LA theatres: Hollywood v Downtown by Bill Kay

It's a punishing schedule, but someone's got to do it: on Friday I went to the Kodak Theater, home of the Oscars, to see British comedian Eddie Izzard, and last night I was at the Million Dollar Theater in Downtown for tenor Michael Kleitman's Tribute to Pavarotti. Two very different experiences, and not just in what was happening on stage.
The Kodak, is next to Grauman's Chinese Theater and is set into the Hollywood and Highland shopping centre, one of LA's biggest tourist traps. It takes the modern approach of fleecing the punters for all it can get, so best to eat and drink beforehand. The full house was a mixture of Angelenos, tourists and Brits who live in the area. Izzard made few concessions to American ignorance, but most of his more obscure jokes were enthusiastically received. Mind you, he was wise enough to lay into Bush, which got some easy applause, and came out surprisingly strongly for Obama - but again, he had got his audience right and they loved it.
The Million Dollar, which was built for that price in 1918 by Sid Grauman before he moved westwards and built the Egyptian and Chinese on Hollywood Boulevard, is an old-fashioned theatre which the LA mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, hopes will lead a revival of Broadway - something which I don't think will happen without driving out his fellow Latino shopkeepers. Meanwhile, though, this theatre is not yet into full ripoff mode: the front stalls tickets cost about the same as for the balcony in the Kodak - around $55 - and the charmingly unadorned snacks counter was selling bottled of Pepsi for a not too bad $4. Oddest of all was a sweet stall in the men's loo, presumably a Latino custom as they run the theatre: bar of chocolate with your loo paper, sir? It was more surreal than anything Izzard could invent.
Russian-born Kleitman has been touring with his Pavarotti show for some time, so it was surprising how badly presented it was. To save on an orchestra, he relied on recorded music which was sometimes as crackly as an old phonograph. And Pavarotti he is not: his voice is much thinner and has less range. The contrast was starkest in his attempt at Nessan Dorma. Kleitman fell way short of Pavarotti and indeed is much more in the style of Jose Carreras.
But the audience lapped it up. They were, as you would expect, much older than Izzard's, few tourists, plenty of Russian supporters. I don't think they filled the theatre, judging by the 30% off promotion they were running last week (to my annoyance, as I got only 10% off about a month ago).
Thankfully we were spared any standing ovations until the very end. Instead, from half-way through the first half, there was a regular flow of middle-aged ladies waddling to the front of the stage with bouquets which Kleitman seemed genuinely surprised and embarrassed to receive.
I'd have loved to see what Izzard would have made of the Million Dollar.