IF THEY CAN MAKE IT THERE ...; `CHAIM'S LOVE SONG' BEGAN IN THE VALLEY AND IS NOW AN OFF-BROADWAY SUCCESS STORY.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Last August, the night before the reviews came out, David Cox couldn't sleep. He and his partner, Edmund Gaynes, had learned that The New York Times wanted a photo of their off-Broadway show, ``Chaim's Love Song'' to run with a critique in the next day's editions.

That probably meant one of two things: Either the veteran San Fernando Valley producers had a bona fide hit on their hands, or they'd be packing their bags and heading home in about a New York minute.

So when Cox raced out to buy a paper the next morning and saw the large photo alongside a glowing review in The Times, he says, ``I started jumping up and down on Second Avenue. I said, `I can't read it, I'm too excited!' I was just beyond myself.''

In her review, critic Anita Gates described the play as a ``rich, affecting drama'' that ``balances wit and grave wisdom gracefully,'' producing ``a funny, philosophical, lovely evening.'' By the end of that day, ``Chaim's Love Song'' had taken in $5,000 in ticket sales.

The only person possibly more excited than Cox and Gaynes was playwright Marvin Chernoff, a Sherman Oaks resident who'd come to New York with his wife, Sharon Bloom, for the opening.

``I've never felt like that in my life,'' recalls Chernoff, 66, a professor in the department of educational psychology and counseling at CSUN who took up play-writing as a hobby 15 years ago.

``I'm normally very restrained. I went to the curb and pumped my arms like Mark McGwire: `Yes! Yes! Yes!' ''

Six months and some 200 performances later, Chernoff's warmhearted, nostalgic comedy about a retired Brooklyn Jewish mailman is still packing 'em in at the Raymond J. Greenwald Theatre, 307 W. 26th St. in New York's bohemian Chelsea district. A few weeks ago, its producers announced the show would extend its run there indefinitely.

That news was nowhere more welcome than 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles, where ``Chaim's Love Song'' has deep roots.

Initially developed at First Stage of L.A., a collective of actors, writers and directors that operates out of the Hollywood Methodist Church, the play received its first reading three years ago at the West Coast Jewish Theatre and ran for 5-1/2 months last spring at the Bitter Truth Theatre in North Hollywood.

Chernoff says he based the title character, 75-year-old Chaim Schotsky, on a 90-year-old Russian immigrant cousin of his, a onetime furrier and first-rate raconteur.

``One of the joys was, on Labor Day, he came to see it,'' Chernoff says. ``He's practically blind now, and he's widowed after 56 years, but he brought his girlfriend from his senior citizens center.''

When the show moved to off-Broadway last summer, its cast was about half made up of L.A. actors, including Allen Bloomfield as Chaim and Kathleen Marshall as the play's catalyst, a naive young Iowa transplant who befriends him.

Marshall is the actress-daughter of Hollywood producer/director Garry Marshall (``Pretty Woman,'' ``Happy Days''), who also owns the Falcon Theatre in Toluca Lake. In New York, the show is being presented by Cox's American Renegade Theatre in association with Gaynes and two other Valley producers, David Billotti and Leslie deBeauvais, who is executive director of Theatre of Hope for Abused Women (T.H.A.W.).

The play has other Valley ties. Cox, 61, who directed the New York production, is artistic director of the American Renegade and is credited with conceiving the idea for the NoHo (North Hollywood) Arts District, a city-sponsored confederation of more than 30 mostly small storefront theaters, galleries, restaurants and other businesses centered around the intersection of Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards.

Gaynes, 51, another local theater mainstay, runs the Two Roads Theatre in Studio City and is president of the Valley Theatre League and the just-opened Whitmore-Lindley Theatre Center in North Hollywood. In addition, he produced several one-person off-Broadway shows, including ``Einstein: A Stage Portrait'' at the Greenwald, ``Mattie: An Evening With Christy Mathewson'' at the Lambs' Theatre and ``Bein' With Behan'' at the Irish Repertory Theatre.

Yet Gaynes was uncertain when Cox first approached him with the idea of taking ``Chaim's Love Song'' to Manhattan.

``It was David's vision, it really was,'' Gaynes says. ``He called me up and he said I (should) take this show to New York. And I said, `Oh, that's a big step!' ''

Chernoff also was unsure about plunging into the New York fish tank, where off-Broadway production costs can run up to 10 times higher than in Los Angeles - typically $12,000 to $30,000 per week - and the critics have sharp teeth.

What's more, performance space has become tough to find in New York, where a resurgent off-Broadway scene combined with a buffed-out economy have created intense competition among producers.

Even so, the lure of New York proved irresistible. Gaynes called the Greenwald, and, he says, ``Amazingly enough, they were available.''

``If you're a baseball player, you want to play in the majors, if you're a math professor you want to teach at MIT,'' says Gaynes, a former actor who has performed in 13 Broadway and off-Broaday shows. ``We're all L.A. people now, but there's nothing like New York.''

Cox echoes the sentiment.

``Of course, my dream was Broadway, but off-Broadway is close enough,'' he says only half-joking.

Chernoff says he still can't believe the way his ``hobby'' seems to have taken on a creative life all its own.

``There's something about taking a blank piece of paper and writing something very personal that is your own. The only thing I can compare it to is like a woman giving birth,'' he says.

At present, Chernoff is busily working on a new play, ``Showtime at the Sheldon Pincus Senior Citizens Center,'' a nostalgic farce set in the milieu of turn-of-the-century Yiddish burlesque theater. Gaynes is producing the show, which is scheduled to open sometime in April at the Whitmore-Lindley Theatre. It will be directed by Gaynes' wife, Pamela Hall, an accomplished Broadway and regional theater actress.

As for ``Chaim's Love Song,'' will it be heard in L.A. again anytime soon?

``It's a possibility,'' says Gaynes. ``It certainly is not the next thing on the agenda. Right now we're negotiating with theaters in Florida, Ohio, Atlanta and various cities.''

As they say in New York, start spreadin' the news.

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Photo

Photo: The ``Chaim's Love Song'' crew: writer Marvin Chernoff, front; producer Leslie deBeauvais; producer Edmund Gaynes, center; and director David Cox.