Allan Havis Plays With Political and Personal Puzzles in ‘Morocco’

In the script of Allan Havis’ “Morocco,” the drama that begins previews tonight on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory, the dialogue glides down the page. The lines seem effortless, without being too clever.

The writing has nothing like the poetic fullness of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” which opened the Mainstage season in September. Nor does it strive for the pyrotechnical literary display of Eric Overmyer’s “In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe,” which opened the Second Stage season.

Havis jokingly calls “Morocco” a product of the “less-is-more school of playwriting,” but he is serious about the spare quality of the language. When he wrote the play in 1983, he was “disgusted with words,” Havis said last week during rehearsals at the Costa Mesa theater. He wanted to create “something very laconic and pulled back.”

The playwright, 37, was also interested “in compression, in mystery, in puzzles that have missing pieces.” He wanted to write “something with a political backdrop, something exotic.” Certainly, in each of those departments, he does not disappoint. The title alone suggests a fleeting association with “Casablanca.” During the play’s New York run in July, one reviewer compared it to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

“Morocco,” which will open Friday and run through Dec. 11, is about three people: a successful Jewish-American architect working on an industrial park near Fez who is put to an unexpected test when his wife is arrested for prostitution; his wife, who is “unusually alluring,” according to the stage directions, as well as being an Oxford-educated banker of Latin-Arabic descent, and a seedy, chain-smoking Moroccan colonel in charge of her detention whose Islamic views clash with those of the Americans.

Sitting at a formal conference table in a rumpled shirt and jeans, the soft-spoken playwright said he got the idea for the play while traveling in Europe and the Middle East. Although he is Jewish and once wanted to be an architect, he added, the play does not draw on any autobiographical experiences.

“I’m fascinated by Americans who have world knowledge and by a character like the colonel,” Havis said. “I don’t think Kempler (the architect) is an innocent abroad. He is adept at handling himself. But he has run into the most potentially damaging thing that has ever happened to him. He’s incredibly vulnerable, and he has to tread water carefully if he wants to free his wife.”

Carefully indeed. Kempler and the colonel assault each other in exceedingly polite tones but with acid verbal sallies that cannot conceal their mutual contempt:

Colonel: Did you play with little buildings as a boy?

Kempler: We’re wasting time.

Colonel: Yes, I am sorry. (Pause) How is it that you married a whore?

Or later:

Kempler: For a moment you can pretend that I’m not a Jew.

Colonel: For a moment.

The question of anti-Semitism arises more than once. But Havis is loathe to define “Morocco” as a problem play about personal bigotry or, on a grander scale, clashing cultural prejudices. Although the architect accuses the colonel of being a racist, the play’s deeper concern resides elsewhere.

“The key question has to do with the wife,” Havis said. “The police have pictures of her that are described as licentious. But what is the picture Kempler has of his wife in his own mind? The journey in the play is for him to find out who she is and what she is. She’s definitely not the nice little lady that follows a husband out of loyalty.”

Considerably rewritten from its New York production, “Morocco” is being directed by SCR’s producing artistic director, David Emmes, and will star Mark Schneider as Kempler and Alexander Zale as the colonel--both in their SCR debuts--and Joan Stuart-Morris as Mrs. Kempler.

Stuart-Morris, who holds a graduate degree in drama from UC Irvine, launched her professional career at SCR in 1978. An 8-year veteran of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival, she played Lady Sneerwell in the Mainstage production of “The School for Scandal” last spring.

“Morocco” already has a lengthy production history on the East Coast. Beginning in 1984, it was done as a one-act at A.R.T. Cambridge, as a full-length play at the Virginia Stage and again at the Hartford Stage before going to New York. Along the way, it earned Havis a trunkload of prizes--a Foundation of the Drama Guild/CBS Award in 1985, the Playwrights USA Award from HBO in 1986 and a Kennedy Center grant in 1987.

In fact, Havis is one of the most grant-laden playwrights around. You name it, he has won it: fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and from the National Endowment for the Arts, residencies at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, the Macdowell Colony and the Edward Albee Foundation, to cite a few.

“I think I’ve played my hand with those,” said the playwright, who joined the drama department faculty at UC San Diego in September. “I’m flattered to be offered a teaching post.”

A native New Yorker with a background in art--he also plays the accordion--Havis said it is too early to tell whether he has made the adjustment to Southern California. “I used to associate artistic endeavor with the depravity of an urban environment,” he said.

But last year he came to live in Orange County for a month when his play, “Haut Gout,” opened the Second Stage season, and that softened him up. “I actually felt like I was living the good life,” he said.

His major discovery so far? That the garret syndrome of “ angst and stress” is not a prerequisite for creativity. The proof is that Havis is already deep into revisions on his next play, “The Ladies of Fisher Cove.”

Still, paradise is not perfect. It lacks his girlfriend, actress Gordana Rashovich, who stayed in New York. “She’s creating a stir there right now,” he said. “In the last year she got an Obie, a Drama Desk nomination, a Hirschfeld drawing. Why lose that momentum?”

Havis sighed. They may have to join the bi-coastal brigade.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “We haven’t worked out all the details.”

Previews of “Morocco” run today through Thursday on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Centre Drive, Costa Mesa. Curtain is 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $14. The play opens officially on Friday and will continue through Dec. 11. Curtain times during the regular run are 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 8 p.m. Sundays with matinees at 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets: $20-$26. Information: (714) 957-4033.