WOODRUFF’S ‘TEMPEST’ GOES CONTEMPORARY

Don’t ask Robert Woodruff to compare his staging of “The Tempest” (opening Monday at the La Jolla Playhouse) to anybody else’s. He’s never seen another production.

“My mind is virtually uncluttered--empty,” said the director. Well, not exactly. For the past several months, he and set designer Doug Stein have been carving out a definite image of the piece. “We tried lots of things,” Woodruff said. “Like a motel; that was silly. But when I saw this set (design), I said, ‘This is the play.’ It happens that in the ‘70s we both independently saw this Spanish company doing a Lorca piece, which really used vertical space. It impressed us a lot. So that’s what we use here: vertical space. Your eyes have to go up and down--about 45 feet.”

Yet for Woodruff, there was no pressure for instant results. “I can ramble aimlessly,” he said of the staging process. “I don’t feel the pressure to be smart, come up with anything to say at a given moment. I’m free to wander. But the set does takes a stand. Then I and the material have to figure out how we fit in. Now I’m starting to look at the piece and see how it all goes together. It’s not like I know what it is; I’m discovering it. And you really have to listen to the language. If it resonates, you’re right. If it lies there, you know it’s not.”

As for the text itself, “We both read it, then turned it inside for a while,” he said. The result is a contemporary staging, “but it also might be yesterday or tomorrow. It’s hard to pin down. I’m trying to find resonances in the political and moral lives we live. So yes, it is contemporary, because that’s where our sensibilities are. It also feels like a play 400 years old--and something that someone got their chops together on and put out yesterday.”

Any morals to be found in this story? “I hate to be moral,” said a kidding Woodruff. “I kick anybody who tries to be moral with me.”

Different Strokes: Opening tonight at the Pasadena Playhouse, Stephen Rothman is staging John Murray and Allen Boretz’s “Room Service.” Not only has Rothman seen other stagings of the work, but he did one himself.

“I’ve just always had a love for this show,” said the Playhouse’s co-producing director. “When I saw it in 1974 at the Hartford (Conn.) Stage, I thought, ‘It’s so wonderful--why isn’t it done more?’ There are two reasons: the size (14 actors), and the fact that the Marx Brothers have taken it into film. So people tend to think of it as a Marx Brothers comedy, not a successful stage show.” But Rothman did, and when the Playhouse was looking for a vehicle for its smaller stage in 1981, he opted for “Room Service.”

Two holdovers--Tony Papenfuss and Nicholas Shaffer--remain from that production, with Robert Desiderio new on board as Gordon Miller, “a Broadway producer just getting by. He’s very enthusiastic, in his mid-30s, trying to get a show on with virtually no money. And through a bunch of circumstances, he has to fake his way into an opening in five days.” With a cast that includes a lot of recognizable faces from television--William Christopher, Jamie Rose, Roy Thinnes, Henry Polic II--Rothman is also keen on not allowing the show to become a star vehicle.

“You can do it that way,” he said. “Ron Leibman did it in the ‘60s, Mark Hamill 1 1/2 years ago. But we have so many strong, intriguing people, I really wanted to create an ensemble.” As for the crunching 3 1/2-week rehearsal, Rothman said, “I’ve been working on this for years. And ‘Room Service’ is pretty straightforward. I know what the plot is, what people’s motivations are, where to get the laughs. The only thing is selfish: I would love to stay in a rehearsal room with these people. Everything has been going so well. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“RIVER” OF RETURN: When Roger Miller’s “Big River” (the musical adventures of Huck Finn and Jim on the Mississippi) first appeared at Boston’s American Repertory Theatre in 1984, it had seven songs. When it arrived at the La Jolla Playhouse later that year, it had 13. And when it got to Broadway in 1985 (where it won seven Tonys, including best musical), it had 20. It still has 20. The only difference is that when the national touring company arrives Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, original director Des McAnuff won’t be at the reins.

“It’s being staged by Michael Grief, who assistant-directed me at A.R.T. and La Jolla,” McAnuff said. “So the staging is pretty much the same as it was then. And we’ve all remained involved in maintaining the show: casting new actors--over the years, there’ve been over 100--and working them in. Of course, after the book and lyrics were completed, my work changed. That’s one of the things I enjoyed most about the first national tour: I could just concentrate on the performances, the staging. I became what JoAnne Akalaitis calls an ‘aesthetic general.’ ”

LATE CUES: Theatre West’s minifest “Fringe Binge” features Paula Cizmar’s “Candy and Shelley Go to the Desert” (ends tonight), Lenning Davis Jr.’s “The Dance” (Friday through next Sunday) and David Abbott in “Sonata for Rimbaud” (Sept. 18-20) . . . T. S. Eliot’s rarely staged “Murder in the Cathedral,” a poetic drama about the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket, joins the Fringe Festival Friday at the Shatto Chapel, First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.