Music Is by Des McAnuff, With Lyrics by Shakespeare

When he was 14, Des McAnuff was a rock and roller, a self-described “wild teen-ager” who spent his evenings playing guest sets at small Toronto clubs.

Then he heard songs from the 1968 musical “Hair” and “that gave me the disease,” as he puts it, of musical theater. He had performed in high school productions before, singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business” in “Annie Get Your Gun,” but theater “was just something that would get me out of classes.”

It was not until he was 17, when he auditioned for a local production of “Hair,” that he began to discover his calling. While he waited for the callbacks, he wrote a musical of his own called “Urbania.”

He ultimately didn’t get the part in “Hair,” but “Urbania” was a big hit at his high school and was later produced in a small professional Toronto theater. More plays and directing jobs followed.

And so McAnuff, now the 38-year-old artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, got his start in theater.

But he never forgot his first passion: Music.

For “Twelfth Night,” which opens Sunday under his direction, he has co-composed the songs with longtime collaborator Michael Roth. William Shakespeare wrote the lyrics.

The Playhouse hasn’t produced any of his full-scale musicals such as “The Death of Von Richthofen as Witnessed From Earth,” but alert Playhouse patrons may recall hearing McAnuff’s compositions or musical performance or direction of other people’s compositions through the years.

There was the time he played in a rockabilly band called the Cadillac Cowboys in “Gillette.” He also composed and performed the music that scored the falling leaves in “A Walk in the Woods.” He has directed four musicals at the La Jolla Playhouse including “Big River,” which won him a Tony for Best Direction of a Musical for the Broadway production. And, now, he’s co-written the songs for “Twelfth Night,” which he will only describe as “eclectic.”

Does he miss the life of a rock and roller?

“Rock and roll is a lot of fun and it’s very healthy,” he said in an interview in his office at the La Jolla Playhouse. “Toronto had a lucrative music scene. It was a long time before I made as much of a living from theater as I did from rock and roll.”

“But I was never crazy about gigging. It was very exhausting, you were genuinely working in rotten conditions and I never saw myself doing it as a career.

“The nice thing about working with theater is that it gave me more freedom to compose for different kinds of things. And I get to work with different musicians on a whole different level,” he said.

Some of those musicians he recently met on on that “different level” were none other than “Hair” creators Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot. He won’t say if the talks will lead to a show at the Playhouse, but he did admit, with a grin, that it was a kick to meet the people who unwittingly got him started in theater.

Casting is set for the mid-November opening of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company and it is bound to put a fresh spin on this already unusual love story. Director Will Roberson has cast the play interracially with black movie and television actress Pam Grier as the waitress and longtime San Diego actor William Anton as the short-order cook. Roberson, who previously directed the wildly successful productions of “Suds” and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” for the Old Globe Theatre, said he got the idea for interracial casting from playwright Terrence McNally himself.

“Terrence said he always wanted to cast it in New York with a black actress and a white man. But to my knowledge that’s never been done,” Roberson said on the phone from Phoenix where he is directing a play titled “Just Kidding.”

“I thought that was thrilling because it says a lot about why she is reticent about jumping into a relationship with him. With the color difference, it makes more sense.”

Even so, Roberson said that he auditioned actresses of all colors before settling on Grier.

“She was the best,” he said.

Roberson first got to know McNally when the playwright came to the Old Globe to work on “Up in Saratoga.” He got a chance to talk directly with McNally about “Frankie and Johnny” when McNally came to the Old Globe to see “Hamlet.” Roberson said that McNally, who will be in the Soviet Union at the time of the opening, has promised to come to see “Frankie and Johnny” sometime during its run.

Lamb’s Players Theatre’s 1991 season will kick off Feb. 22 with “The Rivals,” Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 comedy about an heiress’ determination to marry for love rather than money (this is the play which introduced Mrs. Malaprop and brought the word malaprop into the dictionary) The play runs through March 30. The season continues with Tom Griffin’s “The Boys Next Door,” a poignant comedy about four mentally retarded outpatients and the man who monitors them, April 19-May 25, Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” a story about a woman who wants to return to the land where she was born (it was made into the movie that won an Oscar for Geraldine Page) June 14-July 20, Marsha Norman’s “Traveler In The Dark,” a multigenerational tale about life, death and faith, Aug. 9-Sept. 14 and the musical “Quilters,” a musical about pioneer women, Oct. 4-Nov. 16.

PROGRAM NOTES: Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe, is heading to Kansas City this weekend in his other capacity as president of the League of Resident Theaters, known as LORT. On his agenda to discuss with other theater directors: the growing financial and artistic needs of regional theaters, shrinking financial resources, censorship, pressure by the Dramatists Guild for a uniform contract covering playwrights and Hall’s own goal of putting together a consortium of LORT and non-LORT theaters to finance a return trip of the Maly Theatre in Leningrad to San Diego and other American cities. . . .

San Diego State grad Kathy Najimy of “The Kathy & Mo Show” will play the wardrobe mistress in “Soapdish,” a new movie about the making of a soap opera that is set to star Sally Field, Whoopi Goldberg, Madonna and Robert Downey Jr. The scriptwriter is Robert Harling, who wrote “Steel Magnolias”. . . .

The Centro Cultural de la Raza will feature the Chicano Secret Service, a Berkeley-based comedy troupe, Oct. 20 as well as Las Comadres’ production of “Border Boda,” a story about women who have worked, married, given birth and died on the border on Oct. 26; the Spiderwoman Theater’s production of “Sun, Moon and Feather,” a story by, about and starring three Native Americans who see Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” as being parallel to their lives on Nov. 10, and “Ta’Yer,” a group of Los Angeles-based actors who interweave the story of Cortez’ conquest of Mexico with modern urban gang life on Nov. 24. All performances are free for seniors and children under 12. The tickets for adults are $5-10 depending on the show. . . .

Pay What You Can tickets for the La Jolla Playhouse production of “Twelfth Night” go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Playhouse box office and at the Educational Cultural Complex.