Regional Plays Give N.Y. a Run for Its Money

SAN DIEGO — Here today, Broadway tomorrow.

Judging by this year’s Tony nominations, the distance between San Diego and New York is getting smaller all the time.

Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”--which received 11 Tony nominations last week and Monday was named best musical by the New York Drama Critics Circle--originated at the Old Globe Theatre.

The success of “Into the Woods” was no mere fluke, not just a one-time San Diego ride on the coattails of Sondheim’s fame.

“Into the Woods” was one of three shows nominated in best play categories to have begun as regional theater productions. “A Walk in the Woods” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” both began at the Yale Repertory Theatre, and, like “Into the Woods,” had San Diego runs before opening in New York.

Des McAnuff, the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, directed “A Walk in the Woods” from Yale to a hit run in La Jolla, where it attracted the attention of producer Lucille Lortel who in turn took the play, under McAnuff’s direction, to Broadway.

“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” which was chosen best new play of the 1987-88 season by the New York Drama Critics Circle on Monday, played at the Old Globe Theatre just before its Broadway debut.

The success of these three shows not only underscores the virtual parade of shows traveling from San Diego to New York in the past few years, it also points to San Diego’s growing identity as a town where theater is the top cultural activity.

The San Diego Symphony may have canceled an entire season last year after several near bankruptcies, but the past six years have seen the birth of several new stages: the Old Globe Theatre, rebuilt in 1981 after a disastrous fire like a phoenix rising from the ashes to critical acclaim; the Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts, completed in 1982 as a home for the La Jolla Playhouse, revived after an absence of 19 years; the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Stage and Lyceum Space in Horton Plaza; the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre’s Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre; and North Coast Repertory Theatre’s new enlarged space in the Lomas Santa Fe shopping center in Solana Beach.

Now, the Playhouse is planning a Weiss Forum with a new state-of-the-art thrust stage theater and campaigning for funds for another 400-seat “black box” theater. And new theater groups and makeshift stage areas are springing up in warehouses and galleries all the time.

The increased number of theaters means more jobs for quality actors, directors, designers and technical people, which means that more artists who used to move to Los Angeles and New York for work are seeing San Diego as a viable place to live. San Diego even established a local organization last year, the San Diego Actors Co-op, that has attracted over a hundred members, some of whom pay to fly in artistic directors from regional theaters across the country for casting calls.

The most famous among the San Diego/New York connections is, of course, “Big River,” the co-production by the La Jolla Playhouse and the American Repertory Theatre that won seven Tonys, including Best Play and Best Director for McAnuff, in 1985. But the others are also critically impressive, such as the special Tony for excellent regional theater won by the Old Globe Theatre in 1984 and the San Diego Repertory Theatre production of Romulus Linney’s “Holy Ghosts” that received raves as one of four plays selected by the Joyce Foundation for the American Theater Exchange program.

While the San Diego theater boom is exceptional in its size, it is also reflected in the explosion of regional theater across the country, and a concomitant decline in the ability of Broadway to generate its own original material.

When Lloyd Richards was in town directing “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” he called regional theater the “national theater” of the United States. And that increasingly is where the new plays in New York are coming from--the success of David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plough,” which originated on Broadway, being the exception.

In fact, the main competition for regional theater is not Broadway theater as much as it is foreign imports such as South Africa’s “Serafina” and Great Britain’s “Chess” and “Phantom of the Opera.”

Some of the plays originating in regional theaters are the works of established artists who are substituting San Diego for the old-time off-Broadway or pre-Broadway tryout towns.

Certainly, Sondheim’s choice of San Diego for staging “Into the Woods” was not so much a case of a theater taking a chance on Sondheim as much as it was Sondheim taking a chance on the Old Globe. What Sondheim sought was a less expensive, less pressured and more supportive artistic environment than that afforded by the traditional off-Broadway to Broadway route.

It is a similar sensibility that has led Neil Simon to commit to premiering his new play, “Rumors,” at the Old Globe Theatre at the end of this year’s season.

But the success of “Walk in the Woods” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” come under the heading of nurturing new playwrights.

Lee Blessing’s “Walk in the Woods” was directed by McAnuff at the Yale Rep, the Playhouse and Broadway. This led to a friendship between the two that will result in a world premiere of Blessing’s “Two Rooms” June 26 at the Playhouse.

Playwright Stephen Metcalfe, who had “Vikings,” “Strange Snow” and “The Incredibly Famous Willy Rivers” produced at the Globe, will have the world premiere of a cowboy musical, “White Linen,” at the Old Globe Aug. 13.

A.R. Gurney, who premiered “Another Antigone” at the Old Globe last year, is premiering “The Cocktail Hour” at the Old Globe on June 2. Even the small, non-Equity North Coast Repertory Theatre is developing its own relationship with a playwright. Jack Neary, who wrote “First Night,” a successful West Coast premiere at the North Coast Rep, was called back to do a world premiere of his new play, “Road Company,” opening June 3.

A new development in the theater scene, however, points the way to a future filled with even more intriguing possibilities. The exceptional success of “Suds,” the home-grown ‘60s musical that has become the Old Globe’s highest grossing show, demonstrates that a San Diego production, by San Diego artists, in a San Diego theater, can attract national attention.

Bryan Scott, one of the “Suds” producers, reports having already fielded “a lot of offers” and turned down one in Los Angeles because he feels that an L.A. run would hurt the show’s chances in New York.

“There’s a resistance from the New York critics to shows that come from Los Angeles,” said Scott. “An example of that is ‘Mail.’ It did outstandingly well at the Pasadena Playhouse. It garnered wonderful reviews there.”

“Mail,” which received lukewarm reviews in New York, closed last weekend.

“I think there’s a different attitude when it comes from regional theater, and the Old Globe being one of the most prestigious regional theaters seems to add to that,” Scott said. “I’ll be happy to have it play in Los Angeles-- after it plays New York.”

Amanda Plummer is in rehearsal for the new Lee Blessing play having its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse June 26-31.

The four-person play, originally called “A Quality of Tears,” has been renamed “Two Rooms”--its only major change, according to Des McAnuff, artistic director of the Playhouse, who is directing the production. Blessing, who tackled the issue of arms control in last season’s “A Walk in the Woods,” which recently received a Tony nomination for Best Play of the 1987-88 season, wrote “Two Rooms” about an American kidnapped in Beirut.

The title reflects the setting, which takes place in two rooms, one outside Washington and the other in Beirut. Plummer plays the wife of the hostage. Brent Jennings is cast as her husband, Jo Henderson as a Department of State official and Jon deVries as a reporter.