‘My Rebel’: a Return to Vietnam Era

“A few years ago I started thinking about Vietnam,” recalled playwright Doris Baizley. “It was just before ‘Platoon’ came out; I don’t know what precipitated it. I think it was just one of those things we haven’t wanted to think about that suddenly starts appearing. For me, it was a very big thing that happened in my past. . . . The ramifications now are how it changed our lives.”

Baizley (author of the ‘50s-set comedy “Mrs. California”) takes that trip back in time in “My Rebel,” opening this weekend at the Lex Theatre in Hollywood.

“I wanted to go back, to remember what it was like to be 20 years old: to not know very much and have the world in conflict,” Baizley said. “A lot of us sent boyfriends off to Vietnam with ideas about how our lives would go, working from a very naive point of view--like not liking their haircuts. Then as the letters started coming back, it was scary, alienating. And gradually we turned our backs on them.”

John Shearin (whose own Vietnam play, “Dinky Dau,” ran at Theatre Theater earlier this year) plays the father, Dorothy Lyman is the mother, Jamie Younger the boy who goes to war, Todd Merrill the draft resister--and Mary Kohnert, Dedee Pfeiffer and Michelle Joyner the young women left behind.

“It’s not autobiographical in the sense of me as a character, but it is in terms of events,” noted Baizley, who is 44. “It happened to people I know. It’s almost a group story. These were idealistic second lieutenants--Kennedy liberals--going for all the best reasons. And many of them didn’t come back. My best friend’s boyfriend died there; he stepped on a land mine. My boyfriend came back with a terminal illness and died two months later.

“No one came out of that time the same as they went in,” she concluded. “It’s like Europe after World War I: a whole generation was broken up.

“When the play was first read in a workshop last spring in Philadelphia, it was very hard for me . . . watching scenes that I’d seen and been a part of. But the play isn’t all dark. There’s a lot of humor and a lot of love scenes. Actually, those have become my new favorite things to write.”

THEATER FILE: “Big River,” the Tony-winning Huckleberry Finn musical, is finally winding back to Southern California. A touring troupe will perform it Saturday and next Sunday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, to be followed by engagements at McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert Sept. 29, Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton Sept. 30, Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University in Malibu Oct. 1 and 2, the Visalia Convention Center Oct. 3 and Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo Oct. 5. The show opened originally at La Jolla Playhouse in 1984 and played Orange County Performing Arts Center in 1987.

Today at Highways performance space in Santa Monica, Tennessee playwright-storyteller Jo Carson will read from her works. On Thursday, Carson’s Alzheimer’s disease-themed “Daytrips” opens at the Los Angeles Theatre Center; Steven Kent directs Victoria-Ann Lewis, Anne Gee Byrd, Julianna McCarthy and Christine Rose.

The Latino Ensemble celebrates Tijuana’s centennial--and Hispanic Heritage Month--at Jack’s Placita (next to the Grand Central Market downtown) with two performance works by Tijuana artists: Carlos Niebla’s solo piece “The Queen at Home” and poet/playwright Edward Coward’s “All the Dogs.” The shows, which are performed in Spanish with written synopses in English, continue through Oct. 1.

In Burbank, Alliance Repertory Company’s second annual one-act play festival opens Thursday, with eleven pieces playing in rep: Craig Pettigrew’s “Brutal Mandate,” Stan Jones’ “Blue in the Face “ and Michael Slades’ “Thanksgiving”--and on the alternate program: Deb Lacusta and Dan Castellaneta’s “Pieces of Eight: A Collection of Urban Oddities.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: “A Man With Connections,” Soviet playwright Alexander Gelman’s two-character study of contemporary marital discord, is playing at the Matrix Theatre. Kristoffer Siegel-Tabori directs Charles Hallahan and Carolyn Seymour.

Said Dan Sullivan in The Times: “It’s not a virtue of Gelman’s script that the first half plays like a soap opera--all recriminations and heavy silences. But once we see that Gelman’s real game is wittier than that, we start listening.”

From the Herald Examiner’s F. Kathleen Foley: “Tabori could have played up (the play’s) residual comic elements more forcefully. Barring that, he walks a fine line with a difficult piece.”

Said the Daily Breeze’s Sandra Kreiswirth: “(The actors) bring life to their roles. Hallahan’s Andrei knows how to play both sides of the fence, tough and tender. Seymour’s Natasha is also in trouble. But she gives into it. He does not.”

And from Jane Galbraith in Daily Variety: “Stephen Mulrine’s excellent English translation helps bridge the cultural gap . . . Hallahan and Seymour are perfectly in sync with their characters’ continuing challenge for superiority.”