New season offers oldies, newcomers

Tom Titus

No sooner did I step off the plane at John Wayne Airport after a

vacation in England and Scotland last week than I was confronted with

a full plate of theatrical goodies requiring my attention. The

2003-04 season is under way.

First out of the chute was a particular favorite, “Forever Plaid,”

which opened Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and

which should be discussed elsewhere in this section. This whimsical

piece of musical nostalgia takes audiences back to the 1950s and the

days of harmonizing quartets and such ditties as “Three Coins in the

Fountain” and “Love is a Many Splendored Thing.” Some lucky lady in

the audience will find herself accompanying the group on piano for

the “Heart and Soul” number.

South Coast Repertory will take its patrons even further back

beginning Saturday with “The Last Night of Ballyhoo” by Alfred Uhry

(“Driving Miss Daisy”) on the theater’s Segerstrom Stage. The scene

is Atlanta during the 1939 premiere of “Gone With the Wind,” but the

spotlight falls on a local Jewish family and its annual Ballyhoo

dance.

Also opening this weekend in an extended engagement will be the

Peanuts musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” at Costa Mesa’s

Vanguard University. The comic strip characters come to life in this

lyrical rendition of Charlie’s trials and tribulations in school, on

the baseball diamond and in the romantic arena. Good grief. Life can

be tough when you’re a kid.

Neil Simon’s 1991 Pulitzer Prize winner, “Lost in Yonkers,” has

thus far eluded local theaters, but all this will be rectified Sept.

12 when the Newport Theater Arts Center mounts the local premiere of

Simon’s memory play about a domineering grandmother, her retarded

daughter and other family members, including two grandsons suddenly

placed in her charge. It promises to offer the usual later Simon

formula of laughter mixed with tears.

Orange Coast College, normally a hotbed of theatrical activity,

has seen its theater program shaved by state budget cuts, but the

shows will go on -- just not as many and not as ambitious. Opening

the OCC season Sept. 13 will be “Some Men Need Help,” the story of a

young alcoholic, staged by the college’s Repertory Theater Company.

Long before “Phantom of the Opera” and “Sunset Boulevard,” Andrew

Lloyd Webber was getting his musical feet wet with lyricist Tim Rice.

The result was “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which will be revived at the

Center beginning Sept. 16. This powerful chronicle of Christ’s last

days features such now-classic numbers as “I Don’t Know How to Love

Him.”

SCR’s Julianne Argyros Stage launches its new season Oct. 3 with

“Anna in the Tropics,” a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz,

whose “Two Sisters and a Piano” was staged by the Costa Mesa company

in 1999. This one centers on Cuban-American workers in a Florida

cigar factory in pre-Depression Florida and the effect that a reading

of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” has on them.

OCC’s Repertory returns to the fore Oct. 4 with its annual “Ten or

Less Festival,” a collection of plays 10 minutes in length or

shorter. This project usually includes student-created one-acts.

The temperature on SCR’s Segerstrom Stage will drop appreciably

Oct. 17 with the arrival of Ted Tally’s “Terra Nova.” Set in the

winter of 1911-12, the drama traces the Antarctic expedition of the

compulsive explorer Robert Falcon Scott in his struggle to reach the

South Pole ahead of Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Bring a sweater.

Halloween weekend will see 20 little indians” mounting local

stages, 10 of them at the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse and the other 10

at the Huntington Beach Playhouse. Costa Mesa’s production of the

Agatha Christie whodunit “Ten Little Indians” opens Oct. 30. The

Huntington Beach version of the same play opens Oct. 31.

OCC mounts its annual “Shakespeare Month” production, the comedy

“Twelfth Night,” beginning Nov. 7. The college anticipates a greater

turnout than usual for this one and has scheduled it for a

three-weekend run rather than the normal two.

Shakespeare returns to the local scene the next weekend when the

so-called “Scottish play,” otherwise known as the tragedy “Macbeth,”

arrives at Vanguard University Nov. 14. This saga of bloodlust and

wholesale slaughter may not be for the squeamish, but it’s among the

Bard’s most powerful works.

While the bloodthirsty Scots are at it in Costa Mesa, more blood

will be spilled at UC Irvine when Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,

the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” administers a few close shaves. It

will also open Nov. 14, at the Claire Trevor Theater. This operatic

thriller also offers some bizarre comic touches.

Another Nov. 14 opener will be a comic classic from an English

playwright, albeit in a much lighter vein than either the Shakespeare

or the Sondheim. Oscar Wilde’s last play, “The Importance of Being

Earnest,” takes the stage at the Newport Theater Arts Center to

demonstrate the comedy of manners from the late 19th century.

UCI’s drama department swings back in action on Dec. 4 with

Christopher Fry’s “The Lady’s Not for Burning,” a witty romantic

frolic. It’ll only be on stage for one weekend, at the Little Theater

in Humanities Hall.

SCR’s traditional Christmas treats -- the 24th annual staging of

“A Christmas Carol” on the Segerstrom Stage and the 10th production

of “La Posada Magica” at the Argyros -- will begin Dec. 5 and 13,

respectively. OCC has its “Old-fashioned Christmas and Ice Cream

Social” in the wings for a Dec. 5 opening.

Finally, the Center will offer audiences a Christmas present in

the form of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Starlight Express,” opening Dec.

25. It’s another earlier show from the famed composer’s career, this

one a futuristic tale on roller skates.

As usual, the local theater scene offers something for just about

anyone, and in abundance.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.