4 World Premieres to Highlight SCR’s Upcoming Season

After a banner year that brought a Tony Award and box-office records despite controversial programming, South Coast Repertory announced its upcoming 25th season Tuesday night at a gala dinner in Costa Mesa.

The season, to commence Sept. 9 with a revival of “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, will include four world premieres, two West Coast premieres and the debut of SCR’s California Play Festival, which had been threatened by the loss of state funding.

Miller’s play will be followed on the Mainstage by Mark Stein’s “At Long Last Leo”; Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca”; George Bernard Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell”; Ellen McLaughlin’s “Infinity’s House”; and Stephen Sondheim’s and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park With George.”

Producing artistic director David Emmes said he and artistic director Martin Benson wanted the offerings “to reflect the richness and diversity of literature that have been the hallmark of SCR.”

“The season will be every bit as strong and challenging as last,” Emmes added. “Obviously it doesn’t have the strong language of ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ or the (Nazi) subject matter of ‘Aunt Dan and Lemon.’ So it may seem less controversial. But we certainly haven’t retreated from our principle of providing our audience with the most stimulating plays we can.”

On the Second Stage, the season will commence with Eric Overmyer’s “In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe,” followed by a play still to be chosen, followed by Lanford Wilson’s “Talley’s Folly,” Christopher Durang’s “Laughing Wild” and two undetermined works for the play festival, which will run in “mini-repertory.”

Emmes said “The Crucible” was picked to launch the season because its “sweep and scope would set a tone of serious drama” for the rest of the Mainstage subscription series. The play, which will run through Oct. 13, revolves around a 17th-Century Salem witch hunt and was seen as a disguised indictment of McCarthyism when it first appeared on Broadway in 1953. Benson will direct.

“At Long Last Leo” (Oct. 28-Dec. 1) was heard last February in an early draft, as part of the theater’s NewSCRript series of staged readings intended to test the “playability” of unfinished scripts. In that version, the play took a seriocomic look at a grad school dropout who returns to his suburban home with a 638-page manifesto he has written to change the world.

Stein, 36, is an emerging playwright best known for “The Groves of Academe.” Emmes said Stein has done a considerable revision of “Leo,” which will be a world premiere. Steven Albrezzi will direct.

“The Road to Mecca” (Jan. 13-Feb.16), first seen in 1984 at the Yale Repertory and revived in New York in April, concerns an elderly South African widow who has filled her garden with large concrete sculptures. Considered crazy by her village neighbors, she believes her art to be a spiritual pilgrimage.

Fugard has earned a major international reputation with such plays as “Blood Knot” and “Master Harold . . . and the Boys.” Benson will direct.

“You Never Can Tell” (March 3-April 6) is one of George Bernard Shaw’s so-called “pleasant plays,” an early comedy that the author initially scorned as trivial and later called “absolutely actor proof” when it became popular. The plot concerns a male chauvinist dentist who woos a rigid, scientifically educated feminist. Emmes will direct.

“Infinity’s House” (April 21-May 25) will be the centerpiece of the California Play Festival, which had been threatened earlier this month when Gov. George Deukmejian withdrew his own proposal for a new arts council challenge grant program.

The festival originally was to have included readings and seminars along with the three productions. The loss of state funding means the festival will be less elaborate. But “the quality of the productions will not be affected,” SCR spokesman Cristofer Gross said Tuesday.

With 36 characters, “Infinity’s House” will be one of the most ambitious (and expensive) productions ever undertaken at SCR.

Written by a San Francisco playwright and actress, Ellen McLaughlin, who is now working at Berkeley Repertory, the play takes place in the desert and leaps back and forth in time between construction of the railroads and the testing of the atom bomb. The director will be announced.

The concluding play on the Mainstage, “Sunday in the Park With George” (June 9-July 13), was hailed for its audacity as an innovative musical when it made its Broadway debut in 1984 (it lost the Tony competition that year to “La Cage aux Folles”). Inspired by Georges Seurat’s famous pointillist painting, “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” the show has an inventive but not hummable score. The director will be announced.

On the Second Stage, the offerings will be more offbeat. Overmyer’s “In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe” (Sept. 23-Oct. 23), a West Coast premiere, made its New York debut in June. Wilson’s “Talley’s Folly” (Jan. 27-Feb. 26) has been honored with prizes, including the Pulitzer. Durang’s “Laughing Wild,” another West Coast premiere, had its New York debut in 1987.

SCR also will present the traditional Mainstage production of “A Christmas Carol,” adapted by Jerry Patch from the Charles Dickens story (Dec. 8-24).