‘CIRCE’ MAY COME HOME TO PLAY IN BIGGER HOUSE

Don’t look now, but Donald Freed’s political allegory, “Circe & Bravo,” which struck its first spark here at the tiny MET theater in 1984, then played Denver and London, may be returning home in style.

British producer Duncan Weldon is in town this week to explore the possibility of bringing the London production to Los Angeles next summer--on its way to New York.

Playwright/director/actor Harold Pinter who staged the production in June at the Hampstead Theatre Club and later London’s West End, would again direct. Faye Dunaway, who starred in it, receiving rave reviews, would re-create her role.

The controversial two-character piece, which had critics divided and audiences rapt, provides Dunaway with a bravura role as an outspoken First Lady who knows too much and is held captive at Camp David by a Secret Service man.

Where in Los Angeles would it come? Nobody knows. “We’re just beginning to put it together,” Weldon said, but he’s ruled out the Ahmanson, where two of his other productions have played (“Beethoven’s Tenth,” “A Patriot for Me”).

“It’s too big for the play.”

Watch for the Los Angeles Theatre Center and the Mark Taper to top the list of possibilities.

ITCHING TO BEGIN: Taper dramaturge Jack Viertel is putting together a roguish sort of piece over at the Itchey Foot--his first solo flight since he left the profligate life of theater critic a year ago.

“I’ve always had a peculiar interest in subtopics in American songs,” Viertel explained about “Rogues’ Gallery,” a musical cabaret of 18 song portraits of “eccentrics of all varieties” that he’s put together and that will play Sundays Oct. 26 to Nov. 23.

In pursuing his subtopical fascination, “I discovered a whole enclave of songs about bad guys, people who work in sideshows, fat boys,” Viertel said. “I then assembled a bunch of them and showed them to Gordon (Davidson, artistic director of the Taper) who said, ‘Yes, but what does it mean? ‘ So I took them back, worked on them and now I have a show that runs from childhood to the end of life and from innocence to experience.”

Two women, a man and a piano will be featured. Viertel has no cast yet, but “to whatever extent anything at the Itchey Foot can be called staging,” he said, he’ll stage the show himself.

WINDFALL: A private collection of more than 10,000 items, including books, pamphlets, play scripts, theatrical commentary and playbills covering theater from the 17th Century to the present, have been donated to Pomona College by Norman D. Philbrick.

Philbrick is the former executive head of Stanford University’s department of speech and drama, a Pomona College trustee and sometime playwright who also taught at the Pasadena Playhouse from 1937-39. The exceptional assortment, chosen and documented over a lifetime by Philbrick and his late wife, will be known as the Norman D. and Geraldine Womack Philbrick Library of Dramatic Arts.

The collection also includes hundreds of prints, engravings, watercolors, holograph letters (several to and from David Garrick), theatrical documents, costume designs, set models and a significant portion of materials belonging to designer Edward Gordon Craig. The Second Folio of Shakespeare plays (1632) and the Fourth Folio (1685) are also among the donated items.

Aside from the generosity of the gift (the Philbricks were both graduates of Pomona College and eager to see their alma mater acquire the collection), it contributes importantly to making Southern California one of the country’s leading centers for theater research, when combined with the resources at USC, UCLA and Pasadena’s Huntington Library.

The collection, to be housed in the Honnold Library on campus, will be formally dedicated in November. Anyone wishing to use it before then may contact the library at (714) 621-8150.

FESTIVAL LATINO: Latino theater was much in the limelight this summer.

It was the focus of the Theatre Communications Group conference in Northampton (Mass.) in June, at South Coast Repertory’s Hispanic Playwrights Project in July and, on an international scale, at New York’s Public Theatre in August (where our own Bilingual Foundation of the Arts was invited to present Lorca’s “La Zapatera Prodigiosa,” seen locally last March).

The sequel to South Coast’s Hispanic Project is the staging of two of its three featured plays as part of the company’s regular season. (The third project playwright, Eduardo Machado, was commissioned to write a new play.)

Lisa Loomer’s “Birds” will be done on South Coast’s Second Stage beginning Nov. 7; Arthur Giron’s “Charley Bacon and His Family” will take over the Mainstage beginning April 7. South Coast artistic co-director Martin Benson will be staging both.

Meanwhile, South Coast is engaged in a $12-million fund-raising campaign, a goal to be achieved by 1990. The aim is to create an endowment of $3.5 million for Colab (a research and development project for new plays), raise $3 million for an Artists Center (an 11,00 square-foot addition, now under construction, to provide additional office and other work/rehearsal space) and something called Annual Funds totaling $5.5 million to bridge the gap between earned income and operating expenses for the seasons spanning 1985-1990.