Gabler

Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival may have pioneered "non-traditional" casting decades ago but colorblind classics are still far from the norm at resident theaters across the country. For Sheldon Epps, however, they're standard practice. As one of the few prominent African American directors as likely to be found at the helm of an Ibsen production as an August Wilson, Epps has refused to allow himself to be pigeonholed. And he affords the same consideration to his actors.

Every sorcerer must have his apprenticeship; and Henry Allen, the Washington Post's weaver of spells, served his as a trainee at the New York Daily News at the end of the 1960s. The post-war suburban drift of the Irish and Italians had changed New York and consigned the News to stay where it was and refuse to adjust to the change. The congregants who had once crowded its pews had begun to fall away as from a dying church; and, since the acolyte's nostrils are fresher than the initiate's, Allen could feelingly suffer the air to whose stagnations its journeymen had been awhile since benumbed.

Re "The Owners: Baseball's Newest Heroes," Opinion, Aug. 7: Congratulations to Neal Gabler for a clever piece of writing. He psychoanalyzes the 45% of the public (the bad guys) who believe the players to be responsible for the strike, and says nothing about the 28% of the public (the good guys) who hold the owners responsible or the remaining 27% of the public (me) who don't give a hoot. Gabler's psychoanalysis of the 45% is a not-so-veiled attempt to expose his liberal views--the reason the majority has sided with the owners is due to Reaganomics and the redistribution of wealth (plenty of which has gone to professional athletes, we might add)

About 250 theatergoers indulged in a smorgasbord of treats in honor of the South Coast Repertory's premiere of Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler." Following the opening-night performance of "Hedda" at SCR's Mainstage in Costa Mesa on Friday, cast members and theater supporters gathered for champagne and a Scandinavian buffet at Tourneau, a South Coast Plaza jeweler specializing in Swiss watches. The party was open to SCR's Premiere Night subscribers who donate at least $1,000 a year to the theater.

Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" has the reputation of an acquired taste. Devoted playgoers should find South Coast Repertory's new revival a reacquired taste, depending on their tolerance for its moody embrace of the appalling, self-destructive Hedda. A brief but atmospheric prelude to the drama, glimpsed in the pale half-light of dawn, sets the histrionic tone of what is to come.

The "Masterpiece Theatre" presentation of "Hedda Gabler" (at 9 p.m. Sunday on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24) is such a nervously paced, demanding production that it seems likely that only viewers familiar with the play will be able to feel the tragedy of an anti-heroine who, caged like a bird, withdraws into her red music room and kills herself.

Perhaps Steven Zipperstein and I did not read the same book (Neal Gabler's "An Empire of Their Own," Book Review, Nov. 5), but when he singles out Jack Warner as a humanitarian and leaves out Carl Laemmle, not only does he misread Gabler, but the facts as well. Yes, Warner was a movie mogul, but "Uncle Carl" was a warm Jewish mensch first . Leaving Carl Laemmle out of any discussion of Hollywood, "Where were you while the Holocaust was going on" is a travesty of omission.

Years ago at the elaborate annual SHARE fund-raising party in Hollywood, Phil Silvers and Polly Bergen did a number called "The Rabbi and the Nun," in which he and she, suitably costumed, argued over who had the most influence in the industry, the Jews or the Catholics. The nun offered the likes of Loretta Young, Irene Dunne, Bing Crosby and Leo McCarey, the director. The rabbi countered with Louis B.

Hedda Gabler's is no easy case, even today. What does she want and what would she do with it if she got it? One thing she doesn't want is to be in a comedy. But that is her fate for much of the evening at the La Jolla Playhouse. Emily Mann's staging takes a satiric view of Hedda (Natalia Nogulich) and her friends--a jumpy group who talk! like! this! under the misapprehension that they are being vivacious. If these are the best people in town, it can't be a very big one.