1988 THE YEAR IN REVIEW : A Wink From Tony, a Kiss From Madonna : South Coast Repertory Takes the Spotlight in a Year Packed With Kitsch and Cancellations

In a year of mixed notices, the Orange County theater community witnessed one event that, while not the millennium, is unlikely to happen again.

Drum roll, please: In June, pop music goddess Madonna kissed South Coast Repertory artistic director Martin Benson on the cheek. And she did it on live network television from New York with the eyes of the nation upon them.

If you happened not to notice, which is entirely excusable, you are herewith reminded. But if you have to ask why Madonna did it, SCR officials are reserving a dunce cap for you in the lobby of the Costa Mesa theater right next to their Tony.

For 1988 was--ta-dah--”the year of the Tony.” The League of American Theatres and Producers and the American Theatre Wing, which is a formal way of saying Broadway’s biggest big shots, bestowed on SCR their most prestigious prize.

As their surrogate, moreover, Madonna not only presented the regional theater Tony to Benson (along with her kiss) and to SCR producing artistic director David Emmes, she stunned them both by referring to them as “old men”--probably causing Emmes’ brief memory lapse during his acceptance speech. But that is another story.

More drum rolls, please: 1988 was--blast of trumpets--”the year of the designers.” They had a field day. And kitsch was king, particularly when they were given the chance to camp up the classics.

Ignoring such imports as Paris Opera Ballet’s “Cinderella”--with its giant Betty Grable cutout and its gargantuan King Kong puppet--two of the more obvious instances of designer doo-wop were “The School for Scandal” at SCR and “The Comedy of Errors” at the Grove Shakespeare Festival.

“Scandal,” a deliberately cartoon-ish glyph on Richard Sheridan’s 18th-Century drawing-room satire, benefited from a teasing, post-modern pastiche of insouciant sets by Cliff Faulkner and arch costumes by Shigeru Yaji. Their efforts drew less ink than the comic performances but plenty of notice just the same.

“Errors,” conceived as an interplanetary fantasy by way of “Star Wars” and “Planet of the Apes,” looked like an Elizabethan colony in outer space with sets by Stan Myer, costumes by Yaji again, and hair and makeup by Gary Christensen. The combined result seemed worthy of Hollywood-style, science-fiction pulp at its most bizarre.

More drum rolls: 1988 was--how could we forget?--”the year of the cancellations.” Each of the county’s four most popular stages were stung by them.

The Grove Theatre Company in Garden Grove had to cancel the West Coast premiere of “No Way to Treat a Lady,” the scheduled opener of its 10th-anniversary season at the Gem Theatre in October, for lack of funds.

The Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach canceled the county premiere of “Legends,” which was scheduled to open next month at the Moulton Theatre, for lack of a cast.

SCR canceled the world premiere of “Infinity’s House,” the scheduled centerpiece of its first California Play Festival in the spring of 1989, for lack of a finished script.

In the meantime, subscribers to the Broadway Series at the Orange County Performing Arts Center are still waiting for “Camelot” to arrive. It was to have launched the 1988-89 series in October but didn’t--for lack of its star, Richard Harris, who called in sick.

The show’s non-arrival may have a silver lining, though. Center management could decide to change “Camelot’s” status from Indefinitely Postponed to Really and Truly Canceled, which would mean finally substituting a different show (maybe even a non-chestnut).

More drum rolls: 1988 was--with a cast of thousands--”the year of the Bard.” An unexpected groundswell of popular support rescued the Grove Shakespeare Festival from the brink of financial disaster after politicians in Garden Grove tried to cut off the city’s festival subsidy.

Indeed, after City Councilman Raymond T. Littrell claimed that the Bard was too sophisticated for his “hard-hat” community, festival officials donned plastic hard hats as ironic emblems of defiance, and Shakespeare fans took to wearing them at festival performances and council meetings.

Consider Sylvia Salenius, a working mother from Santa Ana. She uncapped her pen on the way in to see “Richard II” and wrote out a $500 check as quickly as she could sign her name because, she insisted, “Shakespeare is worth it.”

Unfortunately, despite record festival attendance, Benjamin Stewart’s one-man staging of the epic poem “Venus and Adonis”--an offering of sheer acting brilliance and delight--went virtually unseen. On some nights, Stewart almost outnumbered the audience.

And now, with apologies to all those who are about to be overlooked, herewith some shaggy memories:

--Kim Criswell, cast as the royal trash of Baghdad in “Kismet,” belting out her not-quite-burlesque siren song “Not Since Nineveh.”

--The Laguna Playhouse’s “Quilters,” which went on to miss first prize at the 23rd annual International Community Theater Festival in Ireland because it was a musical and not a drama.

--Former performance artist Chris Burden holding up his beefy hands during a lecture at the Newport Harbor Art Museum and saying, “No scars, nothing,” when asked if his crucifixion to the roof of a Volkswagen had left any marks.

--The revival of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” at SCR, especially Kandis Chappell’s profoundly incandescent performance as Elizabeth Proctor.

--The blue “I Support IT” buttons worn by Irvine Theatre advocates who showed up in droves on the night the Irvine City Council voted to build the theater.

Drum rolls. Blast of trumpets. Curtain.