‘Brain Death’ About to Stop Making Waves

For about a year and a half now, the adage that all good things must end seemed not to apply to the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s production of “Six Women With Brain Death, or Expiring Minds Want to Know.”

But now, plans are being made to close the longest-running show in San Diego history in six to eight weeks, according to spokeswoman Laura Preble. Audiences, which once ran from 85% to 100% capacity for the 212-seat playhouse, have slipped to 60% to 70%. Even that would be enough to maintain the show, Preble said, but “it’s at a plateau. We want to end it before the summer season kicks in.”

The six-women musical sensation--a lampoon of contemporary dementia as exemplified by tabloid headlines-- was a surprise hit for the Rep when it opened in the Lyceum Space in October, 1987. It was also a badly needed one. The Rep had been reeling from debts incurred since it moved its offices from the Sixth Avenue Playhouse to manage the Lyceum Stage and Space in Horton Plaza. Its yearly budget jumped from $800,000 to $2.1 million in two years, and insiders began to worry that the days of the theater were numbered.

“It was a survival battle,” recalled Sam Woodhouse, producing director of the theater. “We were really in the trenches. There was a point when we realized we needed to raise $150,000 in 60 days in order to continue operating. Then we bought ourselves another few months and had to raise another $100,000.”

Gifts from Joan Kroc and the Parker Foundation and a benefit by Whoopi Goldberg brought the company closer to solvency. But it was the continuing income provided by “Six Women,” which Woodhouse calculated at about $20,000 a week, that helped ensure the theater’s economic health. When the show moved from the Lyceum Space to the Sixth Avenue Playhouse last June, giving the Rep three continuously operating theaters for the first time in its history, Woodhouse calculated that it reached about 50,000 people and grossed about $700,000--more than seven times the normal gross of a Rep production.

Woodhouse estimates that the show has reached close to 100,000 and grossed more than $1 million.

The success of the show in San Diego was unprecedented and remains inexplicable. It had distinctly shorter runs in its earlier Kansas City, Chicago and Denver incarnations. A Los Angeles production, which took two of the show’s authors who had been in the San Diego cast, Rosanna E. Coppedge and Valerie Fagan, opened and closed this year.

Perhaps San Diego likes female musical ensembles that poke fun at contemporary mores. “A . . . My Name is Alice,” a five-women series of musical vignettes at the Old Globe Theatre, is 98% sold out, with scattered single tickets left, through the end of its June 18 run.

“Six Women With Brain Death” has created its share of long-running friendships and made local celebrities out of some of the cast members, who report that people recognize them in supermarkets.

Linda Libby, whose mother has seen the show about 70 times, is the one member of the San Diego cast who has been with the show continuously from the beginning. She compares the show with “taking care of a baby. I have a real sense of responsibility for it.”

Last year, when the show moved to the Sixth Avenue Playhouse, she was afraid it would close and asked fellow cast member Kate Kiley how she felt when she left the long-running “Beach Blanket Babylon” after two years in San Francisco.

“She said there’s a grieving process you go through, like leaving a friend,” Libby said. “I try to prepare for that. But how do you prepare for a death?”

Coppedge is due back in San Diego to replace Geraldine Joyce, who is leaving the show for a part in the San Diego Rep season opener, “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” on the Lyceum Stage. Seraiah Carol and Sharon Murray, who were also in the original San Diego cast, took breaks of several months before returning to the show.

Having a venue for an extension is a perk that other theaters in town envy. When the Old Globe and the La Jolla Playhouse have hits, they usually have only a few weeks at most to extend a show before getting on with the scheduled subscription series.

In two months, the Rep will again have a space to use if it has a show this season that warrants extending. But is there another “Six Women” in their future? Expiring minds want to know.