A STAGE TURN FOR DIRECTOR LOGAN

Joshua Logan likes the folksy familiarity of the small revue he’s bringing back to Southern California for a three-campus engagement this week.

“I tell a few stories about Broadway and Hollywood. I sing a little--some Berlin, Rodgers, Loewe. It’s all very casual,” explained the veteran director-producer by phone recently from New York.

“Joshua Logan’s Musical Moments”--to be presented at 8 tonight at Pepperdine University, Friday at UC Irvine and Saturday at UC Riverside--is just that: a stage turn for Logan as show-biz raconteur and golden-pop balladeer.

This sort of nostalgia trip isn’t new to Logan. He and his actress-wife, Nedda, backed by a four-member troupe of singers and musicians, have been taking the revue to theaters and clubs across the United States for the last decade. The last time the Logans played Southern California was in 1979.

“I never get tired of doing these revues. Instead of directing other people, this time it’s me up there. I love that sense of direct contact, of getting my own laughs and applause,” said Logan, who usually does about 20 such appearances a year.

Although he tackles show tunes by some of the most revered songwriters, his singing voice, Logan admitted, is one of his lesser talents. “Call it a composer’s voice. I can’t carry a tune, but I believe I can put across the lyrics. Somehow, people seem to like it.”

But Logan as consummate anecdotist is another matter--as anyone who’s read his published recollections knows (“Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life” in 1976 and “Movie Stars, Real People and Me” in 1978). His career covers a lot of ground, a lot of personalities and a lot of successes and failures.

Consider Logan the Princeton undergraduate, part of a clan of aspiring actors that included Henry Fonda and James Stewart, and who journeyed to Moscow to get pointers straight from the fabled stage director, Konstantin Stanislavsky.

There’s the Logan who was once tormented by manic-depressive collapses (he was institutionalized in 1940 and 1953), but who recovered dramatically as a result of the use of lithium carbonate. And the hit-maker who directed such Broadway smashes as “Mister Roberts,” “South Pacific” (a Pulitzer-Prize winner), “Picnic” and “Fanny,” as well as the memorable film version of “Picnic.”

Then there’s the Logan of later years, when his string of hits had run out. His last production to reach Broadway, the 1980 comedy “Horowitz and Mrs. Washington,” was as short-lived as most Logan productions of this period.

Today, Logan is regarded as a theatrical patriarch. “People are always asking me about the state of the theater. I tell them, ‘Everyone says it’s been going downhill, but people have been saying that for 20 or 30 years,’ ” said Logan, who teaches stage and film directing, writing and acting on the campus circuit.

“I don’t think Broadway is headed in any particular direction at all. We just keep going until someone suddenly comes up with a new idea and knocks us all silly--like what they’ve done in ‘A Chorus Line’ or ‘La Cage aux Folles.’ ”

However, another recent major musical, Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” leaves Logan cold. “I hated it. Sondheim is the most brilliant man in the world--when he’s writing lyrics. But he’s a poor musician. I find his music so lacking in warmth.”

Creatively restless as ever, Logan continues to put most of his energy into the theater. A few years ago, he directed a new version of “Carmen” for the Shreveport Symphony in Louisiana. He is now revising “Huck and Jim on the Mississippi,” the musical he wrote with composer Bruce Pomahac, who’s the pianist in the current revue.

Observed Logan, who turned 77 last Saturday: “The theater is my life. I’ve worked with many great, magical people. I’m still working, still active. I have no complaints. I’ve been very lucky--extraordinarily so.”