All that Jazz by Bill Kay

It is disconcerting when a perfect stranger yanks a bar stool away from under your feet - all the more so when she is a striking blonde in the throes of performing in a play and you're practically sitting on the stage of the theatre.
We were at the Blank Theatre Company's 2nd Stage, one of the run of small venues on a shabby stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard known as Theatre Row. For Brits, it brings back memories of the Edinburgh Festival - no frills, seemingly impromptu, lots of scruffy guys in their twenties running about everywhere fixing seemingly vital last-minute problems. And nowhere to eat. We arrived early and wandered around for half an hour, finally settling for Winchell's Donuts on Fountain and Vine, a good half-mile away.
Our friend Ian Whitcomb has composed a musical background for the show - The Jazz Age - and is playing in it with his band, the Bungalow Boys (Fred Sokolow on guitar, Dave Jones on bass). Like anyone involved in a play, Ian has been agonising for weeks whether it will be a success and whether any of the countless changes will improve it or otherwise.
So my expectations were low. All the more of a surprise, then, to applaud the actors' final bow with the feeling that this was the best theatrical experience I had had for years.
It began as farce. The tiny foyer was crammed when we were allowed to go to our seats. You climb straight up to the back of the auditorium - capacity 55 - and then hare down to the front, no reserved seats, first come first served. We landed in the front at extreme stage left - by one of two bar stools.
The other facility that was first come, first served was the one and only restroom - and we were repeatedly reminded that there would be no intermission, the show was two hours straight through and the restroom was at the back of the stage. The Bungalow Boys were above us in a gallery, playing music to get us in the 1920s mood, as we lined up. The time for curtain up (or lights down, no curtain) was decided by the moment when the last satisfied customer made her way contentedly back across the stage to her seat.
The Jazz Age is as much a misnomer as the title of the recent film, Australia. Its only relevance is that the action takes place 1920-40. It tells the story of the developing relationship between Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, spiced by Zelda Fitzgerald (the blonde). I'd call it Scott, Zelda and Ernie, but what do I know? I'd probably have called King Lear Keep It In the Family.
The plot has a natural shape, as Fitzgerald goes on a steady, drink-fuelled decline while Hemingway grows into an international celebrity who ends up punching Louis B Meyer, the Hollywood studio magnate - in the play, anyway.
In one way I'd liked to have gone armed with more than my very skimpy knowledge of the actual threesome, but in another way I was probably better off not knowing any more or I could have been irritated by the inevitable inaccuracies, short-cuts and liberal use of poetic (or playwright's) licence.
As it was, the three characters didn't need names. They played themselves out in a timeless drama that Shakespeare would have loved to get his teeth into. I am not saying the writing - by Allan Knee - was up to Shakespeare, but it was tight and muscular, building the tension relentlessly with the help of three terrific actors: Luke MacFarlane, Jeremy Gabriel and Heather Prete. The beauty of it was that, like all good art, it felt complete and rounded and gave a sense that by the end the viewer knew all that he or she needed to know about that subject.
I came out on Santa Monica Boulevard feeling drained, but satisfied. And very glad that I hadn't fatally entwined my legs in that bar stool.