STAGE NOTES : Twisted Path Ends Well for Theater Head : Despite a series of stumbling blocks, Tony Reverditto of Santa Ana's Way Off Broadway Playhouse gets the go-ahead for "Psycho Beach Party."

STAGE NOTES : Twisted Path Ends Well for Theater Head : Despite a series of stumbling blocks, Tony Reverditto of Santa Ana’s Way Off Broadway Playhouse gets the go-ahead for “Psycho Beach Party.”

By JAN HERMAN

Aug. 8, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

For Tony Reverditto, who heads the Way Off Broadway Playhouse in Santa Ana, a personal request is worth a thousand phone calls.

Or so he recently discovered in a successful bid to stage Charles Busch’s “Psycho Beach Party,” which opens Aug. 15 at the basement theater.

The play for that midsummer slot had been Allison Gappa’s “State of Mind,” but at the eleventh hour it turned out that Gappa wouldn’t have the script ready. Desperate for a replacement, Reverditto dipped into the trusty Samuel French play catalogue.

“I looked for the most outrageous title I could find,” the producer-director recalls. “ ‘Psycho Beach Party’ was prime for us. We’d done a lot of campy stuff before.”

But when Reverditto applied for the stage rights, he was turned down. French, which licenses the play, indicated that the rights had been restricted within a 75-mile radius of Los Angeles.

Reverditto decided to check further. He phoned Busch’s literary agent at the William Morris Agency in New York and, after more calls than he cares to remember, was told that his message would be passed along to Busch.

In the meantime, Reverditto was instructed to fax his request along, as well as write-ups about some of Way Off Broadway’s recent productions. He did. Ten days later he got an answer: Busch wasn’t in New York. He was in Hollywood. Send him a letter.

Reverditto’s associate producer, Denison Glass, had a better idea. Since they’d been given the address, why not make the request in person? Both of them showed up on Busch’s doorstep, rang the buzzer and got in to see the playwright on the pretext of delivering a package. The rest is theatrical history, or will be when “Psycho Beach Party” opens.

“The whole play is a takeoff on the Gidget beach movies of the ‘60s,” Reverditto says. “The central character is Chicklet. She has multiple personalities. The scene is Malibu.”

Incidentally, Busch’s earlier “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom” was a surprise hit in New York several years ago.

Information: (714) 547-8997.

NEW TICKET: Classroom by day. Theater by night.

That is to be the arrangement for the Orange County Coalition for the Arts, a troupe of playwrights and directors that has rented a small industrial space in Costa Mesa as its first permanent home.

The coalition, which has hopscotched around the county from Fullerton to Santa Ana to Anaheim since 1987, plans to convert the space into a 38-seat theater to be shared with a commercial media school for children.

“They’ll have classes in the afternoons, and we’ll rehearse and run our shows in the evenings,” says Steve Wilbur, the coalition president and one of its founders.

Wilbur, 32, says the amateur troupe has produced about 10 plays to date.

“They’re all by Orange County writers,” he notes. “And we use only Orange County actors. We’re really strict about that.”

The coalition of five core members--including Kent Hawkins, Walter Brown, Roosevelt Blankenship and Steven Mills--has rented the space at 729 West 16th St. on a monthly basis from the Orange County Centre for Media Arts, Wilbur says.

A six-play season of low-budget productions is to begin with Hawkins’ “A Bus Called Lust,” described by Wilbur as a parody of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” It will run from Aug. 31 to Sept. 29.

The rest of the 1990-91 schedule: Al Parrish’s “Snakes,” a drama based on a labor dispute (Oct. 12 to Nov. 16); Jerry Gordon’s “Eleven to Eleven” and Paisley Yankolovich’s “A Call to Paul,” a pair of one-acts dealing with sibling rivalry (Nov. 30 to Dec. 29).

And Ruddy Rich’s “The Pier,” a comedy about beach life in Huntington Beach (Jan. 18 to Feb. 23); Hawkins’ “Jack, Lee, Althea and Me,” a comedy involving Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald (March 8 to April 13); “Words Like These . . . II,” a series of vignettes about prejudice by various writers (April 26 to June 1).

Information: (714) 991-8556.

ALIVE AND WELL? They’ve put on one production--”Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris”--and now they’re holding a fund-raiser.

The benefit for Irvine’s Backstage Theatre on Aug. 15 is to be at Gibson’s Food Emporium (Culver Drive and Walnut Avenue, Irvine). They’re calling it “A Taste of Cuisine and Culture.” It has three acts: Meat Department, Produce and Bakery. Information: (714) 474-0792.