Director Says Protests Didn’t Close ‘Red Noses’

It was probably not the walk-outs--20 to 30 a night--or the letters of protest that caused the San Diego Repertory Theatre production of Peter Barnes’ “Red Noses” to close last weekend without extending its 4 1/2-week run.

No, as far as Sam Woodhouse, producing director of the theater was concerned, the final curtain fell on one of the best and most provocative shows of the San Diego season because of economics. With 20 people on stage and three in the band, the weekly production bill was $15,000, making it the most expensive show in the Rep’s season.

Woodhouse is not only unperturbed by the attacks on his critically acclaimed show for being blasphemous; he joked with evident pleasure about the show’s view of religion being compared with the Martin Scorsese film “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

“I’m so pleased that when Universal Studios found out that we were going to open Aug. 10, they moved up the opening date of ‘Last Temptation’ by six weeks,” Woodhouse dead-panned.

Of course, “Last Temptation” drew more than angry letters. It brought out the water balloons that protesters pelted at ticket buyers on the evening the film opened in Mission Valley.

But the two offerings seemed to touch the same raw religious nerves in San Diego. The question that lingers after the jokes are cracked is whether producers will continue to take chances with works such as these.

Like “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “Red Noses” challenges conventional interpretations of the nature of God and what God wants of human beings. In “The Last Temptation of Christ,” Jesus is shown as human as well as divine, unable to resist fantasizing what it would be like to marry and have a family, even though he rejects that choice in favor of the cross.

To the protesters, it has seemed similarly irreverent that in “Red Noses,” Barnes creates a saint in the form of Father Flote, a 14th-Century priest who is determined to bring a message of hope in the form of vaudeville entertainment to those dying of the Black Death. Substitute AIDS for the Black Death that decimated Europe at that time and multiply the paranoia about infection tenfold, to appreciate what a radical that makes the little priest who danced with the plague’s female victims to make them feel young and beautiful again.

Like a cross between George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan” and Woody Allen’s “Broadway Danny Rose,” Flote hears a voice that tells him to form a troupe of disabled but never disheartened outcasts--a blind juggler, two lame dancers and a stuttering comic--to bring a final benediction of laughter to the dying. And, in the name of God, they poke fun of everything, from the Pope to the Nativity Play, hanging their wet laundry on a wooden cross as they eat their own Last Supper.

As San Diego theater grows in stature, complexity and its twin sister controversy cannot lag far behind. Are San Diego audiences ready and willing to support producers who want to produce shows such as “Red Noses?”

According to Gordon Clanton, a sociologist at San Diego State University, the fundamentalists who are behind the protests are not on the rise, but on the wane in this country.

“Fundamentalism was on the outside looking in until Ronald Reagan was elected President,” said Clanton. “Fundamentalism was more influential in the 1980s than it has been ever been, and it’s my feeling that it’s all over now. In the long run, fundamentalism is an insistence on simplicity in a complex world. Ronald Reagan oversimplifies. The one answer to insecurity is Star Wars. The one way of dealing with abortion is ‘don’t do it.’ The one way of dealing with drugs is ‘just say no.’ Now none of the people who are running are attached to the religious right except (Dan) Quayle.”

The Rev. William Mahedy, the Episcopal priest who will travel to the Soviet Union to counsel Soviet veterans of the war in Afghanistan Sept. 25, prefers to stress the right to protest as well as the producers’ rights to make the movies and produce the plays.

“Supposedly it’s a conservative issue,” Mahedy said. “But I think there’s a certain amount of hypocrisy about what is being protested and who’s doing it. You wouldn’t make anti-feminist statements, but the bashing of evangelical Christians is OK. There’s no question that the producers have the right to make such plays and movies. But religious people have the right to boycott.”

The San Diego premiere of “Red Noses” drew raves from every critic who reviewed it, including John Simon of New York magazine, who lashed out at everything else that San Diego had to offer. This will not mean an incarnation of this particular production in other venues, but Woodhouse predicts that several regional producers who came to see his show will mount their own versions now that they’ve seen that this difficult play can be done with artistic success. Noting how different communities will respond to it may provide an intriguing monitor on the extent to which our religious climate will or won’t change over time.

Shows that have gotten extensions are the La Jolla Playhouse’s “80 Days,” extended through Oct. 9 and the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre’s “The Nerd,” through Oct. 8. In the new production department, the city of Chula Vista is offering “Hamlet” free on Saturdays from 4-6 p.m. through Oct. 8 at Chula Vista’s Memorial Bowl. And TheaterGoers of San Diego will feature an improvisational comedy troupe, “Out on a Whim” and an original musical, “Dragon Tale,” produced by Octad-One Productions, at its First Annual Festival in the Park Saturday from 3:30-7 p.m. at Tierrasanta Community Park, 1120 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.