The Odyssey's odyssey begins this week as the Westside theater makes its first moves out of its old quarters and into its new digs at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
One of the theater's three current shows, "Disability," will close Saturday. "Kvetch" and "Personality" will close temporarily on the following Saturday, July 29, but will then move to Sepulveda. The tentative reopening dates are Aug. 11 ("Kvetch") and 12 ("Personality").
The first new production to open on Sepulveda will be Brian Friel's "The Faith Healer," scheduled for Aug. 26. Christopher Neame will take the title role; also in the cast are Judy Geeson and Neil Hunt. A series of monologues about an Irish mystic, Friel's play was on Broadway for 20 performances in 1979 starring James Mason.
Anyone who wants a souvenir of the old Odyssey should take a look at the props, costumes and other merchandise offered at the theater's parking lot sale, Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., in the lot west of the Ohio Avenue building.
In other Odyssey news, Sue Reinish of Chatsworth won the theater's "Grand Kvetch-Off," a spirited complaining contest that climaxed a two-month "Kvetchathon," in which audience members at "Kvetch" could offer their own brief kvetches after the show. Members of the cast judged the "Grand Kvetch-Off," as well as the nightly whines.
Reinish's winning kvetch was on the subject of the non-synchronized time clocks of herself and her husband Shelly.
MORE MOVES: The Los Angeles production of the musical revue "6 Women With Brain Death, or Expiring Minds Want to Know," which recently played two months in a rented 99-seat space at Los Angeles Theatre Center, will reopen at the 200-seat Backlot Cabaret in West Hollywood.
The engagement will begin with an AIDS benefit Aug. 4, then preview Fridays and Saturdays through August, with the opening slated for early September.
New to the cast are Patty Holley and Sharon Murray (who was in the first cast in San Diego, where the show will finally close Sunday, after 520 performances dating from October, 1987). They replace Mary Bond Davis and Cathy Susan Pyles, respectively. The women will be working under an American Guild of Variety Artists contract.
The show will be streamlined with the deletion of a first-act number about a soap opera fanatic; producer Nan O'Byrne's eventual plan is to do two performances on weekend nights. The ticket price will be lower than at LATC: $15, compared with $22-$25. However, the Backlot's two-drink minimum will apply.
