THEATER / NANCY CHURNIN : Hahn Pins Hopes on 1990 to Open New Gaslamp Act

On reflection, Kit Goldman acknowledges with a laugh, her biggest mistake was finishing the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre in January, 1987--right when she said she would.

Goldman, the managing producer of the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, had calculated a certain percentage of her business coming from visitors at the nearby convention center site on 5th Avenue and Harbor Drive. Think , she said, of the thousands of conventioneers she would have traipsing around the Gaslamp if she’d finished the project in January, 1990, when the delayed center is scheduled to have its first booking--the National Spa and Pool Builders Assn.

The Hahn has been the most ambitious venture to date in a gradual immigration of theaters to the still-affordable Gaslamp district. Proceeding downtown from the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Stage and Space--which border the area--one finds the original Gaslamp Quarter Theatre and Sushi Performance Gallery, both longtime residents, and the Progressive Stage Company, which opened there just this year. The Bowery Theatre and San Diego Actors Theatre are planning a 1989 opening, and the RE-IN Carnation project is working on a 1989-1990 debut for a multimedia arts center.

But, in the continuing absence of suitable foot traffic, it’s still a struggle to get people to venture past Horton Plaza, Goldman said.

“After almost 10 years of being in the Gaslamp Quarter, I’ll go out and address some women’s group out in the suburbs, and they’ll tell me they still find this area threatening,” she said.

Still, Goldman isn’t complaining about anything just now. The Gaslamp recently received a $100,000 grant from the Centre City Development Corp. to tide it over until the convention center opens. To cut costs, she has condensed the usual eight-week runs of Gaslamp shows to six weeks this season, and about 15 weeks have been allotted for the theater to co-produce or rent out its space for more commercial properties.

But the best news of all, Goldman said, is that 1990, like prosperity, is just around the corner.

The convention center has booked all but three days of the first three months, said Donna Alm, communications manager for the center. And bookings already extend to 2009.

Meanwhile, Goldman is working on a new project to coordinate with the opening. Next month she gets the first draft of “The Debutante,” the black Pygmalion play she commissioned this year from Elmo Terry-Morgan. If all goes well, that will kick off the Gaslamp season in January, 1990.

We’ll see how the National Spa and Pool Builders take to that.

Busiest-night-of-the-season award goes to Judy Milstein, who performed in “Six Women with Brain Death or Expiring Minds Want to Know” at both 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock Saturday night before rushing off to the San Diego Rep’s Underground at the Lyceum--which she’s coordinating--to show her stuff in a series of comic skits at 11.

Last Friday was the auspicious opening for the new late-night free-for-all scheduled to resume presentations for a possible five nights a week starting Jan. 17. A little bit of music, a little bit of comedy, a little bit of pizza and pasta salad in a cabaret setting added up to a pleasant evening with occasional flashes of genius.

Among the highlights: San Francisco performer Susan Van Allen in “Don’t Call Me Cathy,” about an aspiring novelist turned temporary secretary who resents her boss cutting into her novel-writing time; Damon Bryant singing the Gospel song “City Named Heaven” a cappella; James Mooney and Linda Libby in a duet of Richard Thompson’s “Just the Motion”; and “Donut Shop,” a sketch with Judy Milstein and Laura Preble about a plump woman embarrassed about ordering a doughnut.

The evening sagged uncomfortably at times under the weight of a comic who heckled the audience and another performer who recited soporific short stories. But Milstein’s stated goal is that “almost anybody who strums a banjo or has a story to tell have a place to experiment.”

A little more discrimination would go a long way.

Massachusetts playwright Jack Neary won’t be coming out to co-direct the West Coast premiere of his play “To Forgive, Divine” with North Coast Repertory Theatre artistic director Olive Blakistone in March. For one thing, Neary will be directing “To Forgive, Divine” at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, Mass., close to opening night at the North Coast.

For another, he, like science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, an authority on futuristic space ships who trusts real aircraft not at all, will do almost anything to avoid flying.

It’s not flying that worries him, Neary explained from his home in Lowell, “it’s crashing.”

PROGRAM NOTES: Will there be Old Globe T-shirts in San Diego’s future? There is talk at the Old Globe of major construction down the road to build rehearsal space and a curio and book shop. . . . “Burning Patience” will return to the San Diego Repertory Theatre Jan. 5-8. The Saturday matinee will be performed in Spanish. . . . The Lamb’s Players Theatre presents its artistic director, Robert Smyth, in a return of “Damien,” a one-man show about the priest who devoted his life to helping lepers in Hawaii, Jan. 21-22. . . . The Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis will perform “Kalulu and his Money Farm,” a Shona folk tale from Zimbabwe about a greedy and boastful rabbit who attempts to fool his king, and a Swahili adaptation of “Rumpelstiltskin” Jan. 13 at 8 p.m. in the Mandeville Auditorium of UC San Diego. . . . The Moonlight Amphitheatre will unveil its new season in a revamped setting. Chairs in the stone-terraced grassy area have been increased from 76 to 244. The season opens with “Hello, Dolly!” July 5-16 and continues with “Damn Yankees” July 26-Aug. 6, “L’il Abner” Aug. 9-20 and “Camelot” Aug. 30-Sept. 10.