A NICE GUY GETS ‘NAKED FROM THE WAIST DOWN’

“I’ve played a lot of rats out here,” conceded Scott Bakula. No kidding. In the past year, he’s played a bad apple on ‘My Sister Sam,” an over-critical ex-husband on “Designing Women,” and the two-timing Buck in the stage smash “Nite Club Confidential.” Yet that last character “was a charming rat. So people were not too put off by me--and that’s important. Because, hey, I’m a nice guy.”

On Wednesday, the St. Louis-born nice guy opens at the Pasadena Playhouse in a concert version of Jerry Colker and Michael Rupert’s “Three Guys Naked From the Waist Down,” which Colker, Bakula and John Kassir bowed off Broadway in 1985.

“It’s about three stand-up comics who start out playing clubs in New York,” Bakula explained. “We decide if we form a team, we can get on (Johnny) Carson, become an instant success. And we do. The next moment, an agent’s pounding on the door, offering us a series.”

The “fabulous” job turns out to be a stale sitcom about undercover cops in drag. “In spite of that, the show’s a big hit all over the world. We’re playing it in Japan in kimonos, in Poland wearing babushkas, in Paris with wigs and boas.

“Gradually all their early dreams get pushed aside,” the actor continued. “But it’s not about these guys as victims. They make the choice to do this in hopes of eventually calling the shots. So it’s about disillusionment, striving for success, selling out.

“Michael Rupert wrote the music. Some of it is jazzy, contemporary stuff, some is rock ‘n’ roll, some is Gilbert and Sullivan, some is conventional musical comedy.

“It got great reviews when we first did it, but was a victim of terrible summer box-office,” Bakula recalled with a sigh. “I always hoped we’d get back to it.”

“I’m glad I’ve got my own teeth,” joked British-born actress Diana Chesney of the enunciation required for her performance as the formidable Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” (opening Friday at the Los Angeles Theatre Center). “You wouldn’t believe some of the things I have to say: ‘Thanks to the elaborate investigation of the metropolitan police’ . . . well, they’re marvelous words, but you do have to say them with some care.

“Lady Bracknell is a driven character--there’s nothing nice about her,” added Chesney (whose American TV credits range from “Night Gallery” to “Bewitched” to “Fantasy Island”). “I’ve seen Wendy Hiller do it on PBS last year, Edith Evans do it in the film. The part is a gift to anybody.

“So when Charles Marowitz said he was going to direct it, I said, ‘Well, do you have a star, Charles?’ Because it really is a star part. And I’m one of those people who never made a name in England. Instead, I toured the provinces--and when I got back to London after those awful tours, I’d run to the theater and see those wonderful, beautiful productions.

“I got typecast early on,” she added cheerfully, “playing rough, tough types. I played prostitutes, barmaids, beaters-up of kids. I did get to die a few times, which was very nice. And once for British TV in the ‘50s, I played a very proper, professional abortionist. It was a riot. Then I was brought here to do a television series in 1962. Unfortunately, no one ever saw it.”

“I did David Mamet’s ‘A Life in the Theatre’ at South Coast Rep in ‘79, so it’s great working with his material again,” said Frank Condon, Odyssey associate artistic director. “Mamet’s very demanding: structurally very specific in terms of rhythm and language--but also extremely minimalist, leaving things wide open for interpretation.”

This weekend, Condon stages the Los Angeles premiere of Mamet’s “The Woods” at the Odyssey. “It’s about about a contemporary couple who go to the woods, a pastoral setting that allows problems that could’ve gotten lost in the city to come the fore.” The big issue? “Commitment.”

The director is back in town after multiple stagings of the Garry Trudeau/Elizabeth Swados political spoof “Rap Master Ronnie.”

“It’s constantly changing, being updated,” he said of the current Seattle incarnation. “Garry has been great about adding things. If he didn’t have a strip to put out every day we’d be doing more, especially with what’s been going on (with Reagan) lately.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: “The Traveler,” Jean van Itallie’s new play about a composer’s recovery from a stroke (based on the real-life experience of Open Theatre pioneer Joseph Chaikin), which opened last week at the Mark Taper Forum, brought in a varied harvest of reviewer response.

In The Times, Dan Sullivan praised John Glover’s performance in the title role, but found the show’s dream sequences “burdened with fairly obvious choreography and imagery. . . . The other half is a hospital drama that we seem to have seen on TV.”

The barbs got much more pointed in the Herald-Examiner. Examples from Richard Stayton’s review: “Shaala shashba Jean amashaba Claude van Itallie . . . Taper Chaikin bake and shake . . . Forum itsy bitsy teeny weeny polka dot abrashaya? . . .”

The Daily News’ Tom Jacobs found Glover’s performance “stunning,” and the play “much more than an interesting stylistic exercise--it’s a deeply felt work of art. . . . Van Itallie helped (Chaikin) through his recovery; he observed the process. Now he has dramatized it, brilliantly.”

Daily Variety praised “the imaginative exploration” of the protagonist’s mental journey, yet felt that ultimately the direction became “lost in lengthy scenes where the traveler attempts to regain his speech. . . . With some editing and perhaps some reworking of scenes, this play could become a very fine tribute.”