You May Have to Travel to See ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’

Never mind those San Diego Playgoers season brochures. If you want to see “Meet Me in St. Louis,” you may have to go to St. Louis, where the show begins its tour April 30 starring Debby Boone. Or Costa Mesa, New Orleans, Dallas, Tulsa, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Nashville, Phoenix, Houston or Minneapolis.

The previously announced plans of the Nederlander Organization to present the Broadway musical in San Diego in July seem to be in limbo right now.

According to Jeffrey Seller, booking agent for Paul Blake who is presenting the professional tour of the show, Nederlander gave him an offer he couldn’t accept. Instead of a guaranteed weekly income, Nederlander wanted to split the risk and the box office for the local production.

“As the booking agent, I have a route for ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ and San Diego is not on it, and I am not negotiating to put it on it. I have no expectation that we will play San Diego,” Seller said from New York. And yet, all that could change. Both Seller and Blake said they would love to play San Diego (and Los Angeles, which is also in limbo), if Nederlander makes them the right offer.

There are nine weeks between the show’s engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa from May 14-19 and its next stop in Dallas on July 15. It would be pretty easy to get San Diego and Los Angeles in there--if the parties concerned strike a deal.

All that may depend on how the opening goes in St. Louis. Blake, who is a personal friend of the Encinitas-based “Meet Me in St. Louis” composer, Hugh Martin, has worked with Martin and various designers to revamp the show. The goal, Blake said from Los Angeles, was to return the musical’s focus to the family, as it was in the movie version.

“This is my favorite childhood movie. This is one of the reasons I got into musical theater,” said Blake, who is also executive producer of the Muny Opera of St. Louis where the tour will debut.

Five new songs by Martin and his partner Ralph Blane were added and others taken out. New dances by Tony-award winning choreographer Donald Saddler, as well as new orchestrations, were added. Blake scaled down on the sets, cutting out the ice skating rink scene, and revised the book.

Nederlander is expected to send a representative to St. Louis to check out the opening.

“For all I know, they’re going to see the show in St. Louis and make me an offer,” said Seller. “I hope they do.”

That leaves “Les Miserables,” which San Diego Playgoers is presenting July 9-14 at the San Diego Civic Theatre, as the only firm fixture in the upcoming season.

But “Grand Hotel,” which opened Tuesday at the Orange County Center for the Performing Arts, has yet to be announced by the Nederlander Organization as part of its season package. However, according to the Jacksina Company, which is handling promotion for the show in New York, “Grand Hotel” is coming here as a San Diego Playgoers presentation Aug. 13-18.

The Bowery Theatre will substitute the previously cancelled “Stories About the Old Days” for “The Puppetmaster of Lodz” in the final slot of its season.

“Stories About the Old Days” is Bill Harris’ Off Broadway dramatic comedy about an elderly African-American couple who, during a series of encounters, help each other confront poignant issues from their pasts. It will star T.J. Johnson and Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson on May 11-June 30 at the Kingston Playhouse.

Bowery managing director Todd Blakesley said the company still hopes to mount “The Puppetmaster of Lodz” at a later date.

Of bilingual note: A theatrical adaptation of the poetry, prose and drama of Octavio Paz, who won the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature, will be produced by Teatro Mascara Magica in English at the Lyceum Stage on Saturday at 8 p.m. and in Spanish at 9 p.m. Two weeks later, on April 20, the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, a professional company based in Los Angeles, will tour its production of “Our Lady of the Tortilla,” starring Carmen Zapata, at Mesa College. The matinee performance at 3 p.m. will be in Spanish and the evening performance at 8 p.m. in English.

PROGRAM NOTES: Tom Dulack’s “Breaking Legs,” which had such a successful run when it premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in 1989, is finally heading Off Broadway to the Promenade Theatre on April 27. That’s the same theater where another Old Globe premiere, A.R. Gurney’s “The Cocktail Hour,” had a successful run in 1988. Although the Globe will have a financial participation in the show, there will be a change in director and performers. John Tillinger will direct and Philip Bosco and Vincent Gardenia will star. . . .

Harry Belafonte’s production company, Belafonte Enterprises, recently made a deal to produce the film version of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” a play that was produced at the Old Globe Theatre prior to its 1988 Broadway run. . . .

And the cast for “Three Sisters,” running May 12-June 16 at the La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Theatre, keeps growing. Michael Constantine, who won a San Diego Critics Circle Award for best actor in “A Walk in the Woods” in 1987, will return to the playhouse to portray Chebutykin, an Army doctor. Also cast: Michael McGuire, Kate Wilkinson, Bruce Ladd, Karenjune Sanchez and Josh Sebers. Phoebe Cates, Laura Innes and Nancy Travis are the three sisters with the sister-in-law, Natasha, to be played by Susan Berman, wife of artistic director Des McAnuff. McAnuff will direct. . . .

Sunday, the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards will honor Athol Fugard for best play for the La Jolla Playhouse production of “My Children! My Africa!” that played in Los Angeles. Brock Peters, who was also seen here in the play, will be honored for distinguished achievement for his performance in the show. . . .

Ensemble Arts Theatre, which is co-producing the American premiere of Jean Binnie’s “Lady Macbeth” with the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company beginning April 26, has cast Linda Castro as Lady M and Louis Seitchik as Macduff. The show will play in the Gaslamp’s small space. . . . San Diego Theatre League’s interpreted theater series, in which the organization provides interpreters for the hearing impaired, continues this year with “The Miracle Worker,” the story of blind and deaf Helen Keller, at the San Diego Junior Theatre. The theater league will provide an interpreter for the May 2 noon performance. A special footnotes to this production: The cast is getting a real-life lesson in what it means to have a disability. One of the newest students in the junior theater program, 14-year-old Stacy Gainok, an eighth-grader at Ray A. Kroc Middle School who plays a deaf student, actually is deaf and has been getting through rehearsals with the help of an interpreter. . . .

The Old Globe continues its Play Discovery Series on Monday with “Lost Causes and Impossible Loyalties,” based on a true Civil War incident. The playwright, Brent London, who is the first local writer to have a work selected for the series, based his story on a Confederate plot to burn down New York City during the latter months of the Civil War. The reading will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Cassius Carter Centre Stage.