Blessing’s ‘Eleemosynary’ Will Premiere in La Jolla

Don’t touch that theater schedule. The La Jolla Playhouse is going to do the West Coast premiere of Lee Blessing’s play “Eleemosynary” next season after all.

Des McAnuff, artistic director of the playhouse, had been discussing Blessing’s story about three generations of women before the world premiere of Blessing’s “Two Rooms” opened in La Jolla earlier this year. So, it came as rather a shock when The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company penciled in “Eleemosynary” on the schedule for its upcoming season.

Now the word comes down that the Gaslamp has replaced “Eleemosynary” with the West Coast premiere of “The Business of Murder,” an English play by Richard Harris, the playwright, not the actor. “The Business of Murder,” a mystery about shady accusations, murder and revenge, will run Feb. 15 through April 15 on the Gaslamp stage at 547 4th Ave.

“We always fully intended to do (‘Eleemosynary’),” said McAnuff. “It’s my favorite play of his, and I think it’s one of his favorites, too. We’ve been talking about it ever since the first ‘A Walk in the Woods’ production. Lee had never heard anything about this (Gaslamp production) and had not agreed to it. Clearly, there was some misunderstanding.”

Kit Goldman, managing director of the Gaslamp, said she was surprised to learn the La Jolla Playhouse is planning to produce “Eleemosynary.” The Gaslamp had relied not on a contract but on an assurance from the Dramatists Play Service that the rights to “Eleemosynary” were available when it announced the play as a season opener. The Gaslamp dropped it, Goldman said, for two reasons: The theater was suddenly able to acquire the rights to “The Business of Murder,” which it had been trying to score for three seasons, and recent communication with the Dramatists Play Service indicated that a possible New York production of “Eleemosynary” might end up restricting the rights.

No one was answering the phones at Dramatists Play Service late Wednesday afternoon for confirmation of a New York production of “Eleemosynary.”

If Blessing’s plans to do his play in La Jolla came as an initial surprise to Goldman, it was not an unwelcome one, she said.

“I’m a believer in fate and destiny. Everything just happens the way it should have. (Not getting the play) did clear the way for us. I think it’s great that the playhouse is doing it. Blessing is hot right now, and they have a good relationship with him. We would have really been in a dilemma (about doing ‘Eleemosynary’) after finding out that ‘The Business of Murder’ was available. It all worked out real well.”

More changes: A.R. Gurney Jr.’s “The Cocktail Hour,’ which had its premiere at the Old Globe Theatre, will not be going to the Kennedy Center in Washington as previously announced. Instead it will go straight to New York in late September or early October. Whether that means Broadway or Off-Broadway may be decided on as early as next week.

San Diego’s own “Suds” has rescheduled its first preview night at Off-Broadway’s Criterion Center Stage Left from Sept. 1 to Sept. 6, and its opening date from Sept. 22 to Sept. 25.

Whatever the reception of the show, “Suds” is already having a commercial impact--literally--on the way theater is financed in Manhattan. Working with Joe Kobryner, marketing director of the Old Globe, as an independent consultant, Bryan Scott, one of the producers and writers of “Suds,” has been soliciting corporate sponsorship, which up to now has been the province of nonprofit theaters.

Scott and Kobryner have already lined up TWA as the official airline for “Suds,” as well as Procter and Gamble, which manufactures the detergent Tide--an appropriate choice for a musical set in a Laundromat. Procter and Gamble plans to advertise that “The Tide Has Turned on Broadway.” Take a Tide box top to the theater and you get in free.

Still in progress: Neil Simon is in town, putting the finishing touches on the world premiere of “Rumors,” scheduled to open at the Old Globe on Sept. 22 and then go directly to Broadway.

Playwright Stephen Metcalfe is still ironing out theatrical wrinkles in “White Linen,” the cowboy musical now in progress at the Lowell Davies Festival Stage. The show has already elicited interest from New York, said Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe.

And the book is not closed on “Two Rooms,” Lee Blessing’s four-person play about an American hostage in Beirut. “Lee is still working on it,” said Des McAnuff, the La Jolla Playhouse artistic director. “The play definitely has a future. There has been interest by other theaters in mounting another production, but we haven’t decided on anything. It’s a very alive topic, but we feel there’s more work to be done.”

On the Russian front: McAnuff will bring composer Michael Roth with him to Moscow on Oct. 1 when he directs his play at the Sovremennik Theater. McAnuff predicts that the still-to-be-announced work is “liable to a fairly large enterprise and may take longer than just October to put together.” Sam Woodhouse, producing director of the San Diego Repertory Theatre, is applying for city funding to put on a pair of Soviet- and American-produced Soviet plays to coincide with the proposed San Diego Soviet Arts Festival. Meanwhile, Thomas Hall is still negotiating with the Soviets on bringing the Soviet play “Brothers and Sisters” to the Old Globe in time for the festival.