Live chat with Jon Robin Baitz on Thursday

Jon Robin Baitz has enjoyed one of the more unusual careers writing for the stage and screen. He has written for a range of mediums, penning acclaimed plays ("The Substance of Fire," "A Fair Country"), creating well-regarded television (the ABC drama "Brothers & Sisters") and acting (the film "One Fine Day"). His latest play, "Other Desert Cities," opens Thursday, and he will join us for a live chat that day at 10 a.m.

"Other Desert Cities" marks a Broadway debut for Baitz. The play, whose name was inspired by a drive on Interstate 10, examines trademark Baitz issues, particularly the entanglements of family and the ways its members both nurture and hurt each other. Taking the stage in the production will be some of the original cast from its Lincoln Center run earlier this year (Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach) and an actress Baitz has worked with in his TV life (Rachel Griffiths).

An outspoken native Angeleno, Baitz is sure to pull no punches on subjects such as the state of American theater and the challenges of contemporary playwriting.

To register for the live chat and schedule a reminder, please fill out the form below. And be sure to join us Thursday.

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— Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Jon Robin Baitz in August 2010. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

Steve Guttenberg seeks a comeback ... via Broadway

A couple decades ago, long before he became known mainly for popping up on basic-cable ''Where Are They Now" shows, the actor Steve Guttenberg was everywhere. He starred in numerous comedy-film franchises ("Police Academy" "Three Men and a Baby," "Short Circuit" ) and even took a turn on Broadway, replacing Timothy Hutton in "Prelude to a Kiss" in 1991.

Guttenberg is hoping the Great White Way can be his ticket back to the A-list. After 20 years of appearing in, well, nothing you were likely to see, the actor stars in "Relatively Speaking," the trio of one-acts written by Elaine May, Ethan Coen and Woody Allen that opens at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre Thursday. (Guttenberg appears in "Honeymoon Motel," the segment written by Allen; he plays the father of a groom who falls in love with the bride.)

In a story in Sunday's Times, Guttenberg, 53, explains that his absence from the scene hasn't been for lack of trying. All he's wanted, he says, is to "be at Yankee Stadium," not the second-tier ballparks he's been relegated to, and to work with top-tier creative types. (The notion of "working with the best," though, may be in the eye of the beholder: Among the people Guttenberg said he'd love to pair up with is Michael Bay, the director behind quiet auteur pieces such as "Transformers" and "Armageddon.")

As for why he hasn't been in more high-profile shows or movies since his 1980s heyday, the perpetually sunny actor has an unusual theory -- he thinks he may have just have been too nice to persuade producers to hire him. "I think sometimes [my] kindness is taken as a weakness," he said. "If you're too nice to the doorman, you won't get your packages as quickly."

Read The Times' profile of Steve Guttenberg.

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-- Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Steve Guttenberg, left, and Peter van Norden in "Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment." Credit: Warner Bros.

At RSC's 'Romeo & Juliet,' alarm bells, not wedding bells

 
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It's Romeo and Juliet who normally make sparks fly in Shakespeare's classic tragedy. But it was Romeo and the Friar setting off the fire alarm when the Royal Shakespeare Company staged the Bard's play on Saturday in New York.

About midway through the first of two acts during a matinee performance at the Park Avenue Armory, as Friar Laurence (Forbes Masson) and Romeo (Dyfan Dwyfor) sat on the steps discussing the young lover's conundrum, a three-tone alarm started ringing metronomically. The actors plowed on for five minutes over the sounds before a theater manager stepped out to halt the performance.

TV star Zach Braff turns playwright

Hollywood incursions into off-Broadway can be a mixed bag. But there's something happening at Second Stage Theatre, where for the second year in a row some talent from the screen world is melding nicely with the theater universe.

Earlier this week at Second Stage, Justin Bartha ("The Hangover"), Krysten Ritter ("Breaking Bad") and Anna Camp ("True Blood") opened "All New People," a dramatic comedy in which a 35-year-old depressive named Charlie (Bartha) sees his suicide attempt rudely interrupted by a merry band of dysfunctionals. The play is written by "Scrubs" veteran Zach Braff, who got in touch with his inner Eugene O'Neill in penning his first play. (Read more on Braff's unusual turn here.)

"People" follows last year's "Trust," written by studio filmmaker Paul Weitz and starring Braff and Bobby Cannavale, which also was mounted at Second Stage. Directing both? Peter DuBois, a veteran stage hand who's coming off several acclaimed productions of "Becky Shaw."

DuBois said that he had no hesitation about working with a range of Hollywood writers and actors who he believes understand collaboration in a unique way. "And an actor who writes for actors can be a very good thing: They hear rhythms of a line in a way no one else can," DuBois said. "It's like a Kristen Wiig thing: A non-performer couldn't write like that."

DuBois, Braff and Second Stage's Carole Rothman all worked extensively with the actors to hone the material, particularly to make sure the farcical and sitcom elements -- and there are a number of them -- were leavened with more serious themes of spirituality and failed ambition. "We were kind of doing rehearsal and workshopping at the same time," Ritter told Culture Monster. "It was a little insane but a great way to work."

Braff, for his part, said that he actually wanted to take the lead part that went to Bartha. "Fortunately Carole Rothman talked me out of it. Trying to get a new play in shape while you're acting in it, you just have no perspective," he said. "But maybe I'll get to play the role somewhere else."

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--Steven Zeitchik, from New York City

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: "All New People." Credit: Second Stage Theatre

 

Justin Bartha will team up with Jesse Eisenberg off-Broadway

Justin Bartha is best known to most Americans as the strait-laced Doug in the "Hangover" movies. But he's beginning to make waves in the New York theater world, appearing as a thirtysomething depressive in the off-Broadway dramatic comedy "All New People," which opened Monday night at New York's Second Stage Theater.

Now Bartha tells Culture Monster that he'll star opposite Jesse Eisenberg in "Asuncion," a dark comedy that Eisenberg wrote and will star in, and which will be presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater at New York's Cherry Lane Theater.

Bartha will play Vinny, a progressive academic and roommate of left-wing blogger Edgar (Eisenberg), who's thrown for a loop when a Filipino roommate moves in. Veteran off-Broadway director Kip Fagan ("Jack's Precious Moment," "Detention Tension") will direct the production, which aims to open later this year.

Bartha and Eisenberg, who are friends, have experience acting together. Last year they starred in  the independent film "Holy Rollers," about Hasidic Ecstasy dealers (prompting the "Hangover" star to quip that their new collaboration will focus on "Catholic pot dealers").