Play Reveals Reality of Vegas

Frank D. Gilroy’s 1968 play “The Only Game in Town” isn’t as well-known as his Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Subject Was Roses,” but it does have the cachet of being turned into a film with Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty.

The differences between the 1970 film and Gilroy’s original script are not the reasons director Audrey Marlyn Singer chose the play, which opens Friday night at North Hollywood’s Actors Forum Theatre.

“It’s a play that I’ve liked for many years,” Singer says, “and it’s a challenge to direct. I like the idea of that challenge.”

On a more interior level, Singer says that she identifies with the play’s milieu, which describes the story of a Las Vegas dancer who is the mistress of a wealthy, married man, but whose life is altered when a poor, gambling pianist moves in with her.

“I was a dancer myself,” Singer explains. “I always wanted to be a dancer in Las Vegas. It’s a lifestyle that sounds very glamorous and exciting. And then you find out that everybody, no matter where they live, has the same problems. They have to face the same daily chores, and decisions and choices.”

She says that it was important when directing the play to keep the mood honest, so that these characters seem alone, as if the fourth wall is really there.

“The Only Game in Town” is a slight departure for Actor’s Forum. For its first year in a new theater on Magnolia Boulevard, the group put on mostly audience-friendly mysteries.

“I wanted people to know that we’re here,” says Singer, who has been Actors Forum’s artistic director throughout its 21-year existence.

But Singer is also interested in attracting younger theatergoers to maintain the audience for live theater. “The Only Game in Town” is the first step in that direction. She’s also considering producing “Box 27,” about the politically volatile subject of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward homosexual service personnel.

“To me,” Singer says, “it’s all a crap game. I’m hoping this play will attract the younger crowd. You never know when you choose to do something if it will satisfy some need in the community, and some creative needs.”

* “The Only Game in Town,” Actors Forum, 10655 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Friday and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends May 19. $15. (818) 506-0600.

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On an even more adventurous front are a pair of one-acts called “In the Company of Friends,” playing at the Sanford Meisner Center for the Arts in North Hollywood. Both explore psychological disasters, stemming from the breakup of a friendship between two women in “The Divorce,” and the tensions between two male police officers in “The Job.”

The author considers them companion pieces. She happens to be Lynn Mamet, sister of the more famous David.

This Mamet has been writing as long as her brother has, but always felt that lightning wouldn’t strike twice in the same family. She says that David was instrumental in kicking her into the public arena several years ago.

Lynn Mamet says one day her brother asked her why she wasn’t writing professionally. She replied that the ground was covered.

He said, “What do you mean covered, Tuna?” That’s his nickname for her. “You know, we were not the victims of a happy childhood. Rather than bemoaning that fact, it means to us that we will never run out of stories to tell.”

Explaining that brother David is writing in the urban male voice, Lynn Mamet says that in these plays she is using urban and suburban male and female voices “in concert.”

She says that when she was telling David about the plays, she explained that “The Job” was about cops, “testosterone city” in her words, but there was one woman in it. She said, in a side reference to David’s own work, “You’ll love it, David, because she’s only got eight lines.” David laughed. “But of course,” Lynn continued, “if you’d written it, she’d only have two lines, and both of them would be [expletive].”

Lynn Mamet speaks in the familiar Mamet style, which comes from common familial roots and a family that jockeyed for position in terms of verbiage.

Having moved decisively into the public arena, she has become one of the busiest screenwriters in Hollywood, with scripts in development for Meg Ryan, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn. And, her film debut, “On Hope,” garnered an Academy Award nomination for best short live action film in 1994.

Lynn Mamet is outspoken, like her brother, particularly about her debt to theater. “My commitment,” she says, “no matter how many movies I do, is to remember my roots. I owe something to the stage. William Goldman once wrote, ‘If you only write screenplays for a living, you will have no soul.’ Going back to the stage humbles me. It reminds me of where we should be as writers.”

* “In the Company of Friends,” Sanford Meisner Center for the Arts, 5124 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends May 5. $12. (213) 466-1767 or (818) 509-9651.