TAPER, TOO 4TH SEASON OFFERS HIGH POTENTIAL

As the Mark Taper’s lab space, Taper, Too, enters its fourth season, producer Madeline Puzo has renewed her commitment to exploring “invigorating arguments and ideas, also new forms.”

The announced roster of four plays includes a next-step production of John Steppling’s “The Dream Coast” (Nov. 7-30), a new piece by Michael Cristofer called “Breaking Up” (Jan. 9-Feb. 1), Vaclav Havel’s “Largo Desolato” (Feb. 13-March 8) and Wally Shawn’s blistering “Aunt Dan and Lemon” (March 20-April 12).

New forms? None here, at least not in the sense of Mimi Seton’s evocative “See Below Middle Sea” seen at the Taper, Too last season. Ideas and arguments? Yes--with a high potential to invigorate.

Take Steppling. He’s the quintessential California playwright of the ‘80s, a kid who grew up at the heart of the flip side of the Hollywood dream and writes about its emotionally frayed denizens with a dryness and desolation that is almost anti-theatrical. In that sense, the style is perhaps a “new” form.

“Dream Coast,” which first saw stage lights in the Taper’s New Theatre for Now last November, will be directed by the author and resident director Robert Egan.

The title of Cristofer’s “Breaking Up” gives us an idea what it’s about. Described as “an intricate dance on the high wire of romantic love,” it sounds like an extension of his “The Lady and the Clarinet,” which played the Taper in 1980. Only this time it’s war, not love.

“It explores the improbability of relationships in today’s world,” Puzo said, “how movements in social thought have worked against--and made us redefine--romantic love.”

The last two scheduled plays are more overtly political. Havel’s “Largo Desolato” features the reluctant revolutionary hero who finds the neediness of the people almost as oppressive as the methods of the unfree state.

“It examines the need for heroes and dismisses the heroic stance. Quite a funny play, really,” Puzo reflected, “wry and gentle and oblique. Its humor and slyness are what I like best.”

As for “Aunt Dan and Lemon,” it was an Off Broadway sensation last year waiting to come West. Shawn, who can be ultra-sly himself, has delivered a virulent attack on the moral fakery of our times--or how out of the accommodating mouths of the upper middle class can come the most lurid thoughts. Puzo is convinced Shawn’s play will elicit the hottest debate.

PAIN ALL AROUND: In this writer’s review of “Growing Pains” at the Westwood Playhouse, director Jeremiah Morris was accused of “clumsily” staging a trendy number called “I Want to Be Jane Fonda.”

“The Jane Fonda number was a dance number and therefore was not staged by me,” Morris wrote back, “but choreographed by our very capable choreographer.”

The reviewer’s opinion of this number--or this musical--has not changed, but the director has a point. It was not his problem.

What’s more, space limitations forced the cutting of two paragraphs from the review about more positive aspects of the production.

They commended the sharpness of musicians Harvey Newmark, Chuck Christiansen, Julie Greenberg, Marjorie Poe and Michael Asher (who also serves as the show’s musical director) and the competence of Eric Michael Gillett (who has some nice touches as a savvy French waiter), Renee Gorsey, Cynthia Flippo, Michelle Zeitlin and Audrey Sperling.

(Sperling also takes on the vocal characterization of the leading lady’s Jewish mother who performs only on the phone answering machine. The device is a dead steal from Wendy Wasserstein’s “Isn’t It Romantic” and not as subtle, but still good for a laugh.)

WAIVER CODICIL: Playwright Oliver Hailey, who masterminded, coaxed, coordinated and birthed the collection of playlets called “The Bar Off Melrose,” returned from a summer in England to find the Melrose Theater, where “Bar” ran five months, the target of some anger in the Waiver disputes.

Responding to complaints reported in a recent Stage Watch that Melrose Theatre owners Paul Kent and Jomarie Ward had been uncaring of actors, Hailey said:

“It was the happiest experience of my life--the best time I’ve ever had. And the best news is that Samuel French has just agreed to publish ‘The Bar Off Melrose.’ My job and my passion are to see new playwrights flourish. I wrote a play once called ‘For the Use of the Hall.’ I love Paul and Jomarie. They gave us the hall.”