New ‘Saratoga’ Will Premiere at Old Globe

The Old Globe Theatre, which has become both a launching pad and a popular orbit for plays on a Broadway-bound trajectory, will premiere a new work by playwright Terrence McNally during its 1989 summer season, according to Globe managing director Tom Hall.

As proposed by Broadway producer Elizabeth McCann, the Globe will stage a new comedy by McNally based on “Saratoga,” a 19th-Century American farce. McCann is the Broadway producer of “Morning’s at Seven,” “Amadeus” and “Nicholas Nickleby.” McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” is now playing on Broadway.

“It’s part of a larger program to locate existing material in American (stage) literature . . . and take an existing piece or idea and find a playwright to adapt it,” Hall said.

Although “Saratoga” was a hit in its day, Hall said the play’s dated language and style require adaptation. McNally felt that would cause “a tossed salad,” and offered to write a completely new play based on the original.

“I don’t want to act like it’s this terrible thing I’m trying to replace,” McNally said in a telephone interview from his New York home. “It’s a very funny play. There’s no reason to update it. I’m respecting the plot, the period, the dialogue. The period was a wonderful time in American history, when we were discovering who we were.”

Written by Bronson Howard, who was once called the dean of American playwrights, “Saratoga” was “a 19th-Century ‘Where the Boys Are,’ ” during a time when “independent” young women sought husbands at such fashionable locales as Newport, R.I., and East Hampton on Long Island, McNally said. The standards of the principal female characters, who are attracted to a rakish male, compare to those of today’s upwardly mobile career women, he said.

McNally hasn’t chosen a title but is avoiding “Saratoga” to keep audiences from confusing his play with Howard’s original, or “Saratoga Trunk,” a novel by Edna Ferber.

“It’s not a farce per se, more of a rambunctious comedy,” McNally said, adding that his play will be closer to the style of Oscar Wilde than Georges Feydeau.