‘Forever Plaid,’ Satire on ‘50s Pop, May Play at Old Globe

The Old Globe Theatre may have already lined up the show that will fill its last open summer slot on the main stage, July 18 through Aug. 25.

Stuart Ross, the New York writer and director of “Forever Plaid,” a still-running Off Broadway hit musical, said he has received an offer to stage the show at the Old Globe this summer--an offer he is “excited” about taking. All that remains is the signing of contracts, he said.

“Forever Plaid,” which opened in New York on May 20 last year, is the story of the Plaids, a mythical 1950s male quartet who were killed in a crash with a busload of parochial-school girls on Feb. 9, 1964.

At the time of the crash, the Plaids were on their way to pick up their custom-made plaid tuxedos for their first concert. As the show begins, the four, frozen in their hopelessly square 1964 sensibilities, are given one day back on Earth to give the concert.

They do it with the smooth four-part harmonies that were emblematic of their time, sanitizing such standards as “She Loves You,” so that “yeah, yeah, yeah” becomes “yes siree, Bob” and camping up a sing-along of “Matilda, Matilda” with bongos, maracas and illuminated bananas and jalapeno peppers.

James Raitt, cousin of singer Bonnie Raitt, did the arrangements.

Stephen Holden of the New York Times called the show a “thoroughly amusing, lightheaded spoof of the more insipid side of ‘50s pop culture.”

The sound track recording was released in November, and the show itself is being considered for film, television and comic book possibilities. It is also the first big musical success for Ross, 38, who was a co-writer and director of the 1988 Broadway musical “Starmites.”

Ross said he got the idea for “Forever Plaid” when his parents gave him the records they used to have in their jukebox in the diner they owned in Brewster, N.Y.

“I was looking at the record covers with the pictures of these guys who sang all these love songs, and they were completely square guys who didn’t look as if they’d ever experienced love,” Ross said. “I thought these were the 50s, with the nice guys who were trying to do what their parents liked. I started to write it as a sketch for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but it just kept getting expanded.”

Ross began working on the show in 1987, testing it out as a cabaret revue. But it didn’t take off until 1989, a year before the Off Broadway opening when he got the idea of killing them off and bringing them back to life.

“Killing them proved to be the magic touch,” he said.

Steve Gunderson, one of the co-writers and performers in “Suds,” a nostalgic send-up of Sixties music that was a big hit for the Globe in 1988, has been cast as an understudy for the New York show.

The San Diego actor, whom Ross originally spotted in the Off Broadway production of “Suds,” said he would love to be cast in the San Diego production.

That, like the contracts, remains to be seen. But Ross was full of praise for Gunderson’s work.

“He fits the part like a glove,” said Ross. “We love him.”

“Greater Tuna” has been mighty good to Jaston Williams, who performs in the two-man show with his co-creator, Joe Sears. But, after 10 years, enough is enough.

So, when the show, which pokes fun at 20-odd oddball residents in a small-minded town in Texas, bows in at the Spreckels Theatre April 16-21, it will be on its farewell tour.

“This is it, we’ve been telling people we’re not lying this time; we’re really going to let it go,” said Williams, 39, on the phone from Ft. Worth, Tex.

The show brought the two Austin, Tex.-based actors from obscurity to fame after the pair began writing the piece as an alternative to unemployment in 1981.

Two critics from New York who happened to be in town caught the show and loved it.

“One day you’re wondering where the $300-a-month rent is coming from,” Williams said. “The next day Variety gives you a rave and William Morris is on the phone. Within a year, we were in the top tax bracket.”

Not surprisingly, while Williams and Sears may be letting “Greater Tuna” go, they are not going to let it go all that far.

Working again with their co-writer and director Ed Howard, they already have a sequel, “A Tuna Christmas.” There are repeat characters in “A Tuna Christmas,” but also some new ones, including two waitresses who are partial to cowboys: Inita Goodwon and Helen Bedd. The pair plan to tour the show for a year, then open it Off Broadway in December, 1993.

Williams and Sears tried out “A Tuna Christmas” with some success at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1989-90. President and Mrs. Bush attended for their 45th wedding anniversary and liked the show so much that they asked Sears and Williams to return to do a special performance of new material for the wives of the Senate in June in the East Room of the White House.

It may surprise those familiar with “Greater Tuna” that a conservative president would be amused by the creators of a show that pokes fun at the smut watchers and book burners of the Moral Majority.

“We found them to be incredibly gracious and open-minded people,” Williams said of the Bushes. “Joe and I campaigned very hard for Ann Richards (the new Democratic governor of Texas), and the Bushes were aware of that. It made me feel good to know you could be on different sides of the political fence and still have your work respected.”

But Williams, a self-proclaimed liberal, also has found himself on the President’s side of the fence recently--particularly in his handling of the Persian Gulf Crisis. Williams’ only child, his son, served as a Marine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during the war. Williams is looking forward to playing San Diego because he expects his son to return to Camp Pendleton the same week that he will be performing here.

Eileen Bowman, the local actress who made a controversial splash playing Snow White opposite Rob Lowe at the Academy Awards presentation in 1989, has landed a part in the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s upcoming production of “Tales of Tinseltown,” opening May 30 at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre. Also starring is Melinda Gilb, who played the bad angel in “Suds” at the Old Globe, the San Diego Repertory Theatre and Off Broadway.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

REMEMBERING RADIO DAYS AT THE BOWERY

Looking for a laugh? There’s plenty to spare at the Bowery Theatre’s “The Laughing Buddha Wholistik Radio Theatre,” running through April 21. The format is a send-up of a live radio broadcast, complete with radio plays, tongue-in-cheek commercials and the ever-unexpected appearances from local celebrities--from politicos to artistic directors--doing their shtick on the Kingston Playhouse stage.