15-Year Odyssey Brings Actor Daren Kelly Full Circle--and Back to Orange County Roots

When Daren Kelly left Orange County to make a stage career in New York, South Coast Repertory co-founder Martin Benson was sorry to see him go.

“He was a young leading man in the classic mold with a lot of talent,” said Benson, who remembers the tall, dark-haired actor from SCR productions of Moliere’s “Would-be Gentleman” and Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.”

But Kelly, a Burbank native who grew up in Anaheim, had show-biz stars in his eyes.

“It was like any kid’s dream,” he said last week, now 38 and just back from his 15-year odyssey. “You take your little cardboard suitcase and you look up at the lights and say, ‘I’m gonna get you, Broadway.’ ”

At the time, in the early ‘70s, SCR was struggling for survival, unable to pay even its top actors a professional wage. Kelly, then just out of UC Irvine, was fortunate to get gas money.

“It seemed like the only actors who worked regularly in all of Southern California came from out of town,” he recalled. “Everybody talked about New York. It was the place to go.”

So Kelly headed east. In Chicago, he landed work in Molnar’s trifle “The Play’s the Thing,” starring Tammy Grimes. “That’s how I got my (Actors) Equity card,” he said--a card that might have had wings, the way it propelled him his final leg to Manhattan’s theater district. But it couldn’t get him work.

Down to his last $82 as winter approached, he auditioned in every nook and cranny and waited for the phone to ring. One day it finally did. The producer of a bus-and-truck tour wanted to meet him.

“I came into his office with the snow banked on my shoulders,” Kelly recounted. “He said to me, ‘How would you like to go to Florida in ‘The Great Sebastian.’ I said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”

Kelly returned to New York soon enough and, still starry-eyed, scored better than most. He was cast in Broadway’s “Deathtrap” for a year, first opposite John Wood and then Stacy Keach and John Cullum.

During eight of those 12 months, Kelly even managed to double as a regular on the daytime TV soap “General Hospital,” a well-paid job that he kept for another two years.

Then he landed on Broadway again at the Palace Theatre in “Woman of the Year,” which starred Lauren Bacall. Six months later, Bacall left and was replaced by Raquel Welch. It could have been worse.

“I saw plenty of people fairly high up in the business who couldn’t do community theater,” Kelly said.

Looking back, does he have any thoughts about the old storefront SCR on Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa that he remembers?

“Yeah,” he said, “actors like Don Took and Carl Reggiardo were giving world-class performances as good as anything I saw in New York. They just decided not to take on the whole planet.”

That said, Kelly had to be going. He had an appointment with a Los Angeles casting director. He’s gonna get you, L.A.

MONDAY MONDAY: For a Monday night, customarily a day off in the theater, Eli Simon was a busy director. Probably the busiest in Orange County.

The thin, dapper San Francisco native had to juggle two shows 20 miles apart--one in Costa Mesa and one in Laguna Beach--and both were premieres of a sort.

The first was a staged reading of Anthony Clarvoe’s “Pick Up Ax” on the Mainstage at SCR, which launched the theater’s NewSCRipt series of plays-in-progress. The second was a variety show at the Laguna Hotel, inaugurating the UC Irvine Cabaret, a project co-directed by Dennis Castellano and designed to develop student talent in an off-campus setting.

“I’ve got no complaints,” said Simon, 31, who joined the UCI faculty last year as an assistant professor of theater and made an immediate splash directing a student production of Caryl Churchill’s “Cloud Nine.”

Clarvoe’s play takes place in Silicon Valley and focuses on two computer whizzes--self-described “idiot savants”--who start their own company and, when the competition gets tough, hire a business consultant who applies unique methods to keep from getting nosed out of the market.

Simon has nothing but adoration for the script. “The writing is terrific,” he said last week. “The dialogue is fantastic. The characters are deep and complex. The plot is gripping.”

SCR literary manager John Glore, who collaborated as the dramaturgist on “Pick Up Ax,” agreed in a somewhat lower key: “Of all the plays we’ve presented in NewSCRipts, I’d say this is one of the ones closest to being ready to go.”

In any case, between the reading and the cabaret, Simon more or less covered as wide a theatrical spectrum as could be expected--or, depending on one’s enthusiasm, tolerated--in a single night.

The UCI Cabaret debut featured such acts as Paul Tifford, described by Simon as “a sure show-stopper.” He is “the fifth-rated Hula-Hoop champion of the world,” the director said, “straight out of Ed Sullivan.”

Other acts included a song-and-dance number by a former cheerleader for the Golden State Warriors, singers from a gospel choir and straight musical-theater excerpts from “Sophisticated Ladies,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Wiz” and “Cabaret.”

“We wanted to be very eclectic the first time out,” said Simon, adding that the next cabaret effort a few weeks down the line would be an all-Gershwin evening featuring “a very classy quartet.”