Irish Play ‘Rememberance’ Added to Globe Offerings

The West Coast premiere of “Remembrance” will run May 4-June 16 at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Graham Reid’s lavishly reviewed off-Broadway play tells about a growing love between a widowed mother and a widowed father of two young men killed upholding opposite sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

It is the first play of Irish playwright Reid, who was born in Belfast, to be produced in this country. Reid now lives in London.

“Remembrance” replaces the previously announced “La Fiaca” in that time slot. “La Fiaca” will move to the Festival ’91 summer season to accommodate the schedule of director Lillian Garrett. It will play Sept. 11-Oct. 27 at the Cassius Carter. The busy and multitalented Garrett, playwright of the still-running “The White Rose” at the Old Globe, will take on acting duties in spring in Robert Schenkkan’s two-part, nine-act epic, “The Kentucky Cycle,” at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre Company.

The six-play summer season also includes two previously announced Shakespeare plays, “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Tempest,” to be alternated in repertory at the Lowell Davies Festival Stage. Old Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien will direct “The Merchant of Venice” June 21-Sept. 8 and Adrian Hall will direct “The Tempest” Aug. 2-Sept. 29. Old Globe veteran actor Richard Easton will portray both Antonio in “The Merchant of Venice” and Prospero in “The Tempest.”

The world premiere of Velina Hasu Houston’s also previously announced “Necessities,” a story about a successful film producer determined to acquire a child, will run July 3-Aug. 18 at the Cassius Carter. It will be directed by Julianne Boyd. Negotiations are still under way for two productions for the Old Globe Theatre from July 11-Aug. 18 and from Sept. 5-Oct. 13.

In light of the Middle East crisis, many dwell on what seem to be insoluble problems between people.

But for George Saadeh, a Palestinian-born Arab who had to relocate with his family when Israel became a country in 1948, the differences between people are not as important as the striking similarities.

“I’m proud of my own, but people are people,” said Saadeh, 48, chairman of the board of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company. “For many, many years, I wanted to show how people can coexist in love and marriage and trust with all the adversities against you.”

Saadeh practices what he preaches. He has been married to a Jewish woman for 23 years.

So it isn’t all that surprising that the former Old Globe board member is now pouring most of his effort into saving a small, struggling company that plans to unveil the third-annual Streisand Festival of New Jewish Plays on Feb. 25 . In April, the company follows with the local premiere of “A Shayna Maidel,” a story about two sisters separated by the Holocaust.

“A Shayna Maidel,” Saadeh said, is one play he is “dying to see.”

Saadeh met his wife, Carolyn, in Washington at a singles party less than a month after the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. In the war, the Palestinians lost the West Bank, including Ramallah, where Saadeh’s family used to live.

Carolyn, a native of Dayton, Ohio, whose family had lived in Washington for years, decided, on the dare of a friend, to pretend she was an Israeli just to see how if they could get a reaction from this Palestinian Arab in the wake of the war.

“She put on an accent similar to mine, and it was the most frustrating evening for her because for four hours we sat and talked, and we didn’t talk about where she was from,” recalled Saadeh. “I said, ‘Let’s have a good time. I’m looking at the greatest blue eyes that were ever created.’ ”

That meeting led to a date, and that date led to an embarrassed confession from Carolyn that she was Jewish, but not Israeli, as she at last dropped the accent.

They were married by 1968, and the wedding process immediately tested the couple’s strength.

The two mothers disagreed on how many people make up a family wedding.

For Carolyn’s mother, an immediate family of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and first cousins numbered about 120. George’s mother was thinking more along the lines of third and fourth cousins for a group that would number in the thousands.

George and Carolyn said with a smile that once they were able to get that list down to 120, they knew they could weather any crisis.

PROGRAM NOTES: The La Jolla Playhouse may be closed for the winter, but the shows go on. Two Playhouse productions scheduled in honor of Black History Month are opening elsewhere soon: The world premiere of “The Heliotrope Bouquet,” co-produced with the Center Stage in Baltimore, opens in Baltimore on Wednesday and plays through April 7. The show heads here Aug. 11. And the Playhouse production of “My Children! My Africa!” runs Feb. 21-March 24 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. . . .

Meanwhile, the world premiere of the Old Globe’s co-production of “The Snow Ball” with the Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, Conn., opens in Hartford on Friday and runs through March 16. Old Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien, who is directing, will be in Hartford for opening night, as will Old Globe managing director Thomas Hall. “The Snow Ball” opens here May 9. . . . It’s the briefest of extensions: “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson,” which was scheduled to close Saturday night at the San Diego Rep, will have a final performance Sunday at 2 p.m. The playwright, Amiri Baraka, plans to take his wife, Amina Baraka, to the show on Valentine’s Day. . . .

San Diego Rep has finally raised the $350,000 needed to complete this past season. Now it’s on to a stabilization campaign, with the goal of raising $500,000 by September. The upcoming season is not in danger, a spokeswoman said. . . .

Bowery managing director Todd Blakesley and Burnham Joiner not only wrote the upcoming production of Bowery Theatre’s “The Laughing Buddha Wholistic Radio Theatre,” opening Feb. 28, but they will appear in it as actors as well. Rounding out the cast are Bowery development director Allison Brennan and Ensemble Arts Theatre member Paul Jennings, as well as Robert Larsen, Erin Garrett and Melissa Reaves, a radio traffic announcer.