riveting in his portrayal) ask us to give ourselves over to the self-destructive shenanigans of Williams, it almost gets in the way of the show’s music.”

From Richard Stayton in the Herald Examiner: “Harelik is posing as the genius hillbilly demon songwriter with the heartbreaking yodel who could twist pain into such classics as ‘I’m So Lonely I Could Cry.’ Or is Harelik posing as George Hamilton posing as Hank Williams? Where is John Denver when we need him? The impression resembles one of those Elvis Presley impersonations: Harelik has the stance, but never the soul.”

In the Orange County Register, Thomas O’Connor wrote that the play “proves most dramatically alive when Harelik and Myler finally start steering ‘Lost Highway’ off the map of celebrity-bio standard: early struggles for the break, women troubles, booze troubles, career-in-shambles troubles. The creators are theatrically savvy enough to capitalize on the suggestive power of the stage and, especially, the torrent of musical genius Williams left behind.”

Said Drama-Logue’s Polly Warfield: “A play in the ordinary sense it may not be, but ‘Lost Highway’ is something else--great entertainment, great songs, great show. . . . Harelik puts his considerable talent and youthful vigor at the service of the songs and makes them live. He captures it all, or mostly all: the sob in the voice, the drawn-out vowels, the honk in the honky tonk, the slouch at the microphone, the swivel in the knees.”

Last, from Gary Franklin on KABC Radio: “It’s a terrific evening of theater. Harelik, the rest of the cast, the band, the mom, the wife, the black street singers with their heavy-hearted blues who form a sort of dusky Greek chorus throughout the musical drama--well, it all works and I urge you to get tickets to see ‘Lost Highway’ at the Taper. On the Franklin scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best, it’s a 10.”