Thursday, April 9, 1998 | 8:47 a.m.
Last month, UNLV's Runnin' Rebels basketball team made headlines with its long-awaited return to the NCAA's tournament.
Amid intense newspaper and television coverage, the boys in red traveled to Hartford, Conn. to compete in the Big Dance against the powerhouse Princeton University Tigers, who pummeled them in the first round.
Meanwhile, another troupe of UNLV players went straight to the top of their field and, later this month, will head to Washington, D.C. to strut their stuff in their own brand of a Final Four tournament.
Yet the efforts of the graduate students who comprise the cast of "Falsettos" have gone largely unnoticed.
Following performances of the Tony award-winning musical comedy at the Judy Bayley Theatre in December, the show was selected to be performed at Chapman University in Southern California in February, as part of the regional festival of the prestigious 30th annual Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival.
There, "Falsettos" competed against college theater productions from throughout California, Utah, Arizona and Hawaii. More than 900 productions from schools nationwide entered the festival this year.
A national selection team viewed UNLV's "Falsettos," penned by William Finn and James Lapine, and chose it as one of six theatrical works to be performed -- not competitively this time -- at the Kennedy Center April 27-May 3.
Prior to its pair of scheduled performances there on May 1 and 2, "Falsettos" will again take the Judy Bayley stage Saturday night.
"It's probably (an honor) bigger than we realize," says UNLV student Jim Ballard, who plays the character of Whizzer. Ballard and one of his co-stars and classmates, Todd Horman, who plays Marvin, were also honored by KC/ACTF for their "performance excellence" following the shows at Chapman University (two of four actors from the region were honored).
Also, "Falsetto's" scenic, costume and lighting designers were invited to the regional festival. Its musical director and stage manager were given meritorious achievement awards by KC/ACTF, which also awarded another of the musical's stars, Amy Ross, a nomination for its Irene Ryan acting award.
Still, this is probably the first that most folks have heard of these accomplishments.
"I put it in sports terms," Ballard says. "UNLV finally had a decent basketball team this year, so they made it to the Final 64 (college teams that went to the NCAA tournament).
"Meanwhile, the theater department has already gone through its tournament and made it to the Final Four ... and Todd and I were kind of named MVPs. It's a big deal. I just have a feeling there won't be a TV crew waiting for us when we get off our plane (in D.C.), but that's OK," he says.
Horman isn't pouting, either.
"It's just interesting how (the athletic) department is perceived and how (the theater) department is perceived," he says. "Obviously there's a little more attention paid (to the basketball team), but it's always been like that.
"No matter if you're (veteran stage actors) Angela Lansbury or George Hearn in New York as a lead in a Broadway show," he says, "you're never going to make as much as Michael Jordon."
But the Kennedy Center performances are certainly a feather in the school's cap, says "Falsettos" director and UNLV Professor of Theatre Arts Bob Burgan.
It is the second time that the university has been invited to the festival (in 1975, "The House of Bernarda Alba" was honored), despite having entered a production nearly every year.
KC/ACTF has, however, given awards to UNLV students in other theatrical categories, including acting and playwriting, in years past. "We've gotten a lot of attention ... but not on this level for 23 years," Burgan says.
Rave revues
Deborah Anderson, a professor of acting and directing at Middle Tennessee State University, was one of four members of the national selection team that viewed "Falsettos" at Chapman University, as well as 58 other productions.
A trip to the Kennedy Center, she says, has long been considered "the Oscar for college. It's an amazing honor for the school."
Of "Falsettos," Anderson says UNLV's production was the best she's ever seen orchestrated by a university or a small professional theater. "I just thought the casting was excellent throughout."
She was among those in the audience wiping away tears toward the play's end, when a character succumbs to AIDS. "I took it pretty hard. They did it very well, they didn't schlock it up," she says.
Jerry Bliss, another member of the selection team and a theater teacher at Colby Sawyer College in New Hampshire, says "Falsettos" was "extremely well directed," considering the musical challenge of having all of the dialogue sung.
"It's almost like an opera," Bliss says. "The singing was so well integrated with the story ... we got emotionally involved. We understood the characters (and) what they needed. It was a very emotional and reaching-out-to-the-audience piece."
"It's a tour de force for singers," adds Jose Gonzalez, another selection team member and founder of the Hispanic Playwrights Project at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Southern California.
"You're basically singing the entire time, so you need voices that can carry it," Gonzalez explains. "It's really a touching story and to be able to technically pull it off musically and ... to bring a soulfulness to it is wonderful."
Emotional chords
Still, some audience members were rubbed the wrong way by the homosexual theme of "Falsettos." Ballard recalls how a few theatergoers left during performances at UNLV.
Much of the story follows the gay relationship that burgeons between Marvin and Whizzer. "Immediately they say, 'Oh, it's about homosexuality; they kiss on stage.' We don't kiss on stage, but they thought we would, so they leave," Ballard says.
Certainly homosexuality "plays a part, but I don't think it plays a huge part," Horman says, contending that the plot focuses more on Marvin's troubled relationship with his wife and teenage son. "Maybe at first it's, 'OK, they're gay,' but then, it's done with."
It's just one of several touchy subjects broached in the musical, he says.
"Yes, it's a homosexual couple, so you can be uncomfortable with that," Horman adds. "Yes, the play involved AIDS and that's going to cause some emotions to stir. There's a divorce (and) you've got a child in the midst of all this. There's a lot of stuff going on. I don't think I would call Las Vegas a theater town by any means, so (the topic) is something different.
"I don't think (audience members) were offended, but I think they were affected and that forced them to do something, whether it was to stay ... or get up and leave. In a way, I think we did our job in that respect."
Gonzalez agrees. "They should be very proud ... to be one of a handful across this nation that has been selected as one of the best of this art form," he says. "To be invited to the Kennedy Center ... shows a lot about the department. It shows a lot about the university."
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