Palos Verdes Players ‘hope our audiences don’t always expect us to do a comedy.’

A stroll through the lobby of The Palos Verdes Players theater is a journey through the history of the South Bay’s oldest community theater group.

There are framed programs, photographs and reviews of years of past productions--the likes of “Blithe Spirit,” “The Owl and the Pussycat,” “California Suite,” “The Fantasticks” and a smattering of light-hearted whodunits.

So why is this troupe, whose forte has been entertaining comedies and musicals, tonight opening a six-week run of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”?

After all, it’s a hard-edged drama about cruelty and liberation inside an Oregon mental hospital. There’s strong language and the good guy dies at the end.

“We’re doing it for the challenge,” says the play’s director, Michael White. “There’s not enough serious theater in the South Bay, which has tried to mass-produce Rodgers and Hammerstein and Neil Simon.”

White and others associated with the group see the drama as a sign of change for the venerable company, which performed its first play in 1934 in a room over a Palos Verdes Estates drugstore.

The 23-character play already has made a mark of sorts, attracting 230 actors for auditions, the most who have ever turned out for a Players tryout.

“We’d like the theater to become more a reflection of the time and where we are. Los Angeles is such an eclectic society,” said Jon Cusick. He heads the committee that chooses plays for the group, which combines amateur theater enthusiasts and career-minded actors who have professional credits.

Cusick’s aim is to mix “entertainment with strong plays” so that “people will know we’re here to do serious business” as well as stage popular fare.

Thus, next season’s seven plays include the familiar musical “110 in the Shade” and Simon’s “Rumors.” But it also has “Fences,” a powerful drama about a black family’s disintegration, and “Indians,” a play about American Indians that is funny and serious at the same time.

Change seems to be something that the Players have taken in stride for nearly 60 years. Following World War II, the group disbanded for nearly a decade, starting up again in 1953.

From 1964 to 1979, it had its own rented Palos Verdes Playhouse at Malaga Cove Plaza. The space was cramped and there was nowhere to build scenery, but 30-year Players veteran Dave Borst said that’s the period “we look back on with the greatest nostalgia.”

The playhouse was lost after the landlord rented the space to a commercial tenant. During the 1980s, the group wandered from this school to that and was located for a time at the Norris Theatre for the Performing Arts.

In February, 1990, the group moved into a brand-new theater of its own in Torrance, but that has been a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, the Players has what Borst calls a “dream” theater. It was created inside a warehouse with $35,000 borrowed from members of the group. The lofty auditorium seats 138 people, and there are rehearsal halls, dressing rooms and a meeting place for the group’s governing board.

But during two years of construction, the company was inactive and audiences found other places to go. And the new theater--in a long building with a blue awning tucked behind a Crenshaw Boulevard bowling alley--has been hard for people to find.

After playing to sparse houses for a year, the group scored a hit with “The Fantasticks,” the perennial nostalgic musical about young love. On opening night in January, the Players invited the entire Torrance City Council and Mayor Katy Geissert.

The curtain had to be delayed “because the mayor got lost,” said Betty Schroeder, who runs the box office. Later, the city helped the group get a sign directing people to the theater put up on private property at Crenshaw and Amsler Street.

The Players hope that “Cuckoo’s Nest” will also be a hit. But some concede that a drama about mental illness is a risky venture compared to the drawing power of a play with the innocent appeal of “The Fantasticks.”

Said Borst: “We just have to hope that our audiences don’t always expect us to do a comedy.”

What: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Where: The Palos Verdes Players, located behind the Palos Verdes Bowl at Crenshaw Boulevard and Amsler Street, Torrance.

When: Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; also Fridays and Saturdays through July 27.

Admission: $8.

Information: 326-2287.