Plays and Circuses

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ODD COUPLE: A year or so ago, Michael Jackson was nearly $400 million in debt, running a $30 million annual deficit, and in grave danger of losing his Neverland Ranch in Santa Ynez. Living with his three kids in some dumpy Las Vegas compound. Part-time Santa Barbaran Tom Barrack was worth an estimated $2.3 billion, which has recently descended into the multimillions (due to the economy, you know).

Now they’ve teamed up. Barrack wrote a $22.5-million check to save the ranch and helped arrange for Jackson to stage 50 upcoming concerts in London. They are sold out. Jackson now is ensconced in a Bel Air mansion, rehearsing, according to the L.A. Times. The ranch, meanwhile, has been stripped, the animals long gone, though the auction of Jackson’s belongings was saved from the auctioneer’s hammer at the 11th hour. Jackson himself has not been seen in Santa Barbara County since he beat that child molestation rap a few years ago.

On the Beat

DOLLARS ON WHEELS: Locals are grumbling about the City of Santa Barbara spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on that century-old luxury railroad car, at a time when the municipality is hurting big time. Campaign issue coming up?

ITALIANS IN LOVE: All’s well that ends well with Tony & the Soprano, a feel-good tale of love, laughs, and lyrics now on the boards at the Circle Bar B Dinner Theatre. You don’t like opera? You will when Santa Barbaran Stephanie Sivers (she’s the soprano) opens her lovely mouth. David Couch plays a mob hoodlum whose cold heart turns warm. But my heart was stolen by Fernanda Douglas, a Dos Pueblos first-year student who plays the pipsqueak of the bunch and who has a great future in show biz if she wants.

MANHATTAN STORY: If you take in the Ensemble Theatre Company’s current production of The Scene, you’re going to experience one of the most unforgettable characters — but a not very likeable one — seen in S.B. theater lately. There are words to describe Clea, played to the hilt by Annie Abrams, but, well, you’ll have to see for yourself. She blows into New York from Ohio and blows the hell out of the seemingly tranquil marriage of Stella (Colette Kilroy) and Charlie (David Nevell). She whips out words like a Valley Girl, and after a vodka or two she’s liable to leap on the nearest guy, including Charlie’s buddy Lewis (Daniel Blinkoff).

DANCING IN TAILS: Heiichiro Ohyama presents a very formal figure on stage, elegantly attired in tuxedo and tails, as conductor of the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra. And the pieces the 30-year-old orchestra plays tend to be traditional, to say the least. But at a recent concert, the group was bopping to the oom-pah, carnival-like sounds of Austrian composer Friedrich Gulda’s Cello Concerto. And there was Ohyama bouncing and dancing along. But music-lovers need not fear that Ohyama will be booking Gulda for a repeat of the all-Mozart performance he once staged with his girlfriend, both nude. Gulda died in 2000.

WE HAVE THE BEST? Paging through Vanity Fair, I spotted a full-page ad in which Ty Warner proudly proclaimed that his San Ysidro Ranch was named “America’s best hotel by Forbes Traveler.” Warner bought the property in 2000 and embarked on an ambitious three-year, $150-million renovation.

HOT BLOGS: Dunno how Jerry Roberts even has the time and ability to sniff out Sacramento political insider stuff from little old isolated S.B., but his new blog, Calbuzz, was just named by the Washington Post as one of the top California political Web sites. Jerry, former crack S.F. Chronicle political reporter and managing editor (and ex-exec editor of the lamented News-Press), has beaucoup contacts, natch. In handicapping the governor’s race, Calbuzz talked to my old buddy Jack O’Connell, state supe of public instruction, about Jack’s ambition to enter the race. For lo these many years I’ve figured that O’Connell, former assemblymember and state senator from Santa Barbara County, had the governor’s job in his sights. Don’t be surprised if he jumps in as a long shot. Calbuzz notes that Sen. Dianne Feinstein is playing coy about joining the race for governor, but predicts she won’t run, preferring the Obama era in D.C.

PHOENIX: The real estate market there has plunged to the extent that a three-bedroom, bank-owned home recently sold for (get this) $25,000. Moving up the food chain, a better house in a better neighborhood — bank-owned as well — was snapped up for a mere $205,000, according to the Arizona Republic newspaper. A five-bedroom, nice-looking place with three baths and about 3,000 square feet sold for $300,000. A beautiful (bank-owned) five-bedroom, three-bath, 3,000-square-foot “lightly lived-in” vacation home in Scottsdale with de rigueur slab granite kitchen counters and much more went for $546,500. Did I mention the 115-degree summers? Phoenix has seen home prices plunging from between 16 percent and 28 percent in the past year. A friend tells me that things are so bad in Las Vegas that you can pick up a condo for $20,000. (Did I mention the summers?)

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