Back to Laguna, where it all began

Tom Titus

Hello, Laguna. It’s good to be back.

Actually, I haven’t been that far away. Since 1993, the last time I

reviewed a show at the Laguna Playhouse (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”),

I’ve been confining my observations on local theater to the Costa

Mesa-Newport Beach area. Not of my own choosing, I assure you.

Time was, when the Daily Pilot covered all the theater in Orange

County, and occasionally the major productions in Los Angeles (“Les

Miserables,” “Phantom of the Opera”). But about a decade ago, the Pilot

became a community newspaper, concentrating on just two communities.

Laguna, however, holds special memories for me. Back in February of

1965, when I’d been covering the city beat in Costa Mesa for a little

over a year, a fellow reporter presented me with a pair of tickets and

asked if I’d like to review a play in Laguna.

Having developed a genuine affection for the theater after a 15-month

hitch at an Army base just south of Manhattan -- and spending most

weekends in the Big Apple taking full advantage of the USO’s free tickets

for servicemen -- I jumped at the chance. Thus it was that I began what

has become a 37-year career of reviewing and writing about local

theater.

That Laguna play, by the way, was “A Thousand Clowns” and featured

Mike Farrell in one of his many Laguna assignments before he went on to

bigger things such as “M*A*S*H” and “Providence.”

I was a regular visitor to the old playhouse on Ocean Avenue during

its last five years, and watched the new Moulton theater take shape in

1969. And over the years, 28 in all, I absorbed a lot of theater in

Laguna.

Most of it was generated by the playhouse’s longtime artistic

director, Douglas Rowe, who staged that production of “A Thousand

Clowns” and, it seemed, a thousand or so others before departing to

embark on a professional career. He was last seen enacting a title role

in “Caesar and Cleopatra” in 1990, under the direction of another Laguna

legend, Marthella Randall.

It was Doug Rowe who elevated the Laguna Playhouse from a pretty good

community theater to a showplace for professional-level artistic

excellence. When he left, his shoes were splendidly filled by the

playhouse’s present artistic director, Andrew Barnicle, who completed

the theater’s elevation to full Equity status.

I was just getting to appreciate Barnicle’s directorial skills when

the Pilot pulled in its horns, so to speak, but I understand he’s

applied a true professional gloss to this former community theater and

I’m anxious to resume my acquaintance. It was Barnicle’s terrific

“Midsummer” -- enriched by superb performances from George Woods, Debbie

Grattan and Mark Coyan -- that marked my last Laguna review nine years

ago.

Now, with the birth of the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot, I’m happy to

be returning to what my former, revered, managing editor, the late

Lagunan Tom Murphine, always called “the best of all possible coasts.”

See you at the playhouse.