Stephanie Shroyer

In his first role in America, Maurice Barrymore played the hero in Augustin Daly's immensely popular 1867 "Under the Gaslight." Daly saw the production and later brought Barrymore back to his Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, where Barrymore eventually met Georgie Drew, with whom he founded the Barrymore theatrical dynasty. "Under the Gaslight" helped establish Daly's company as one of the most popular of the mid-19th Century.

If Neil Simon and Anton Chekhov had a baby. . . . It sounds like the setup for a literary joke, and in a way that's what "The Good Doctor" was when it opened on Broadway in 1973. A collection of sketches--mostly comic--that Simon adapted from stories or other jottings by Chekhov, the finished product ended up looking a lot more like one parent--Simon--than the other. This impression hasn't changed over the years.

When John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" opened at Rich's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn in January, 1728, wags said of its success that it made "Gay rich and Rich gay." It's hard to see how the show's current revival at the Pacific Theatre Ensemble's hole-in-the-wall theater in Venice could make this company rich (they have roughly 40 people in the audience and 23 in the cast), but it is bringing wide grins and great bursts of laughter to its public.

The Santa Monica Pier will become a theater in August. The Pacific Theatre Ensemble will venture out over the Pacific, presenting a Shakespearean comedy in a 200-seat space at the western end of the pier. Admission will be free. The city is putting up $15,000 for the production, and the ensemble hopes to match that amount in a fund-raising campaign, said artistic director Stephanie Shroyer. This will be the first Actors' Equity-contract show for the ensemble, which has won acclaim for its smaller-theater productions of such shows as "Slaughterhouse on Tanner's Close" and "South Central Rain."

Nearly 18 years after his death, Bob Marley's legend and stature continue to grow. Similarly, the annual festival in Long Beach celebrating the legacy of the charismatic musician has become North America's premier showcase for reggae music and African Caribbean culture. The 18th annual Bob Marley Day Festival leans toward tradition, with a Saturday bill headed by dancehall deejay Beenie Man and a Sunday lineup featuring "lover's rock" stylist Gregory Isaacs.

Los Angeles Theatre Center won the most honors and small theaters also did well in the 1990 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards announced Tuesday. LATC captured eight awards-- its most ever. The downtown theater, which is being purchased by the city of Los Angeles, had won three awards during each of the last four years. Six of LATC's awards this year were for "The Illusion," the most for any one production.

Audiences are guaranteed to get into the thick of things at Pacific Theatre Ensemble's lavish revival of John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera," opening Thursday at the company's "co-op" space at 705 1/2 Venice Blvd. in Venice. "It's a sexy, bawdy, political satire--and we're doing it in period, environmentally," said PTE Artistic Director Stephanie Shroyer, who is also directing. "Every conceivable corner of the space has been converted into 1728 London.

Besides its rich ensemble acting, Pacific Theatre Ensemble is known for imbuing its productions with an extraordinary sense of the mood, colorings and aura of the period and locale. For the group's production of Maxim Gorky's "Barbarians," the effect begins with authentic lemon piroshki at the door. Inside, we enter a small provincial Russian town just after the turn of the century, by virtue of Bruce Whitney's sound design and Matthew C.

The pace of its development having speeded up a lot lately, the Pacific Theatre Ensemble can be counted on for one thing: not to repeat itself, not these days. It has expanded, acquiring a new space adjacent to the old one on Venice Boulevard in Venice.

Pacific Theatre Ensemble, the Venice-based company that has won popular and critical acclaim producing work with extra-large casts--including "Slaughterhouse on Tanner's Close," "The Blue Dahlia" and "The Beggar's Opera"--is making a move towards minimalist theater. With this weekend's opening of an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" it will launch its Sampler Series, a trio of small-scale, one-act works.