Wicked Little Town

Untimely Exit for Stage Fave

You'd have to go back to the sudden death of "Rent"'s young composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson in 1996, on the eve of the work's Off-Broadway premiere, to find a theatrical tragedy as untimely and bewildering as Kellie Waymire's death, apparently from natural causes, last week.

A small, sweet-faced actress with serious theatre chops and some resemblance to Renee Zellweger, Waymire had returned from a TV shoot on Thursday evening, in time to go onstage that weekend for her critically acclaimed run in "Kate Crackernuts" at the 24th Street Theater. It was her boyfriend, scenic designer Gary Smoot, who found her on the kitchen floor at 1:30 Friday morning, according to sources involved with the show.

Friday night's performance was cancelled, and the cast and crew gathered at the theater, shaken, to sort out their feelings. They thought of how insistent Kellie, a busy TV actress, had been that she appear in as many performances of the play as she could. Her understudy had gone on a few times, but Kellie made a point of scheduling her TV commitments around the play's run as much as she could.

There was no contest, then, said director Jessica Kubzansky: The best way to honor Kellie's commitment to show was to go on with the remaining three performances, last Saturday and this coming weekend.

Eerily, one of Kellie's co-stars told Wicked Little Town that at a post-performance gathering the week before, the cast had been trading stories about their worst fears. Kellie's was that she would die in her home and not be discovered for days.

That her significant other found her so relatively quickly after death is very small comfort. But we take comfort where we can when confronted by such a senseless loss.

The Queen Is Dead, Long Live the Queen

How many performers get a standing ovation five weeks after they're put in the ground? A precious few -- maybe at the Oscars now and then.

Precious is definitely one word for the late Pamela Gordon, whose towering legacy on the local stage scene was honored with this week with a moving 90-minute memorial tribute at Evidence Room, one of the 66-year-old actress' theatre homes. Other words would include "mysterious, wickedly funny, and graceful" (playwright Kelly Stuart), "a gift to writers" (playwright Jennifer Maisel), "innately lively" (playwright Dennis Miles), "so frail, delicate, and beautiful -- and then she spoke" (filmmaker Jacques Thelemaque). Afterwards, I spoke to Shannon Holt, who called Pamela "the queen of the tribe" of L.A. theatre makers.

In attendance were such luminaries as Megan Mullally, Leslie Hope, Dan Butler, and David Schweizer. Highlights included actress Ames Ingham's teary tribute to her "theatre mother and sister"; a reading by Robert Fieldsteel from a wacky 20-year-old play script that writer/director John Cassavetes had tailored to Pamela's talents, opposite his wife, Gena Rowlands; and a closing tribute of clips from Pamela's wide range of on-camera work. This visual record is not all that remains of Pamela's indomitable, questing spirit. Critic Steven Leigh Morris -- who called one turn of hers "a cross between a phantom and an elf" -- aptly reminded us that there are "performances of Pamela that will live on in the minds of anyone who saw her." Or heard that dusky, husky voice, or that cackling guffaw.

If you listen, you can still hear its echo bouncing around the stages of L.A.