‘THE BOSS’: AN AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY FROM 1911

Calvin Coolidge’s line, “The business of America is business,” is not something the theater, generally speaking, has given great scrutiny, even though business fills in the exterior lives of modern men and women where politics leave off.

Edward Brewster Sheldon was an early-20th-Century American playwright who took into account the great social prototypes of his day, which weren’t kings but entrepreneurs, union leaders--the principals of a capitalist nation hammering out its destiny. On Wednesday, the Megaw opens Sheldon’s “The Boss” (1911),which is very likely, after all this time, a West Coast premiere.

Sydney May Morrison, the Megaw’s artistic co-director, directs here, and has this to say:

“Sheldon was highly instrumental in the development of 20th-Century theater in America. He didn’t go for the artifices, melodrama and star turns of the 19th-Century theater, and he was a great inspiration to Eugene O’Neill and Rachel Carruthers, among others. The Barrymores paid tribute to him, and even though he was bedridden with a bone disease until he died in 1946, a lot of artists and writers visited him and felt he was a true spiritual force.

“He liked realistic studies. In ‘The Boss,’ he created our first anti-hero in a character who was a powerful industrial entrepreneur who amassed money and real estate, who was in one respect ruthless but in another very vulnerable in his love for a woman. The play touches on unionism, the shantytowns that cropped up in the Eastern Seaboard in the early part of this century, and the disparity between the rich and the poor.”

Seems like old times.

The Burbank Little Theatre is not the most imposing name one could imagine for a new Equity Waiver outfit, Burbank being the butt of Johnny Carson jokes and the term “Little Theater” carrying a pejorative of its own.

But a new group, its nucleus made up of New York theater artists, is there, come what may, and on Thursday opens a quartet of original plays by M. B. Valle called “City Hearts.”

Gary Blumsack, the theater’s artistic co-director (with Patrick Pankhurst), had an interesting start with Valle. Blumsack had worked out of La Mama, among other prestigious places, admired Valle’s writing and asked him if he’d like to co-write (Blumsack does screenplays). Valle refused.

“Then he began to see what talent I had working around me,” Blumsack said, “and he changed his mind. I’d say he’s one of the best of our new writers (he’s 26). He writes mainstream stuff, about relationships--nothing esoteric. The plays are called ‘The Ride Home,’ ‘At the Movies,’ ‘In the Park’ and ‘Sidewalk Talk.’ They’re about people, young and old, good and bad, living amid the complexities of New York.”

In his theater’s upcoming season, Blumsack hopes to do “Wait Until Dark” with Doug McClure and Greg Mullavey and Mark Kemble’s “Group,” which deals with some of the famous names attached to the Actors Studio in New York during the McCarthy era.

Other openings for the week include: Monday, “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” at the Henry Fonda Theater; Tuesday, “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” at La Mirada Civic; Wednesday, “A Woman of Independent Means,” moving to L.A. Stage Co. West; Thursday, “Clytemnestra,” a Suzuki Co. production from Japan at UC San Diego; Friday, “They’re Playing Our Song” at PCPA in Santa Maria, “The Dark Lady” at Found Theater in Long Beach and “Three Sisters” at Richmond Shepard’s in Hollywood.

LATE CUES: Travelers heading east might look in on the Theater of Nations festival in Baltimore, which begins June 15 and includes the National Theatre of Great Britain’s “Animal Farm,” Music Theatre Group/Lenox Arts Center’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Sweden’s Jordcirkus, Fred Curchak, Poland’s Polivka, National Theatre of Bulgaria, Brazil’s Grupo Contadores De Estorias and Theatre Padres, formerly known as the “Traveling Jewish Theatre.”