THEATER / NANCY CHURNIN : Growth of Local Theater Brings S.D. Comic Home

Eleven years ago, comic Jonathan Schmock left for New York because of the dearth of theater opportunities in San Diego. Later, the La Jolla High School graduate moved to Los Angeles to perform in the television series “Double Trouble” and the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (as the snooty head waiter), only to hear from friends, “Everyone in L.A. thinks San Diego is the place to go for theater.”

Now, if Schmock wraps up a national commercial for Rainier beer, scheduled tonight, he’ll be at the Lyceum Space Saturday for a San Diego debut in the West Coast premiere of “Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening With The Illuminati).”

The two-man show, which director Jean Hauser describes as “post-Apocalyptic comedy,” is about the crazed Rev. Eddie (Schmock), who tries desperately to impart his vision of the world to Brother Lawrence (Eric Grischkat) before the world ends, an event that Eddie expects to happen any moment now.

Hauser discovered “Some Things” in an issue of American Theatre, found the show had played only at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Nexus Theatre in Atlanta, with both productions featuring the authors in the two lead roles. She couldn’t get them for her production becaus of a conflict in schedules, and just as she was wondering who could possibly master the show’s crazy pace, she caught a rerun of “Double Trouble” with Schmock. (She knew Schmock was a San Diegan because his mother, Joyce Schmock, volunteers at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre, where Hauser is production manager.)

Schmock, for his part, could not have been more enthusiastic about getting on the boards for the first time in his hometown, especially, said the Comedy Store and Improv veteran, since “I don’t wear any pants in the whole show.” (He wears long underwear, cowboy boots and a black cassock.)

Schmock said on the phone from Los Angeles that he wouldn’t have left San Diego had today’s lineup of local theaters existed 11 years ago. Any other regrets? Only one--his last name.

“It’s been a burden,” Schmock said.

Still, it has proved to have one distinct advantage in show business.

“It’s one of those names you never forget,” he added with a sigh.

Is the American musical dead? Not if San Diego producers have anything to say about it.

As Broadway withers from the mounting costs of doing new musicals, regional theaters show themselves increasingly willing to butt heads with foreign extravaganzas like “Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats,” “Les Miserables” and “Starlight Express.”

Most recently, the Old Globe Theatre delivered “Into the Woods,” a Broadway hit that picked up two Tonys and a Grammy. The La Jolla Playhouse produced multi-Tony-award winner “Big River” and “80 Days,” still a work-in-progress.

Now, Don and Bonnie Ward, co-directors of the newly renamed Starlight Musical Theatre (San Diego Civic Light Opera Company), are negotiating for an indoor San Diego theater in which to unveil a workshop production of a new musical in early 1990.

Of course, one doesn’t have to be a big theater to dream big.

When San Diego State University unveils its version of John Gay’s 1728 classic, “The Beggar’s Opera,” it will be with a new score of 23 musical numbers. It takes the stage May 5, 6 and 9-13 at the Don Powell Theatre on campus.

Revising Gay’s work follows in the tradition of Kurt Weill, whose version, “The Threepenny Opera,” is now more famous than the original, and Duke Ellington who called his all-black, jazz version “Beggar’s Holiday.”

The SDSU production is still called “The Beggar’s Opera,” and, although the language of the script has been updated, the basic story is maintained. It satirizes Sir Robert Walpole, then Prime Minister of England, a womanizer and conniver suspected of working both sides of the law.

Even more important than this particular production, said Terry O’Donnell, the SDSU professor who wrote the new music with student Malcolm Lowe, is that the show continues in the school’s new-found commitment to original work. A year from now, SDSU plans to collaborate with a New York composer and lyricist in the world premiere of a musical, also set in the 18th century, called “First Star,” about the first American theatrical company.

A workshop production of “First Star” is scheduled for the fall.

PROGRAM NOTES: Sharon Murray, one of the original actresses in the San Diego Repertory Theatre production of “Six Women With Brain Death or Expiring Minds Want to Know,” returned Wednesday to the 1 1/2-year-old show after an absence of several months. She replaces replacement Judy Milstein, who’s listed as an understudy in “A . . . . My Name is Alice,” opening at the Old Globe Theatre on Saturday . . . . David Grant Wright, who plays the Cowboy in “I’m Not Rappaport” through Saturday will have to get right back in the saddle at the Hahn Cosmopolitan. He’ll perform in the next show there, Beth Henley’s “The Wake of Jamie Foster,” opening May 31 . . . . News of the booming San Diego theater scene will spread when the KPBS-TV documentary, “San Diego Arts Awakening: The Theatre Experience,” will be distributed nationally via satellite to all public television stations April 30 at 12 noon . . . . A staged reading of Velina Hasu Houston’s “My Life a Loaded Gun,” a new play based on the relationship between Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two intensely confessional poets who committed suicide, will be presented May 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Julianne Boyd, who directed Houston’s “Tea” last year at the Old Globe, will take a break from directing “A ... My Name is Alice” to direct this Houston play as well. . . . For those who wish to brush up on their Beaumarchais, the French Theatre of San Diego State University will present “Le Mariage de Figaro”--in French--May 5-7 at the Aztec Center.