SUDS STARS TRY ‘HAMLET’

What happens when “Santa Barbara” goes to Denmark?

That was the curious prospect currently faced by three stars of the popular NBC soap opera--Lane Davies, Louise Sorel and John Allen Nelson--as they prepared for the “Hamlet” that opened Saturday at the Globe Playhouse.

“I needed to get back,” said Sorel. “I was steeped in theater--born here, but I worked in New York a long time. So that’s where the heart is. But you come out here, it gets cushy, you work a lot. Continual work is hard to turn down. And gradually, I lost the sense of being able to work in the theater.”

Concurred Davies (who organized the production and plays the title role), “The last time I was on the legitimate stage was three years ago in Atlanta. But in the last year and a half, I’ve been working almost every day on the soap, so I’ve done a lot of acting.” Yet even now, a return to the stage holds some fear: “I guess I’m every bit as terrified as I should be, given the role I’ve taken on.”

He added that his Hamlet “may be a little more ambitious (than other characterizations). I think the usurpation of the crown really eats at him--almost as much as the other things eating at him. As long as Hamlet’s alive, he’s a threat to Claudius’ crown. Both men are aware of that.”

Sorel, too, has a slightly different slant on the queen. “She’s not evil, just self-serving. In those times, women just sat around, procreated, looked beautiful--then were thrown away. So Gertrude’s selfish, she’s learned to survive. She’s gone on to Claudius because old Hamlet was never around.”

For Nelson, a relative novice to the stage, there are no comparisons to other productions. “This is the first ‘Hamlet’ I’ve seen,” he offered candidly. “I’ll tell you how this Laertes is going to be different: John Allen Nelson is doing it. I’m not being obnoxious. No one could ever copy my weird quirks.”

From the new and unusual department comes the world premiere of Sam Diego’s “Rules of the Road,” opening Thursday at Theatre/Theater Backstage.

“In the ‘60s we used to call this the ‘open-frame theater,’ ” offered director Stephen Tobolowsky. “In other words, we found a frame that we could work with, but that also had a through-line: a beginning, middle and end. To give Sam (described as ‘a performance artist-comedian-underground philosopher’) enough of an anchor to get a high level of consistency--and the security to improvise. The framework became the rules of the road: how to survive, how to hitchhike. . . .

“It developed a lot like commedia dell’arte,” he continued. “Bits of business that worked, we kept; others we threw away. So some of it was scripted: a certain set of events would happen every night--but out of that came the improv. I’ve seen the show in previews and it’s never the same. One night there was an accident on Hollywood (Boulevard) and Sam went off on ‘What to do if you hear a siren.’ ”

The show’s setting itself is apropos: on the road. “The stage actually starts on Cahuenga,” Tobolowsky explained. “The audience goes down the alley and sits (in chairs) on either side of the ‘theater’--and the whole area is playing space.”

And another angle on the Bard: on Saturday, PCPA presents the premiere of Karen Sunde’s “Dark Lady,” a romantic treatment on the woman supposed to be the love subject of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

“Every few years, a different notion goes around about the identity of this dark lady of his sonnets, who was supposedly also the model for Cleopatra and Rosalind,” said the playwright. According to A. L. Rowse, the lady is Emilia Bassano, “an Italian--therefore dark--from a family of musicians. I thought, ‘How delicious: that Shakespeare’s mistress was not only an artist, but a poetess--and not only a poetess, but a feminist.’ ”

Sunde’s story, which features the characters of Shakespeare, Emilia and Richard Burbage, is based both on historical data “and things you can piece together from the sonnets. It (the affair) very well could have happened.”

“This play asks the question, ‘When you’re in business, how far will you go to save your corporate skin?,’ ” said writer D.B. Gilles, whose “Cash Flow” opens Saturday at the Tiffany Theatre. “Three men get together to decide how to solve their cash flow problem--and each comes to the meeting with a different solution. One is honorable, one is dishonorable and one is illegal.”

For Gilles (whose “Men’s Singles” played at South Coast Repertory in 1984), the business world is not exactly foreign: Before becoming a full-time writer, he spent nine years in advertising and promotion. “I was of no importance in the corporate structure, but I did get friendly with a few of the big shots, became privy to a lot of what was going on. From there, you just let fiction take over.”