By Cynthia Citron
LOS ANGELES — Howard Teichman is a man who knows a crisis when he sees one. He is smack in the middle of two of them at this very moment. The first is a mid-life crisis. Not his, but Barney Cashman’s, the protagonist of Neil Simon’s play The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, which Teichman is directing for the West Coast Jewish Theatre. The second one is that while Teichman was rehearsing his players, he and his wife and kids were living in a single motel room because their home in Woodland Hills had just burned to the ground.
But, as they say, the show must go on. And so, Lovers will be opening October 1st at the Pico Playhouse in West Los Angeles.
“Nobody tears your heart like Neil Simon,” Teichman says. “In my view, he is the greatest living American playwright.” This is Teichman’s most recent directorial stint with a Simon play. He previously directed Rumors, Lost in Yonkers, and Plaza Suite. He also has had two other experiences with Simon: “I had been standing in a long line at the Carnegie Deli in New York waiting to get seated, and just when I got to the head of the line, Simon swept in and was immediately ushered to a table,” Teichman says.
The second Simon encounter was at Monticello. “I had been waiting in line for 45 minutes, when Simon breezed in and bumped me from first place again.” Other than that, the two have never met.
Teichman, who was born in Toronto, started his theater career in Chicago in the 1970s as a writer/creator/performer with Second City, where he was mentored by Fritzi Sahlins, the wife of Second City’s owner. “I was in the same class as Bill Murray,” he says. His comic specialty was pratfalls and flips: “I used to flip right into the audience!” he remembers.
At Second City he also created a World Premiere children’s show, Commedia. Then, migrating to California, he earned an undergraduate degree and a master’s in Theatre Arts from UCLA, and an internship with the Central Theatre Group’s Gordon Davidson. Which led to his first producing credit, at the Mark Taper Forum, for Cabaret Verboten, featuring Bebe Neuwirth. Not too shabby a starting gig.
Teichman, who is an entertaining conversationalist, tells of being the stage manager for a play about a prison break. “The prison break sequence was on a reel to reel projector, and when I went to run it it unraveled and went flying all over the booth like spaghetti,” he says. So he created his own sound effects—explosions, shouting prisoners, and all.
Now, as a director, he prides himself on his casting. He mentions Cheryl David, an actress with whom he has done five shows. (Most recently, Sarah, Sarah.) “Working with her is always a collaborative effort,” he says. “When you direct, you have to leave your ego at the door. It isn’t a tug of war. The actors can have their little quirks—they earned it, and I respect it. I see nothing wrong in it, as long as it doesn’t disrupt the play or the other actors.
“A director has to be a psychologist and an Encyclopedia Britannica. He has to feed the actors information and become an inspiration to them. Eighty-five percent of the job is taking the time to work with them and respect them as actors.
“It’s not about the money,” he concludes. “If it isn’t about having a good time it isn’t worth doing.
“The page is my bible, my map, and my compass,” Teichman continues. For five years he ran a Writers’ Workshop with writer/director Hindi Brooks at Theatre 40, where he was resident director for a decade. He also taught an Overview of the Theatre course at UCLA. And in the 1990s he was named to the Board of Directors of the West Coast Jewish Theatre, as well as Resident Producer. And finally with the recent retirement of Herb Isaacs, the Artistic Director of WCJT, Teichman has been appointed to that spot with the company.
He is very much looking forward to the opening of Last of the Red Hot Lovers. “The key to Neil Simon is not playing it for the jokes, but to bring out the pathos, he says. “And to always ask yourself ‘Are you being true to the text? Are you telling the story?’”
As for the future, he confides, “I’d like to direct Yiddish theater—in Poland!”
The Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Thurs.-Sat. 8pm, Sun. 2pm, thru Nov. 21. Tickets $27-$20. Pico Playhouse, 10508 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 860-6620, www.wcjt.org.