The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 51

Wxt iPfitlaklpfiiaKnquirer Section How do workers feel about companies? Hate 'em. E3. Ann Landers E2 Comics E8 Consumer Reports E2 In Performance E4 Kids' Talk E2 Newsmakers E2 Prime-Time TV Grid E6 Radio Highlights E7 TVRadio Talk Cokie Roberts: Will the "sensible sister" of "This Week" stick around, post-Brinkley? Gail Shister, E6. Lifestyle Entertainment Tuesday, October 24, 1995 LjtiWlf'lUli 1VJL jy Salons for small-fry It's the latest style: Some shops specialize in cutting children's hair. And many kids really will sit still for it.

By Dcnise Cowic INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Jocelyn Levy drove from Northeast Philadelphia to try out Cartoon Cuts in Willow Grove Park mall. She knows her two youngsters can be tough customers when it comes to getting their hair cut. "They freak out, they cry. That's why I think this is great," says Levy, who spotted the recently opened salon for children on a previous trip to the mall and decided It might be just shakes her ponytailed head firmly, unmoved by the lure of green elephants spraying water through their trunks at the shampoo station, pink palm trees overhead or even Barney on video. Can a toddler resist the forces of high-concept marketing? (Can Elmer Fudd fool the Wascally Wabbit?) Stay tuned.

Cartoon Cuts opened in Willow Grove in July, just a few months after a sister store set up shop in Flourtown. Geared to entertainment, and servicing mostly children under 12, the salons joined a variety of kid-friendly busi- i nesses. Zoe Caldwell won the leading actress award for her portrayal of Maria Callas in "Master Class. i MP if 1 tr what the barber ordered. "For four years he gave me a really hard time," she says of her son, Elan, 5.

"I used to have to hold him in my lap and hold him down. Then, "he was saying, don't wanna get my hair cut, I don't wanna get my hair And look at him." She gestures across the salon to where Elan sits, eyes glued to a video playing in front of him, while stylist Melissa Eberz clips his locks. He barely seems to know she's there, and the second she's through, he heads for the computer and video corner to play Sega Genesis. So, do you like this place, Elan? "Yes." What do you like about it? "Everything." This day, it's his younger sister, Ariella, who is the challenge. The energetic 3'2-year-old has had a great time checking out the toys and building a skyscraper of brightly colored blocks, but a haircut? Uh-uh.

She "We looked at a lot of demographics before launching Cartoon Cuts, and found that it's a huge market that nobody is filling," says Dennis Hogan, who helped found the Virginia-based chain in 1991. "All the baby boomers are having kids, and the marketing specialization to children has thus grown." It has. Lots of businesses, from educational-toy biggies such as Zany Brainy to kids' outfitters such as the Children's Place, have proved that small fry can translate into big business. First, though, they have to appeal to children themselves, and Cartoon Cuts has done this with vivid primary colors and cartoon cutouts, video and computer games, an arts and crafts play area and televisions at every styling station. But it isn't the only salon catering See CHILDREN on E3 4 I Wilma Theater stars at Barrymores It was a flashy debut for the awards ceremony.

At first, as Dominique Nelson gives him a shampoo, Jeremy Kolar, 2, isn't happy about being at Cartoon Cuts in Willow Grove Park mall. iiiiiMMiBiiiMMiiiiiiMiiiiMiiiimwiHiiiiiiiii hi ii i in iini i i i i I wnniLiiiniiPijyi niiwnniiwiiiwiiininiiMPiimi iij ii iw ii i i jiiim n'W11! mw pi i mm i I tf v- s. I ii I 'i s' -ft 'i 7 3: 1 By Clifford A. Ridley INQUIRER THEATER CRITIC The Wilma Theater dominated the first annual Barrymore Awards ceremony last night in the Annenberg Center's Zellerbach Theatre, winning seven of 21 awards for acting and production. The awards honored achievements by Philadelphia nonprofit theaters in the 1994-95 season.

The Wilma's production of Jim Cart-wright's blistering English drama Road won four awards, including citations to Pearce Bunting for his leading performance as a sardonic street person and to Blanka Zizka for her direction. Zizka shared the play-direction award with Mary B. Robinson, whose staging of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men was the Philadelphia Drama Guild's last show before the company collapsed early this year. The Wilma also was honored for its private-eye musical Gunmetal Blues, which won three awards including an outstanding-musical-actress prize for Alison Fraser. Denis Lawson of the Walnut Street Theatre's Lust was named outstanding actor in a musical.

The Philadelphia Theatre Company won three awards, all for its world premiere of Terrence McNally's Master Class, which opens Nov. 5 on Broadway. McNally's audaciously theatrical play about a tutorial conducted by soprano Maria Callas was named the outstanding production of a play, and Zoe Caldwell won as expected for her galvanic performance as Callas. Her award was accepted by Sara Garonzik, See BARRYMORE AWARDS on E10 The Philadelphia Inquirer REBECCA BARGER Each hair station has its own TV, and Jeremy calms down and gets absorbed in a Barney video, allowing stylist Nelson to cut his hair. Personal Briefing by Marc Schogol appears on E3.

Oil IVIUSiC By Tom Moon Electric Factory promises its audience the magic of discovery cues from the austere, functionality-first, post-grunge rock ethic. The Electric Factory's three-bands-per-night lineup ensures that local artists will play in front of crowds that could swell to 3,000 people. Its profile virtually guarantees that some area acts will launch successful, long-term careers from its stage. The open-booking policy will allow T71Mf. Porfortq PVP to Hf what it did at the original club and its successors, and what it does now at the Theatre of Living Arts: nurture and expose worthy but under-recognized talent.

EFC honcho Larry Magid preaches the wisdom of developing arena-level head-liners, and this club will certainly fit into a road map that progresses from local clubs into larger spaces such as the Electric Factory, then arenas. That's important, but expect the Factory to do more. It'll be home to a slew of artists who don't want to go into arenas, but command a sizable audience all the See ELECTRIC on E5 discovering new music and the cultivation of an engaged, knowledgeable, diverse audience to appreciate it. At a time when caution is the norm, when the big guns of the music business strive for safe sellers and indulge the more visionary artists as tax write-offs, Electric Factory Concerts is going to extravagant lengths building something Almost from scratch tn shnwrnep tnlont Rather than devoting its full energy to booking the Eric Claptons and the obvious mega-stars into the Spectrum, the organization has filled a void in the city's venue lineup with an inspiring, impressively adaptable space. The room, on Willow Street between Callowhill and Spring Garden, Sixth and Seventh Streets, is a big old playpen that will no doubt expand the horizons of its patrons.

It borrows its name from an important part of Philadelphia rock history the original Electric Factory, at 22d and Arch, was from 1968 to 1970 the city's most important venue, hosting Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis but takes its architectural The triumph of the Electric Factory, the new flexible-capacity nightclub in the warehouse district north of Old City, is not its sound system, which pumps 25,000 watts of power into a massive steel, glass and concrete structure that seems uniquely suited to this purpose. It's not the clean and large bathrooms though the proprietors ot the Troca-dero, the Chinatown theater that stands to lose business to the new hall, might glean some remodeling ideas here. It's not even the two-tiered design that allows patrons of all ages to watch on the ground floor while those 21 and over enjoy their favorite beverages in a spacious balcony area. The real victory is not nearly so physically obvious except, perhaps, on the marquee. It has to do with creativity.

This is an attempt by one veteran concert promoter to restore a bit of music-oriented thinking to a business that is too often done by rote. It's about the magic of The Philadelphia Inquirer DIRK SHADQ The June Rich band, with Jackie Murphy (left) and Vanida Gail, helps inaugurate the new Electric Factory. The nightclub opened Oct. 11..