‘HANNA’: FUN AND GAMS ON CONEY ISLAND

Loved “Women Behind Bars”? Then you’ll probably enjoy the equally raucous antics in Tom Eyen’s “Why Hanna’s Skirt Won’t Stay Down,” opening Saturday at the Coast Playhouse.

Originally introduced in 1965 as a one-act at New York’s La Mama and Caffe Chino, Eyen (a Tony winner for “Dreamgirls”) later added two companion pieces--on Hanna’s sisters, Sophie and Gilda. Since then, Sophie has joined Hanna in the current incarnation, which played New York in 1971 and 1983.

Set in a Coney Island fun house (with a “breeze hole” over which Hanna likes to perch--hence the title) and featuring the sorry sisters, a barker, a stud named Arizona and a maze of mirrors, the work is directed by Ron Link, whose professional collaboration with Eyen dates back 18 years and covers eight plays (including the popular “Women”).

“This has qualities of ‘Women Behind Bars,’ ” Link said, “but not the same kind of vulgarity; the script isn’t littered with expletives. It’s one of (Eyen’s) early language plays, wonderful and magical.”

And unique: “I have to switch gears when I direct Tom’s stuff. He has a rhythm, almost a music, in his writing. And he needs women who are very strong, who don’t resist playing strong--but have a heart.

“I love that it takes place in a fun house, that whole (aspect of) unreality. Because it’s about people so immersed in fantasy that reality is like a bad memory. They’re so into promiscuity that they’ve deadened themselves to the possibility of real love. When it comes around, they don’t even see it. . . . So it’s deadly serious, but at the same time, very funny--like a ride you go on. And there’s nothing dated about it.”

Added Link (who followed up 1985’s “Delirious” with “Women” in Brussels and “Butterflies Are Free” in Kansas City): “Sure, there are a lot of meanings, but I’ll leave that for other people to decipher. I just wanted to do this so audiences could come and have a good yuk.”

Susan Tyrrell is the lead.

More yuks abound at “Tequila” (conceived, directed and choreographed by Larry Hyman), opening Friday at the Skylight.

“I’ve got (a cast of) half actors and half dancers--hopefully you won’t be able to tell who’s who,” said Hyman. “What I’ve tried to do is meld theater and dance to the point where movement moves the story line along. In a musical, the actors talk until they can’t anymore, then they break into song. Here, they talk until they dance. So it is very highly choreographed, but not really a dance piece.”

The story takes place at a fictitious film festival on the Mexican Riviera, “with eight characters, all at a crisis point in their lives. And this is the closing-night party in the garden. It all leads up to a big cha-cha, in which business deals and transactions are finalized.”

(The dances include rumbas and sambas, but no tangos: “I’m all tangoed out from my last show here, ‘Scenes From a Tango.’ ”)

Concluded Hyman (who recently choreographed the Playwright’s Horizons workshop production of Wendy Wasserstein’s “Miami” and will go to work on “Much Ado About Nothing” for the Acting Company this fall): “It’s all extremely stylized. I didn’t start out to make anything experimental--and it’s not. But it is different.”

Also new this week: David Michael Wieger’s “The Gentlemen’s Club,” opening Thursday at the Fountain Theatre.

Said the playwright, “It’s about the rites of passage men go through (here, four adult roommates, one about to be married), from being with men to being with a wife. Women seem to go through that (transition), but for the men it’s less easy. . . .

“That doesn’t make women the enemy,” he added hastily. “If there is an enemy, it’s society, which makes it so difficult for men to stay in contact after college (fraternities and sports-bondings).”

Wieger’s newest play, “Dove Tail” (written as part of an “In the Works” program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) also probes the male identity. “It’s about the really difficult situation men are in right now: How to deal with women. Before, they could be macho , aggressive. In the ‘70s, they thought they should get in touch with their sensitive, romantic, submissive sides. I hope we’re now moving into a new age where a man can be both.”

Ongoing in Occidental College’s summer drama festival: the Joseph Stein/Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick “Fiddler on the Roof” (to Aug. 22), Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Crimes of the Heart” (to Aug. 19), George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman” (to Aug. 20) and Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” (Aug. 6-23).