‘PAINS’: A PLAY ABOUT GROAN-UPS

Into every long-term marriage creeps the inevitable question, “If we had to do it all over, would we do it this way again?”

“Growing Pains,” the musical by Julius and Cissy Wechter (she’s the lyricist, he’s the composer and co-author of the book, with Joan Desberg Greenberg) in part addresses that question and its corollary, “No matter what you do, somewhere along the line you always come up short.”

“Growing Pains” has grown up somewhat itself. It opens Friday at the Westwood Playhouse after a successful run at the under-99-seat Room for Theatre last year.

Julius Wechter is 51, Cissy somewhat younger. They’ve been married 31 years and live in a 10-room house on the Valley side of Laurel Canyon, a meticulously restored replica of traditional Americana in which dark burnished wood, brass and antique memorabilia co-exist with the brighter, sandy hues of sun-bleached Southern California.

By any conventional standard of success, they’ve done well: he as a principal with Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass and as originator of the Baja Marimba Band (17 years after its demise, he still sports a dark bandito mustache that droops down the sides of his mouth), she as the creator of a successful Encino boutique called Flair.

“Growing Pains” is in part a “do-something” musical. That is, it’s the creation of people who feel the need to do something more with their lives than what they’re enjoying at the moment. It’s also an outgrowth of the discovery that, long after family, affluence, success and achievement are assured and that mysterious state referred to as “adulthood” is achieved, people still experience pangs of inexplicable uncertainty. Growing pains never completely abate.

“The play is about people in their 40s, with a subplot about a widowed mother,” Cissy Wechter said.

“It’s about how people never stop growing; they always have something to learn,” Julius Wechter said. “It has a line, ‘in these dark middle ages, we’re going through stages we thought we had passed.’ It’s an old-fashioned musical.”

“The first in years,” Cissy said. After so much time together, they’re either finishing each other’s thoughts and sentences or inserting sentences into each other’s paragraphs.

“It takes place in Woodland Hills,” he said.

She chimed in: “ ‘Ah, the Valley,’ Bette Midler said, ‘a million people, a hundred stories.’ ”

“But it’s not a Valley musical,” he insisted, fearing that such a term might fix the imprimatur of banality on “Growing Pains.” “It starts with the realization of a husband and his wife of 25 years that they’re miserable. That is, he’s miserable; therefore she’s miserable. Friends talk them into a trial separation. It touches on the Marina, the Oakwood Apartments and south of Ventura Boulevard. It’s full of tears, drama, sadness, ballet. We have great hopes for it.”

“I don’t think there’s been a musical about people in their 40s,” Cissy said, on a somewhat more pragmatic note. “We had ‘I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road,’ but that was more about change.” (Perhaps they hadn’t seen “Merrily We Roll Along.”)

“The closest thing would be ‘Isn’t It Romantic?’ ” Julius said. “It tells us that you can’t relive the old days. Twenty-five years is a long time. It’s quite a different relationship between a couple who have been together that long and a couple who have just gotten married. Every person our age says, ‘I wouldn’t want to be young again.’ ”

“It’s the drugs now,” Cissy said. “Nowadays kids have to face peer pressures we never knew about. People don’t care anymore about doing things right.”

“I think that’s rationalization,” Julius said, glancing at her. “ ‘Growing Pains’ won’t satisfy anyone looking for a moral lesson, except that a 46-year-old man won’t find happiness going out with young girls.”

If virtually all plays and works of fiction are autobiographical, even if their events never occurred except in their creators’ minds, “Growing Pains” would have to contain the Wechters’ speculation about what it feels like to break up. But speculation is as far as it goes.

“I grew up in North Hollywood,” Julius said. “My father was in heating and cooling. I started playing piano when I was 5.

“I was at LACC when it was a great time for jazz,” he continued. “Most of the big-time studio musicians playing now were starting out then. I met Cissy there. After we got married, I went to work at Lockheed as an IBM operator, to support my wife and child. I got a call from Martin Denny to go on the road. I didn’t know what to do. Cissy said, ‘Are you a musician?’ I said ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”

Eventually the job offers began coming in for Julius. He did studio work with the Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, the Righteous Brothers and Emil Richards. When he wrote “Spanish Flea” for Herb Alpert, his career soared.

In the years that followed, Cissy Wechter discovered a latent talent for writing lyrics. They optioned a novel by Edward Lewis Wallant, author of “The Pawnbroker,” and tried to persuade Alexander Cohen to produce it. But according to Julius, Cohen said, “It’s too sad. It’s not worth putting a year of my life into.”

They abandoned the idea of the theater until the breakup of the Baja Marimba band. “I sat around, not knowing what to do with my career,” Julius said. “My son David, who had by then become a producer-director, said, ‘Can you write a play?’ I decided to do a comedy and thought of Joan, the funniest person I know. Cissy had written for PTA shows, and also did a couple of songs with Leon Russell. But it was hard getting her away from her business. ‘You’ve got to do this,’ I said.”

“Growing Pain’ s” run at Room for Theatre played to turn-away crowds. The years had come together for the Wechters in an unanticipated way when they realized anew, as Cissy says, that “you don’t have many 25-year-old relationships to give. It’s a different world out there from when we were younger. No one is 16 anymore.”