AS SHALLAT LIKES IT . . .

If one of the most enduring qualities of a playwright is in how variously he can be reconceived, then Shakespeare remains at the top of the list (as if he needed another qualification). The South Coast Repertory opens “As You Like It” Tuesday. Lee Shallat directs, and has this to say about her conception:

“I think that even though the forest of Arden is a pastoral world, in which people’s true natures are embraced, the play ends with the conventions of romantic comedies intact. It enumerates a sophisticated view of love. Rosalind, the central figure, has a lot to teach Orlando about love--his idea is simple and true blue. I think it’s too easy, in our day, to embrace Jacques’ cynicism; the play says ‘yes’ to love in spite of it.

“The designers of this production and I have been collaborating for a long time on how we want it to look and sound. The conceit is to create a fairy-tale world, in spite of the play’s sophistication. The court world will be dark and anti-comic, but Arden will be silkily draped, a forest of pillows and white, yielding and alive. I’ve been living this play for months. I’m so into the forest of Arden that I can’t see it for the trees.”

Room for Theatre, which likes to polish up American plays of the ‘20s and ‘30s, makes a rare excursion into the contemporary with Richard Lenz’s “Last Class,” opening Monday.

Lenz, a veteran stage, TV and movie actor (his last Broadway role was in “Cactus Flower” and he played in “Once in a Lifetime” and “History of the American Film” at the Mark Taper Forum), claims the idea came to him after someone explained one of his earlier plays to him in a manner that sounded like complete academic nonsense.

“The play I wrote had a swing in it,” he said. “The director said, ‘The swing is a vehicle for the protagonist’s attempt at homeostasis.’ I said, ‘Gee, all I wanted to do was keep the audience interested.’ ”

“ ‘The Last Class’ is a one-man show (I appear in it) which deals with a professor who’s been fired and is giving a final lecture on ‘Philosophy and the Dynamics of Creativity.’ It’s about a man who walks the razor’s edge. There’s humor in it, in the spirit of what I saw at a car wash recently which had a sign out: ‘Free Psychiatric Help With Car Wash.’ He desperately wants to impart something of value before he leaves. And so do I.”

The works of playwright John Bishop are gaining greater and greater attention in Los Angeles, particularly with the successful reopening of his “Borderline” at the Skylight. Two Bishop one-acts that haven’t been seen here, “Confluence” and “Cabin 12,” open Tuesday at the Company of Angels. William Maynard, principally known as a set designer, stretches out here as director.

“Bishop has been a resident playwright and dramaturge for the Circle Rep in New York since the late ‘70s, and his plays have an interlocking quality,” Maynard said. “He grew up in Mansfield, Pa., and a lot of his plays have to do with small-town life, where everybody knows everybody else.

“ ‘Confluence’ is set where the three rivers in Pennsylvania converge, and so do the lives of three people. One is a former football pro who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He’s 45 and has a 25-year-old girlfriend who’s about to move on to a new life as an actress. He feels her loss as keenly as he felt the loss of his career. He meets an older man, a Hall of Fame baseball player who was once his idol, and the old man teaches him how to cope.

“In ‘Cabin 12,’ a father in his 60s and his son, in his 30s, have to make funeral arrangements for the son’s brother, killed in an automobile accident. Their communication has been very grudging. Now they have to face up to the idea of living life the way other people think you should, and the dangerous consequences--that’s what the death of the brother represents. These ideas of the difficulty of communication, of living on the edge, of expressing feelings that are hard to pin down, are things Bishop is very good at revealing.”

Other openings for the week include, Monday: “Cast of Characters” at the Ensemble Studio Theater; Wednesday: “Becket” at the Megaw and “The Time of Your Life” at the Morgan-Wixson (the first production of this year’s CalArts in Town series); Friday: “The Dresser” at GEM Theater in Garden Grove, “Provenance” at the Ensemble Studio Theater, “Suggs” at Actors Alley, “Streamers” at Fig Tree Theater and “84 Charing Cross Road” at the Broadway Playhouse in San Gabriel. On Saturday, “The Big Ball Game” opens at McCadden Place Theater.

LATE CUES: The Bilingual Foundation of the Arts opens its 1986 season on Wednesday with Federico Garcia Lorca’s comedy “La Zapatera Prodigiosa (The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife).” Billed as “a playful romp through the fun and foibles of married life--a play for audiences of all ages,” Lorca’s light farce has been given a new English translation by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata. Margarita Galban directs. . . . Jennifer Jason Leigh has been signed to appear with Gregory Harrison and Michael Learned in William Inge’s “Picnic,” which opens at the CTG Ahmanson April 6. Marshall W. Mason directs.