Michele’s version

“If someone had asked me to go see a Greek comedy I’d have probably replied “Have fun. Hope you enjoy it,” but this one was for the gala reopening the Getty Villa and my husband was in it.

It was the oddest arrangement for a performance schedule I’d ever heard of. There would be three performances of a short version (38 minutes) in January 2006 and then the writer/director, Meryl Friedman, would expand it to a full length show for four more performances in March. The January “playlet” would celebrate the reopening for special guests of The Villa and the March rendition would inaugurate the indoor theater and be open to the public. Okay. Whatever. My husband was being paid and he was having fun.

I saw the short version in January. It was a riot. It was one seamless gag, riffing on itself. I couldn’t imagine how Meryl could more than double the length and not lose that incandencent confection she’d whipped up for the Getty’s special friends.

I needn’t have worried. I returned in March, this time with our friend Fox. It was the Saturday matinee. The place was packed. Tickets to all four shows had been claimed on the first morning of availability. The show went up and I was stunned. It was better. I don’t think anyone in that theater would have wished to be anywhere else. My friend, Fox, turned to me at the end of the show, incredulous that there was only one more performance and he said, “We should produce this.”

He was serious.

It was a perfect day to fly, and you can never tell what the winds or the marine layer will deliver in Southern California, but I couldn’t take advantage of it. I’d promised my good friend, Hubert, that I’d go see a show he was doing in Malibu.

What I don’t know about the theater could fill up the Coliseum a couple of times over, but I know when I’m laughing. I wasn’t alone. I’m not sure if it was me or Michele who first floated the idea that we should produce the thing, but I do know that the name, Stinger Productions, was my idea.

I’ve been around the block a couple of times. I’ve argued before the Supreme Court of the State of California, you’d think I know enough not to invest in the theater. Show me the real estate, right. Everybody knows that. But I’m in. I keep thinking of Meshulam Riklis who got defensive when somebody asked him about his enormous investment in his wife’s career: “Say what you will about Pia Zadora, but I never lost a dime on that broad.”

I should be so lucky.