Starlight Moving to Debut a Musical During ’91 Season

It’s not just talk anymore. Starlight Musical Theatre will be taking a decisive step next month toward the development of a new musical for the 1991 season.

The company is inaugurating a series of three staged readings of new musicals, all of which have yet to be named. One of the three could be chosen for a full production next summer. The first show will be Feb. 26 at Starlight’s rehearsal hall at Kettner Boulevard and Juniper Street. The other two will probably be at San Diego City College, said Don Ward, co-artistic director of the theater.

Ward, chatting informally after a spirited performance of WAM (“Words and Music”), a school touring program that previewed at Starlight’s recital hall in Balboa Park Tuesday, said he had no intention of mentioning the upcoming musicals yet, but his excitement over the upcoming project got the better of him.

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said in response to a direct question about how the long-continuing search for a new musical was going. “But we’re starting a prologue series. We’re very excited about it. And best of all, the board is committed to doing a new musical in 1991.

“We’ve got our fingers crossed.”

Meanwhile “Suds,” San Diego’s home-grown musical that moved from the San Diego Rep to the Old Globe to Off Broadway, is back on its feet and heading for San Francisco’s Waterfront Theatre for a March 7-April 1 run that could be extended if the demand is there.

Co-producer and co-writer Bryan Scott hopes that “Suds” will discover the same kind of faithful audience in San Francisco that the long-running hits “Beach Blanket Babylon” and “Greater Tuna” have managed to find.

“I’d be more than happy to stay a while,” Scott said. “You don’t have to twist my arm.”

Only one of the four original cast members will pass on the San Francisco run. Christine Sevec will stay at United States International University where she teaches. Instead, Jeanine Morick, an understudy for all the female parts in New York, will play Cindy, the Cinderella who puts starch and a whole lot of ‘50s pop music back in her life in a fluff and fold Laundromat.

Steve Gunderson, who just finished wrapping up a movie, will return along with Susan Mosher and Melinda Gilb, who just closed in “Funny Girl” at the Lawrence Welk Resort Theatre. Director Will Roberson will fly to San Francisco from the Phoenix Little Theatre where he is directing “The Crucible.” Eventually, he will return to San Diego to direct “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill” for the Old Globe Theatre in April.

“Suds” went $500,000 into the hole on its 1988 Off Broadway venture. Still, Scott and his co-producers raised an additional $100,000 for the San Francisco run in the hope that only another production would give them at least a chance of getting back into the black. But it’s been bumpy going. They had originally planned to move to the Waterfront Theatre months ago--and then the earthquake hit.

“This time hopefully the timing is better,” said Scott. “We have the money and they have had their earthquake for the decade. At least that’s what I’m counting on.”

SAN DIEGANS IN NEW YORK: The movie that Gunderson just wrapped up in New York, “Topsy and Bunker,” also featured Gunderson’s friend of 15 years, SDSU graduate Kathy Najimy, who found fame and fortune in the Off-Broadway hit “The Kathy & Mo” show with yet another longtime mutual San Diego friend, Maureen Gaffney.

The film, based on a stage play by SDSU graduate Jim Hansen, is a modern “Of Mice and Men” story, with Gunderson playing a socially maladjusted misfit who shares a run-down apartment with Bunker, his childlike, mentally retarded roommate. The independently financed movie, directed by New York University film school graduate Thom Massengale, is still looking for a distributor.

Najimy, who plays the bit part of Bunker’s boss, Joanie, has a long history with the project; she directed Hansen’s stage play at the Second Stage Theatre in New York two years ago. Hansen, too, seems hot right now. He won the American Playwrighting Grant from the New York Foundation of the Arts last year and is about to have a campy “B” movie send-up called “Trailer Park Nurse” produced Off Broadway.

Gunderson dropped a few lines from New York saying that he is “thrilled” to be in almost every scene; that means he can’t end up entirely on the cutting room floor as he did in “Desperately Seeking Susan,” “Heartburn,” and “Falling in Love.”

“At one time producers were seeking out ‘names’ for my role and I wasn’t sure if I would be doing the role,” wrote Gunderson. “In any case, they didn’t dump me, thank goodness. (I’m) too nervous to go to dailies--but I’ve been getting great feedback from those that go. They say word on distribution should be swift. . . . “

As for “The Kathy & Mo Show,” which opened in September of 1988, Najimy and Gaffney just had their contracts renewed for another year. Gaffney and Najimy, who have already committed to an HBO special and are negotiating a two-picture deal with a movie studio, asked for a two-week vacation before getting back to the comedy grind. Gaffney plans to use her time to head to San Diego in February. She had hoped to get together with her old friend Bryan Scott, but he had to explain, reluctantly, he would be in San Francisco with “Suds.” . . .

PROGRAM NOTES: Sweetooth Comedy Theatre has a brand new musical in a brand new space. “In Stitches: A Musical Escapade of Royal Proportions” by Ruff Yeager opens at Uptown Sound on 3838 Fifth Ave. Feb. 15-March 17. The story is based on “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” . . . The next reading on the Old Globe Theatre’s Play Discovery Program is “Sun Bearing Down,” by Larry Ketron. Playwright and screenwriter Stephen Metcalfe will direct the four-character drama about life in an oceanside restaurant Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. . . . The La Jolla Playhouse was one of 14 companies nationwide to receive a “New Voices’ grant from NBC to support the efforts of new playwrights, directors and actors. The Playhouse receives $20,000. . . . Des McAnuff, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, was impressed with the relevance “A Walk in the Woods” had for audiences in Vilnius, Lithuania where he recently traveled to direct the work. The part of the American arms negotiator was played by a Lithuanian from a Lithuanian theater and the part of the Soviet arms negotiator was played by a Soviet from a Soviet theater and the friendship that grew between the two actors bridged a very real gap between those two cultures. “We were all very moved when we realized the levels of political reality going on,” said McAnuff on the phone from New York.