‘Steel Magnolias’ Shrinks in Cavernous Bay Theater

“Steel Magnolias,” the off-Broadway hit and soon-to-be movie about five women who bare their souls and wicked wit in a Louisiana beauty shop, may not be coming to San Diego’s Civic Theatre after all.

The producers put on hold plans for the road show, starring Barbara Rush and Marion Ross, after the play was panned when it opened in San Francisco’s cavernous Curran Theatre. The critics fired some well-earned barbs at the frankly sentimental but true story--it’s a “Terms of Endearment” with a twist of Southern Comfort.

But the biggest culprit, which most critics overlooked, was the theater, not the script. The play shriveled in the acoustical barn of the Curran, which serves as a pointed reminder that the Old Globe Theatre was wise to back A.R. Gurney in his insistence on “The Cocktail Hour” playing in the intimacy of an off-Broadway house rather than a Broadway theater.

Intimate shows such as “The Cocktail Hour,” which takes place in a living room, and “Steel Magnolias,” where the talk is in a small-town salon, cry out for close, comfortable settings with no need for microphones.

If the tour drops San Diego, theatergoers could still benefit if an enterprising producer can acquire the rights to present an independent production in a house that fits the play better than the behemoth Civic Theatre, giving five actresses the roles of their lives.

Still on tap for the San Diego Playgoers’ season is “Forbidden Broadway,” a takeoff on Broadway shows, most of which should prove familiar to San Diego audiences. It includes “Into the Woods,” which becomes “Into the Words,” the San Diego Playgoers’ upcoming “Cats” and “Starlight Express,” retitled “Starlight Excess,” and, of course, the inevitable “Phantom of the Musical.” “Forbidden Broadway” plays Tuesday through Sunday at the Civic Theatre, followed by “A Chorus Line,” June 27-July 2.

Harry Anderson (“Night Court”) will headline the July 8 finale of the 61st International Brotherhood of Magicians at San Diego Civic Theatre. Nightly demonstrations at the Civic Theatre from July 5-8 will feature 1,500 magicians from all over the world.

John Hirsch, the director of last year’s contra gate-inspired “Coriolanus,” had to drop his commitment to direct “Measure for Measure” for the Old Globe this summer when he was leveled by tuberculosis. Hirsch, back in his Toronto home after seven weeks in the hospital, said he was glad his replacement will be Adrian Hall, recently deposed artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center.

“I was really looking forward to going back to the Old Globe,” he said by phone. “I had one of the best times I ever had working with Jack (O’Brien, artistic director) and the other people there.”

He firmly dispelled any suggestion that the money quarrel between the Directors’ Guild and the League of Regional Theaters played any role in his decision to cancel his position.

“I was sick,” he said, adding that he sympathizes with both sides.

“Those of us who are free-lancing and doing major productions spend three to four months doing a show, and the amount they are able to pay us is meager. At the same time, theaters are still dealing with financial problems and living in a time when it’s very hard to survive. I don’t know what is going to happen at all.”

What do you do when your last show is an unqualified flop? If you’re the Progressive Stage Company, you produce a new show about the comic pitfalls of putting on a flop. That’s why the Progressive is readying the San Diego premiere of Terrence McNally’s “It’s Only a Play” for a June 22-July 23 run, said producing director Carlos X. Pena.

“Our last show (‘House of Correction’) was a turkey, so we thought we would put on a play about putting on a turkey,” said Pena. “ ‘It’s Only a Play’ is about the Broadway opening of a show called ‘The Golden Egg.’ Everybody gets (maligned): the writer, director, actors, critics, even the preview audiences. I just hope San Diego has a good sense of humor about its theater scene.”

On the boards for August is Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties,” a romp through 20th-Century ideas with Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara, the father of dadaism. For late fall or early winter, Pena plans the world premiere of a musical, “A Few Hours in Hell” by local musician Stu Shames, who will start workshops next month for his story about the only cabaret in hell.

Local actress Trina Kaplan will be supporting more than the show she’s acting in this weekend. Along with husband Ted, Kaplan, who plays the gleefully shrewish mother-in-law in “The Mandrake” at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, is sponsoring the O’Neill Playwrights West readings at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company on Saturday.

The O’Neill Playwrights West, which formed on the picket lines of last year’s Writer’s Guild of America strike, is made up of playwrights who attended the famed Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Conn. Three readings of new works to be presented on the set of “The Day Room,” still playing at the Gaslamp, include “First Draft” by Yale Udoff at 11 a.m., “V.D. in Safe Haven” by Preston Marshall Ransone at 1 p.m. and “The Prince and the Greaser” by Jon Surgal and C. Finestra at 3 p.m.

The O’Neill Playwrights West readings, free and open to the public, will continue June 24 with “The Big Explanation” by Doug Gower, “The Descent” by Paula Cizmar, “Getting Off” by Lee Thomas and “Three for Two” by Michael Robert David.

The Times Arts Tix Center is moving to a new location in Horton Plaza and will be unveiled at noon June 29. The facility, where theatergoers can buy half-price tickets on the day of a performance, will have expanded hours: Mondays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Tuesdays-Saturdays from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. To get the center off the ground, William Purves formed the San Diego Theatre League, of which he is president, and then raised the funds to hire the organization’s first full-time staff member, executive director Alan Ziter. By June, 1986, two months after he was hired, Ziter began operating Arts Tix out of a “temporary” space in Spreckels Theatre. It took three more years to raise the money to move to Horton Plaza.

In the last three years, Ziter reports, Arts Tix, which costs $90,000 a year to run, has turned over $1 million to arts organizations by selling their tickets. “Now we want to return twice as much in half the time in our new location,” he said.