STAGE NOTES : Musical ‘Starlight Express’ Chugging Toward Orange County Performing Arts Center in April

All aboard! “Starlight Express” will chug into the Orange County Performing Arts Center next season for a two-week run, April 3 to 15, immediately following a run at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical will start a 28-city tour in Cincinnati on Nov. 7 with stops in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and at least a half-dozen other places before reaching Costa Mesa.

Arlene Phillips, who choreographed the original productions in London and New York, will direct the show. It will feature technology over star performers. The touring set is made of 20 tons of rollerdrome grids and trusses and will extend 50 feet into the theater.

TIME OUT: Douglas Rowe is taking a year’s leave as artistic director of the Laguna Playhouse, starting today. Actually, he’ll be on “working sabbatical,” general manager Jody Davidson said earlier this week.

The leave will allow Rowe to investigate theatrical operations elsewhere, in preparation for eventually augmenting the playhouse’s production facilities at the Moulton Theatre in Laguna Beach with a second venue, to be used by a professional troupe.

Davidson said Rowe still will direct Sheldon Harnick’s musical adaptation of the Frank Capra movie classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” next season and another, as-yet-undecided production in the spring. “He’ll be in close touch,” Davidson says.

Meanwhile, rumors that “Big River” producer Rocco Landesman eyeballed Mark Turnbull’s “Manet” before it closed out the playhouse season June 12 are somewhat exaggerated. “My father-in-law saw it and told me he loved it,” said Landesman, who also heads the Jujamcyn chain of Broadway theaters in New York.

Turnbull is reportedly preparing to go to London for talks with a producer there who may be interested in mounting the original musical about 19th-Century French painter Edouard Manet. The composer-playwright could not be reached for confirmation. Rowe, who was off on a camping vacation this week, also was unavailable.

DOWN FANG! Over at the Grove Shakespeare Festival, box office officials are scratching their heads over an announcement that Murray Schisgal’s “The Songs of War” would open later than expected.

Last week a Grove spokesman reported that the premiere at the Gem Theatre in Garden Grove would be delayed because the set was being redesigned. The latest (and, we hope, the final) bulletin is this: Previews for “Songs,” the second offering of the season, begin Wednesday and Thursday; the show opens Friday (with full-run prices) as originally scheduled.

Only the barking dogs of the press--otherwise known as the critics--need be concerned about the delay. They have been asked to wait until July 12 before they sink their fangs into the show.

GOING UP: The price of tickets is going up at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa next season--by $2 per ticket across the board if you’re not a subscriber and by 6% per subscription if you are.

That means single tickets will range from $14 to $28, depending on the date and time of performances and whether they are Mainstage or Second Stage plays. Mainstage subscriptions will run from $162 to $48; Second Stage subscriptions will run from $40 to $120.

The rise results from higher production costs, according to South Coast spokesman Cristofer Gross and comes after a record year for attendance (178,000 seats sold). Subscriptions for next season are being renewed more quickly than ever, Gross added. Nevertheless, South Coast anticipates fewer total subscriptions for the 1989-90 season than for the two previous seasons.

“We’re tapering off by design so we can accommodate more single-ticket patrons,” Gross explained. “In the past we have been oversubscribed.” South Coast hopes to have 23,000 subscribers for both stages next season. It had 25,300 two seasons ago and 23,100 this year.

MORE FATS: It’s not yet official, but the Orange County Black Actors Theatre plans to extend its upcoming production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” in Anaheim after its limited engagement on the Second Stage at South Coast Repertory.

The Fats Waller musical will open next Saturday in Costa Mesa (after previews Thursday and Friday) with Rose Mallet, Tina Jackson and Henry Weaver returning from last year’s “Eubie!”

“Tickets are selling very well,” said business manager Wendell Carmichael, adding that the high interest almost certainly means that the show will be reopened at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center on July 22.

“Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” is scheduled to run through July 16 on the South Coast Second Stage. The troupe is planning a fund-raising performance for corporate donors July 10, Carmichael said.

ABUNDANT FUTURE: Gilbert Parker, the William Morris agent who brought playwright Beth Henley and director Ron Lagomarsino together for the world premiere of “Abundance” at South Coast Rep’s California Play Festival in April, says a deal is being negotiated with a New York producer for another production of the play.

Henley recently returned to Los Angeles from London and is working on rewrites, says Parker. He declined to name the producer but noted that “he wants to retain Ron as the director.” Apparently the key to any deal will be allowing the collaboration that Henley and Lagomarsino began in Costa Mesa to continue.

Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company, which had been considering “Abundance” for next season, is now “out of the running,” Parker said. “Ron wouldn’t have been available for the dates they wanted.” Also, the New York producer didn’t want to give up the Chicago market because “he could do the play regionally.”

SETS TO GO: Prospects for taking Opera Pacific’s “My Fair Lady” to Toronto later this summer apparently haven’t panned out. “There was some consideration of it,” says Kurt Howard, assistant to OP general director David DiChiera. “But for various reasons it was decided against.” As things stand, “we would only be renting (out) the scenery.” Ironically, the scenery gets a mediocre rating from the cast of the production, which closes Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts.

“We all know the set needs work,” one performer says. “It doesn’t travel well and needs to be redone.”