‘Have Pen, Will Write’ Nets Premiere for North Coast

The local premiere of Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound” is heading to the 194-seat North Coast Repertory Theatre, a non-Equity company in Solana Beach. No one is more surprised by the news than Olive Blakistone, its artistic director, who merely wrote away for the amateur rights.

“I was really delighted because I didn’t expect to get it,” Blakistone said. “I just write for what I want. I also asked for ‘M. Butterfly’ and ‘Frankie and Johnnie’ and ‘Steel Magnolias’ very cheekily, fully expecting that they would say no. And they did. But, every once in a while, some slip through the cracks like ‘Torch Song Trilogy,’ ‘The Normal Heart’ and this.”

San Diego will get the local premiere of “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune,” Terrence McNally’s smash off-Broadway love story about a short-order cook and a waitress, next year. It’s scheduled for the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre. The Gaslamp has the professional contract for “Broadway Bound” and thought, until Tuesday, that it would be presenting the local premiere of that show, too, in February at the Hahn Cosmopolitan. Gaslamp managing director Kit Goldman said the theater will proceed with plans to present “Broadway Bound,” but it might alter the opening date.

North Coast will present “Broadway Bound” in September.

“Broadway Bound,” the third of Simon’s acclaimed autobiographical trilogy that began with “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Biloxi Blues,” was a critical success on Broadway, winning Tonys for Linda Lavin as best actress and John Randolph as best featured actor in 1987. It closed last year after a yearlong run on Broadway, and the rights had just become available when Blakistone wrote for them.

“I had a kind of 13th-hour semi-heart attack because I heard a rumor that the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre wanted to do it,” said Blakistone. Normally, a request from the Gaslamp, which has a small professional theater contract, would take precedence over a request from the North Coast, which is still raising money to go Equity.

“I called Samuel French (which leases the rights), and they said we may have let this go a little soon, but not to worry, that we have the contract and they will honor it,” Blakistone said.

James A. Strait, general manager/associate director at the Gaslamp, said, “Their timing was fabulous, ours was a little less fabulous. But it doesn’t matter. I think there is a wide enough audience for a show of this quality.”

Besides “Broadway Bound” and “Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune,” the Gaslamp said the Hahn Cosmopolitan season will include--at dates yet to be announced--Alan Ayckbourne’s “Woman in Mind,” a story about a woman whose real-life family and fantasy family end up intermingling; Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” about a widower whose first wife returns as a ghost, and the world premiere of “The Debutante,” a play commissioned by Goldman that will rent out the Hahn space.

“The Debutante” is set to star Southeast San Diego native Cleavon Little in an original story about upper-class African-American society in turn-of-the-century Victorian Philadelphia. It will be a busy year for Little, who will also reprise his Broadway role in “I’m Not Rappaport” for PBS with Judd Hirsch, traveling to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival to do a one-man show called “All God’s Dangers” and filming a MacGyver episode. He recently received an Emmy nomination for his performance in a “Dear John” episode with Hirsch.

The season for the small Gaslamp Quarter space has not yet been announced.

“Broadway Bound,” which runs Sept. 30-Nov. 18, kicks off an ambitious season for the North Coast. Next on the boards is “The Hasty Heart,” a comedy/drama by John Patrick set in a convalescent ward during World War II, Dec. 1-Jan. 6; “The Memorandum,” a satire of political bureaucracy by Vaclav Havel, the Czechoslovak playwright who was jailed by his government for his political beliefs, Jan. 19-Feb. 24; Stephen Metcalfe’s “Emily,” March 9-April 14, a story of a young woman’s search for love, which premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and the San Diego premiere of “The Film Society,” a South African drama about apartheid, set in an old-line preparatory school, April 27-June 2.

PROGRAM NOTES: The “Suds” team of Melinda Gilb, Steve Gunderson, Christine Sevec and Susan Mosher will unite with their old friends from “Modern Times”--Bryan Scott, Bill Doyle, Don Victor and Kim Breslin--in a series of comic sketches and music called “When Friends Collide” at the Underground at the Lyceum, Aug. 18-19. A taste of things to come: a “Julie Andrews Sisters” sketch, in which Julie Andrews twins, played by Gilb and Mosher, do a medley of Julie Andrews numbers to the theme of “The Patty Duke Show.” In lieu of admission, the actors ask that you bring a canned or boxed food item for the San Diego County AIDS Assistance Fund Food Bank. . . . NewWorks Theatre is the latest company to receive a grant to participate in the San Diego Arts Festival. The company’s project, which is geared for children, is “Anton Chekhov, the Man and his Plays.” It will be presented mornings at the Lyceum Space on Oct. 31-Nov. 3 and then will travel for 10 performances on school campuses Oct. 6-10. Auditions will be Aug. 20 at 6 p.m. at the Blind Recreation Center, 1805 Upas St