After The La Jolla Playhouse's second season, the
trio of stars at the top were rather pleased that they could actually boast a small profit.
They decided to use the extra cash to venture into Los Angeles itself and offer up something
uniquely different in an effort to get noticed there. What they chose to produce was
almost assuredly suggested and encouraged by Mel Ferrer: the very first
American staging of Jean Anouilh's "Eurydice," a re-working of the
ill-fated story of Orpheus and Eurydice placed in a modern day setting.
The play, which was written during World War II , was
first produced in Paris in 1941, where it was a great success despite
it's grim content. It was Anouilh's first adaptation of a Greek myth, a
form in which he believed deeply and would return to in later years.
Francophile Ferrer had translated the script and was now eager to direct
the first English speaking production. His La Jolla partners decided to
give him the opportunity and secured the Coronet Theater in Los Angeles
for the event. The play was given a limited run in October with
production commencing directly after the La Jolla season ended.
Ferrer's cast was headed by Viveca Lindfors, who was
making her American stage debut after much success in Sweden. She had
been brought over to America by Warner Brothers in 1946 in the hopes
she'd become the next Greta Garbo or Ingrid Bergman, but had thus far
appeared in only one movie. She was joined by John Beal, Christian
Kelleen, Felix Bessart, Melville Cooper, Edith King, Steven Geray and
Edgar Barrier.
While critics and crowds alike received the show
kindly, the production lost money for the La Jolla players, making them
a little less adventuresome in Los Angeles, and a lot more conducive to
overtures being put out by architect William Pereira to form a Los
Angeles based group to be called The Actors Company. Oddly, most press
entries referred to them as "The Actors Company," already, which helped
to complicate who the actual Actors Company would be when it was created
less than a year later.
One small postscript: Though there's no evidence Mel
Ferrer and Jean Anouilh met at this time, they certainly were friends in
later years and collaborated on a film together in 1971 called "A Time
for Loving." He also produced and starred in another Anouilh play
at La Jolla in 1951, Ring Around the Moon.
The La Jolla Playhouse
