TOM TITUS -- Theater

South Coast Repertory audiences will get two fewer plays next season,

but the Costa Mesa company will make up for it the following year, when

its newest and largest stage becomes operational.

SCR’s 38th season -- counting a three-show summer in Long Beach in

1964, before the company put down roots in our backyard the following

year and became South Coast Repertory -- still will have its share of

first looks. Three world premieres and the first West Coast production of

a new play are on the 2001-02 schedule.

This final season before the expanded three-theater complex opens has

been shortened by one production each on the Mainstage and Second Stage

to accommodate construction of the new theater. This project not only

includes the Judie Argyros Stage, named for a significant benefactor, but

also additional offices, classrooms and technical support facilities.

It also will mark the last hurrah of the Second Stage, which will be

converted to a 99-seat multipurpose performing space. And, according to

David Emmes, SCR’s co-founder and producing artistic director, “the final

season in the Second Stage will be a potent example of what this stage

has come to represent in SCR’s history.”

The 38th SCR season will get underway just after Labor Day -- with

previews starting the preceding weekend -- when W. Somerset Maugham’s

“The Circle” opens on the Mainstage. This is an English drawing room

comedy described as “a commentary on one generation’s inability to learn

from another’s mistakes.”

Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming,” which SCR previously staged in 1968,

when the theater was located in downtown Costa Mesa, is ticketed for a

mid-October opening. This “comedy of menace” centers on a family’s

reaction to an uninvited and unwanted guest.

Another SCR favorite, Moliere -- whose “Tartuffe” was the company’s

first local production -- contributes the third Mainstage production,

“The School for Wives.” This play is about a prospective bridegroom who

keeps his intended “under wraps,” so to speak, until they can wed.

Predictably, complications ensue.

Following a new play in February, as yet unannounced, the short season

will close in early April with the world premiere of Horton Foote’s

“Getting Frankie Married -- and Afterwards.” It’s a comedy about an

ailing Texas matriarch determined to see her son wed before she cashes in

her chips.

The new season on the Second Stage will lead off with back-to-back

world premieres -- “Hold Please,” by Annie Weisman, and “Nostalgia,” by

Lucinda Coxon. The first entry focuses on women in the workplace, while

the second is a drama set in south Wales merging mythology and mystery,

with an appearance by Sherlock Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The January slot in the downstairs theater is unfilled, awaiting a

prospective tenant. The Second Stage season will close in late March with

“The Dazzle,” the West Coast premiere of a play set in the early 20th

century by SCR favorite Richard Greenberg, who’s had five plays born at

the Costa Mesa theater.

While the season is being trimmed a bit, SCR’s annual holiday

favorites still will return for their 22nd and eighth incarnations,

respectively. “A Christmas Carol” will again unfold on the Mainstage,

while “La Posada Magica” weaves its spell downstairs.

Only one element is absent in SCR’s announced schedule -- the annual

American classic, which in past seasons has included “Death of a

Salesman,” “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “All My Sons.” Hopefully, such

a worthy project will surface in one of the “to be announced” slots.

* TOM TITUS writes about and reviews local theater for the Daily

Pilot. His stories appear Thursdays and Saturdays.