STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : Late-Night Theater Finds It’s Own Niche, Clientele

Last weekend, Underground at the Lyceum, the late-night program at San Diego Repertory Theatre, drew its biggest crowds ever--stretching its capacity to 260--thanks to the wonderful sketch and songfest presentation of “When Friends Collide” by the “Suds” team of Melinda Gilb, Steve Gunderson and Christine Sevec, and the “Modern Times” crew of Bryan Scott, Don Victor, Kim Breslin, Bill Doyle and Jeannie Stawiarski.

“For the first time, we had to get extra chairs,” said Adrian Stewart, Rep managing director. Judy Milstein, who produces the Underground, began the program as an experiment in December and nursed it anxiously as it grew from audiences of 30 to 40 to a “break-even” point of more than 100 to 150 the last three to four months.

“We’re still learning our lessons,” said Milstein, who acknowledged having anxious moments at the beginning when she wondered if the project would fly. “I’ve just learned to work with a group of people that changes every week. It’s still very grass-roots and very dependent upon the support of volunteers and the agreement of the Rep to house us.”

“It certainly is our intention for the time being to continue it,” said Stewart. In fact, the Underground intends to expand in September. The shows now run Thursday through Saturday nights at 10:30 with a suggested donation of $2. But, starting Sept. 6, the Underground will be host to a free Literary Late Night on Wednesday evenings. The first guest will be playwright Mac Wellman, author of “The Albanian Soft Shoe,” opening Sept. 15 at the Rep. Wellman will read his poetry.

The growth of interest in the Underground comes not just from audiences, but from the increasing number of local performers and artists like the “Suds” and “Modern Times” teams, looking for venues to try out new work.

Just a few blocks away at the Progressive Stage Company, producing director Carlos X. Pena is recruiting performers for his After Hours presentations on Friday and Saturday nights (also at 10:30), with a ticket price of $3. Pena and Milstein say they have been talking about exchanging work with each other and other emerging late-night venues. Stu Shames, the writer and director of the Progressive’s current show, “A Few Hours in Hell,” tried out several numbers from his bawdy vision of the underworld at the Underground before opening at the Progressive, where the show plays Mondays through Wednesdays, through Aug. 30. Shames’ wife, Kim Breslin, plays the half-goat/half-girl in “A Few Hours in Hell” and in “When Friends Collide” at the Underground.

For Shames, who slips in occasional songs from “Hell” in his work as a piano player at the U.S. Grant Hotel during High Tea, the opportunity to try out his first new work in three years is nothing less than “wonderful.”

Shames’ last musical was “Lost in the City,” a popular revue at the now defunct Triteria that was on the schedule at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986 before being canceled to make way for a construction project.

“I saw Carlos at a street fair and I told him about the project and he said, ‘Do it here!’ ” Shames recalled.

“I think the development of these experimental spots has really opened things up. I had always felt that this was a very incestuous town, and everything was closed up. This is a wonderful opportunity, and I hope there will be more.”

The Ensemble Arts Theatre, which presented Sam Shepard’s “Angel City,” a story of Hollywood types, at the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, Scotland, just got a rave from the city’s leading newspaper, The Scotsman.

“The play is, at first viewing, demanding to the point of incoherence,” said Joseph Farrell in his Aug. 18 review, “but the cast produce bravura performances which are all the more remarkable because the characters alter and deteriorate as the work progresses. Director Ginny-Lynn Safford forced the play to a crescendo of frenzy without ever losing control. This is an impressive Fringe debut for a new professional company.”

The Ensemble Arts Theatre will present “Angel City” Sept. 28. Location and ticket information will be announced soon.

“Charly” Fedora, the director of the Mid City Players, at 548 5th Avenue, always fantasized about taking his company somewhere no American company has gone before--to Hungary. A couple of weeks ago he shared this dream with a friend of his, a Byzantine Catholic priest from Hungary, who told him he was in luck. Hungary’s Minister of Culture was in town and he would set up a meeting for Fedora. After a four-hour meeting, Fedora walked away with an official invitation from the Hungarian government.

“He (the minister) said that, ever since President Bush landed in Budapest less than a month ago, ‘Our country is hot to do anything from your country, provided we can do a cultural exchange.’ ” Fedora said.

They settled on a time--the summer of 1990--and now the Mid City Players plan to present “Quasimodo,” an original adaptation by Fedora of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” a 30-plus character play presented by the company in San Diego in June. A Hungarian troupe will send a company to San Diego afterward. Fund-raising for the trip is under way.

PROGRAM NOTES: Pay-what-you-can tickets for the Sept. 2 matinee performance of “The Misanthrope” at Mandell Weiss Theatre go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday at the La Jolla Playhouse box office. Tickets for the last pay-what-you-can event--Lee Blessing’s “Down the Road”--sold out in 40 minutes. . . . The Roger Downey translation of Frank Wedekind’s “Lulu,” produced at La Jolla Playhouse last year under the direction of Sharon Ott, will be presented at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where Ott is artistic director, Sept. 6 through Oct. 14. Among the cast changes: television’s “Family Ties” star Justine Bateman replaces Elizabeth Berridge as Lulu. . . . Weekend openings depict two faces of crime: The Marquis Public Theatre presents David Mamet’s “Edmond,” the story of an ordinary man gone wrong, starting tonight; Sledgehammer Theatre opens Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Pre-Paradise Sorry Now,” a love story about two young serial murderers Saturday at 420 First Ave. The Sledgehammer show contains explicit sexual situations and graphic violence and is described as “not for the timid.”