Carol Lawrence

South Coast Repertory's "Major Barbara" and the Road Theatre Company's "The Woman in Black" nabbed the most honors in this year's Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards, with both productions winning four each. Many categories had multiple winners. One of the "Major Barbara" awards was for outstanding production. A second show, "Napoli Milionaria," also won an outstanding production honor, although it won no other awards.

In 1953 and 1954, a Bible college student in Los Angeles named Jack Hayford drove daily into Van Nuys as a messenger for the old Security Pacific Bank, "never dreaming I would ever have a church out here." Nevertheless, in 1969, the Foursquare Gospel minister accepted the pastor's role at a struggling, 18-member church on Sherman Way in Van Nuys.

The original Broadway cast recording of "West Side Story" and Erroll Garner playing "Misty" are among five inductees at the Hall of Fame of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The academy, which bestows the annual Grammy Awards, has inducted pre-1958 musical pieces into its Hall of Fame since 1974. The Grammys were first awarded in 1958.

Featuring more hearty invocations of "famiglia!" than the entire Olive Garden ad campaign, Joe DiPietro's "Over the River and Through the Woods" made its West Coast premiere Friday as part of another, related premiere. The occasion: The opening of North Hollywood's El Portal Center for the Arts.

Ron Field, a Tony and Emmy award-winning director and choreographer who developed routines for dancers ranging from Fred Astaire to Michael Jackson to the thousands of dancers at the 1984 Olympics, has died at age 55. Field died Monday at St. Vincent's Hospital of neurological impairment caused by brain lesions. The creator of dances for "Cabaret" and many other Broadway shows had lived in Manhattan.

* Theater. "Over the River and Through the Woods," Joe Di Pietro's comedy with Carol Lawrence and Joseph Campanella, inaugurating the new El Portal Center, Mainstage, 5269 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, opens Jan. 14, playing Tuesdays-Wednesdays, Sundays, 7 p.m.; Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 9. $35-$42. (818) 508-4200; (800) 233-3123. * Theater. Sally Kirkland headlines in "The Powder Room Suite," a duo of "toxic comedies" by Frank Strausser, opening Jan.

"I'm a Michael Feinstein groupie," admitted Betty White, who first met Feinstein in 1988 in London, where they participated in a Royal Variety Performance for the Queen Mother. The Golden Girl watched with amusement and understanding as those who shared her enthusiasm for the entertainer swarmed around him at a reception after the Jewish National Fund Gala '93 Tuesday evening at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.