Only 1 Show’s a Sure Thing for 1990 Rep Theatre Season

Don’t count on the accuracy of the announcement of the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s coming season in this month’s American Theatre magazine, said a representative of the theater.

Only one show mentioned in the magazine is definitely slated for production: “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson” by poet Amiri Baraka (the former Leroi Jones) with music by jazz Hall of Famer Max Roach (last at the SD Rep with original music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and direction by George Ferencz, who directed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” at the Rep.

“The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson” tells the story of a black gangster who used his money to help fuel the Harlem Renaissance and became friends with such literary stars as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. The show will be a co-production with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and La Mama ETC and is loosely scheduled near or at the beginning of the season in the spring. The Rep has got its fingers crossed over a National Endowment for the Arts grant application for the show and is expecting a response next year.

Another show listed in American Theatre magazine as being on the Rep schedule is “Born in the R.S.A.” by Barney Simon, which will have a reading at the Rep’s Underground at the Lyceum on Oct. 19, under the direction of Binnur Karaevli. (R.S.A. stands for the The Republic of South Africa). “Born in the R.S.A.” and the other shows listed--Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This” and “Sorrows of Frederick” by Romulus Linney--are possibilities for the coming season, but none are confirmed, said the Rep.

Picking a season is a tricky business for any theater. But the upcoming choices at the Rep may bear closer scrutiny than most, given the many complaints it has had from subscribers over a season that probably has been one of the most adventurous and premiere-packed of any theater in the country.

Will the theater retrench in the wake of angry words from some subscribers about the dead babies in the San Diego premiere of “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” the unflattering glare put on Elvis Presley in the American premiere of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and the difficulty many have in understanding the world premiere of “Albanian Softshoe”?

One who hopes not is Darla Cash, who stars in the theater’s currently playing “Albanian Softshoe,” produces the Wordworks reading series at the Underground at the Lyceum and is married to the theater’s artistic director, Douglas Jacobs.

“Maybe this year has been too radical for people, but a theater that doesn’t make a commitment to living writers is dead,” Cash said. “In certain ways, we’ve tried to show our true colors by using new playwrights, which is good, hiring enormous casts, which is good, and spending a lot of time developing new work, which is great. We’ve been needing to do this for years, and we have done it. I think a lot of subscribers have said that, if you continue to do this work, we will not be there for you. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to turn around and do Neil Simon next year. We’ve crossed the Rubicon.”

(Of course having a new Simon play on the Old Globe season schedule has boosted that theater’s subscription ticket sales, which are running 20% ahead of where they were last year at this time. And the North Coast Repertory Theatre has Simon’s “Broadway Bound” currently running, with a production by the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre to follow early next year.)

In the meantime there is a special deal for those mystified by Mac Wellman’s “Albanian Softshoe” at the Rep.

Adrian Stewart, managing director of the theater, or Keith Davis at the box office, will sell second-timers a ticket for $5 to check it out again.

“We want people to understand this work, and we want them to feel we’re trying to nurture them and not just leave them on the wire,” Cash said. “There have been so many questions.”

And does she understand the story, a beautifully produced, elegantly acted but “strange” tale--as the Rep describes it in its own advertisements--of two women who travel across the ice moons of Saturn to deliver a fake cheese to someone named Pancake?

“It’s constantly a mystery and a revelation. It’s taught me to release and go with the moment. It turns on a dime just like Shakespeare,” Cash said.

The timing seems right for a second look as actor Alex Colon leaves the cast to do a movie, “Havana,” and Kedric Robin Wolfe, last seen here in the acclaimed “Warren’s Story,” steps in as the Man of Shala through the end of the run Oct. 28.

PROGRAM NOTES: Next on the boards for Sledgehammer Theatre is “Hamlet,” to be directed by Sledgehammer’s artistic director Scott Feldsher for a late March 1990 opening. Sledgehammer dramaturge Bruce McKenzie (now in “Albanian Softshoe”) will star as the prince and Robert Brill will do the sets. The show runs five hours, but this time Sledgehammer will break with its own tradition and present intermissions, promised Ethan Feerst, the executive director. . The last Pay What You Can of the La Jolla Playhouse season begins Saturday, when tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. for the Oct. 21 matinee of “Macbeth” at 2 at the Mandell Weiss Theatre. Tickets literally cost what people feel they can afford to pay, which has been as little as 50 cents and as much as $7 over the full price of $18. . . .

Broadway producers have been frequenting the world premiere of Tom Dulack’s “Breaking Legs” at the Old Globe’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. No deals have been made, but Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the Old Globe, confirmed that there is “a lot of interest” and that he hopes the playwright will return to San Diego before the end of the run for more rewrites. In the meantime, Greg Mullavey is leaving the cast after the Sunday night performance, to take Ron Leibman’s role in another Old Globe premiere now on Broadway, “Rumors.” William Anton will step in for Mullavey on Tuesday and play the part through the end of the run, Oct. 29. . . .

Mid-City Theatre will be doing its own part for the upcoming Soviet Arts Festival with free performances of its entire run of “Fiddler on the Roof” Oct. 26-Nov. 12. The company’s founder, “Charly” Fedora, heard that San Diego Gas & Electric was doing some funding for the festival and called Jack Morse, head of public relations, to ask for underwriting to present a free show. He was promised a check for what he needed--$2,000--by the end of the conversation. . Wordworks at the Lyceum continues with the 10:30 p.m. reading of “Heaven and Earth,” Oct. 26. The play, a comedy by UC San Diego professor Allan Havis, is about a couple--Victor, who is Jewish, and Trish, who is not--and what happens when their families mingle. Next on tap is the Nov. 2 reading of a theatrical adaptation of the novel “Pamela,” directed by John Highkin. . On Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 28 at 10:30 p.m. Underground at the Lyceum presents local comic Don Victor in “Dancing Alone.”