STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : It’s Official: Rep to Premiere Soviet Play by Actor in Urals

What had been a rumor is now official: The San Diego Repertory Theatre has received approval from the San Diego Arts Festival: Treasures of the Soviet Union to present the world premiere of a Soviet play, “Slingshot,” from Oct. 22 to Nov. 12.

The San Diego Rep and Roman Viktyuk, the Soviet director chosen to direct a play of his choice in English, had been leaning so heavily toward presenting the American premiere of “Smirnova’s Birthday Party,” that the Soviet arts festival printed the “Smirnova” title on its brochures as the Rep’s offering. But then Viktyuk flew to San Diego July 29 with the as yet untranslated “Slingshot” under his arm.

It seems that less than a month ago, Nicolai Kolyada, a Soviet actor living in Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains, sent Viktyuk this play about an embittered dock worker, crippled in a work accident, who learns to love again with the help of a friend.

Viktyuk had never seen Kolyada’s work before because none of the actor-writer’s four plays had ever been produced in Moscow or Leningrad where Viktyuk does most of his work.

“I read it at night, and I called him in the morning and told him who was calling. There was a long pause, and then he started yelling, ‘It is a dream!’ ” Viktyuk said at the Rep. (Viktyuk’s Russian was translated into English by Raia Rechaim of La Mesa.)

“In my opinion, it is the best Soviet play,” Viktyuk said. The director convinced the San Diego Rep of that Aug. 2 after reading them the play in Russian with simultaneous translation into English.

The day after he received approval from the Rep, Viktyuk said, “Tonight, I will call the playwright in Sverdlovsk. He has no idea that his play will play for the first time ever in San Diego. I can only imagine his long pause. And I will be yelling to him that the dream continues.”

Allison Brennan, who earned raves in “Hard Times” at the San Diego Rep two years ago, is looking forward to her next starring role, playing the cutting British wife opposite her real-life husband, Ralph Elias, artistic director of the Bowery Theatre, in Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw” at the Bowery’s Kingston Playhouse Sept. 15.

The last and only other time the two shared a stage brings back memories of when the couple met more than five years ago. The play was “Another Paradise,” an Off-Broadway story in which they played a Kentucky husband and wife. Brennan, who had been cast first, was helping the director choose the male lead. When she saw Elias audition, she remembers having said, “We have to have this guy.”

“I picked him out of the lineup without even knowing I was picking him for the big job,” she added.

Neither one of them was interested in a relationship at that time. Elias had just broken up with someone and she was looking for “someone more suitable--a lawyer--not one of these artist types.”

But by the time they started the kissing scene, she said, “there was no turning back.” The romance continued offstage, and they were married two years later.

If the program notes for the San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Company seem to boast an added flair, credit William Murray, longtime New Yorker columnist, novelist and G&S; enthusiast, who is following up his recent roles in the San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Company’s “Trial by Jury” and “Pirates of Penzance” with a new part--as dramaturge for the 11-year-old theater.

Murray will be writing the notes for upcoming productions, starting with “The Mikado,” Sept. 15-24 at the Casa del Prado Theatre, and assisting artistic director Leon Natker with the selection of additional repertory for the company.

Murray said that, because of his busy schedule, he never planned to get involved in behind-the-scenes theater work. His latest novel about horse racing, “The King of the Nightcap,” recently hit the bookstores. In between New Yorker staff assignments he is working on another novel, another nonfiction book and planning to fly east to edit his book, “The Last Italian.”

“I’ve written, directed, produced and reviewed theater in the past and it is an enormously time-consuming obsession that I have deliberately stayed away from,” Murray said. So why did he agree to do it now? “Out of love. I really love the material, and I love being around singers. If I can be of help to the company, that’s fine. I think it is important to have a company like this in San Diego.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The next Shakespeare on the boards in San Diego is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The text has been modernized by producer and director Keith A. Anderson, and it is absolutely free on Saturdays from 4-6 p.m., through Oct. 7, at the Memorial Bowl Amphitheatre at 373 Park Way, Chula Vista. . . . Two shows from this year’s La Jolla Playhouse season are heading to Broadway: Graciela Daniele’s “Dangerous Games” opens Oct. 9 and Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s “The Grapes of Wrath” in April. The Playhouse will share in the net profits from “Dangerous Games” and “The Grapes of Wrath.” Another Playhouse show, Geoff Hoyle’s “The Fool Show,” is being retitled “A Feast of Fools” and is also heading east. . . . Tony-award winning actress Julie Harris, fresh from the national tour of “Driving Miss Daisy,” will be coming to town--not to act, but to check out the art show by her friend Juli Veee at the Art Loft in Del Mar tonight from 5 to 9. . . . Neil Simon’s brother, writer Danny Simon, plans to attend opening night of his brother’s autobiographical “Broadway Bound” at the North Coast Repertory Theatre Sept. 30. . . . The Ken Hill version of “The Phantom of the Opera” will be haunting Symphony Hall for an extra week. The original dates of Dec. 19-24 have been selling briskly, and so the run has been extended from Dec. 26-31.