From Balboa Park to Broadway : The Old Globe has become a testing ground for New York shows, but it’s trying to avoid compromising its classical commitment

The Old Globe Theatre will premiere Neil Simon’s latest comedy, “Jake’s Women,” on Thursday. The inevitable questions follow:

Is Simon’s story about a man and the women in his life--dead wife, current wife, girlfriend, sister, daughter, therapist--semi-autobiographical? Probably. Simon, whose best work is often semi-autobiographical, seems permanently surrounded by a constellation of women.

Is the show going to Broadway after its debut here?

Are you kidding? Don’t all plays by the popular and prolific Simon go to Broadway?

And what about the Old Globe--is it going Broadway?

More specifically, is this venerable, 56-year-old institution flirting with an identity crisis, as it tries to straddle the dual roles of regional theater and Broadway tryout house?

Any time writers in the league of Neil Simon or Stephen Sondheim are involved in new productions outside of New York, the likelihood is high from the outset that the shows will go on to Broadway productions. The Old Globe premiered three such shows in the last four years that went on to successful New York runs: Simon’s “Rumors,” Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” and A. R. Gurney’s “The Cocktail Hour.” It also served as a secondary stop (read development station) for two August Wilson/Yale Repertory Theatre productions: “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and “The Piano Lesson” (opening on Broadway April 16).

All of which leads some to wonder: Does opening the door to Simon and Sondheim make the Old Globe a Broadway tryout house?

Hold on. The very words, “Broadway tryout house,” which have been bandied about in the media, have a bristling effect on Jack O’Brien, the Old Globe’s artistic director.

In his view, the Old Globe is first, last and always a regional theater that has its first loyalty to its San Diego audience. During a recent interview, O’Brien said that shows are picked for their interest to local, rather than New York audiences. Autonomy is maintained over each production. Case in point: Simon’s longtime New York producer, Emanuel Azenberg (who doubled as best man at Simon’s November wedding to ex-wife Diane Lander), is not involved in pre-production work.

“I think people think, ‘Oh, goodness, this theater is going to be taken over by a New York producer, or once we do this commercial piece, they’ll never take us seriously again,’ ” O’Brien said. “There cannot be an identity crisis here because of the Globe’s expected role as the repository of classical work. As long as we are clear about our classical commitment, our audience never gets nervous.

“To have Neil here makes us work harder on the humor in our classical works. Putting Neil or Terrence McNally or Pete (A. R.) Gurney next to a classical play makes these pieces resonate and the classical work makes their tensile strength more stable. Every play was new at some time. Is there a philosophy here? We do the work we believe in.”

Tom Hall, the Globe’s managing director, acknowledges an economic advantage to the New York connection, which has already returned about $250,000 in royalties to the Old Globe coffers by his calculation. The theater works on contracts that bring it anywhere from 1/2% to 1 1/2% of the gross receipts and 2 1/2% to 5% of the net profits of a given show. But Hall minimizes the role of money in artistic decisions.

“Ninety percent of the productions that everyone thinks have commercial viability fail,” he said. “So only a fool would pick a play strictly because they thought it would have a commercial future. The Broadway theater is a little more risky than horse racing.”

The proof of these statements lies in the programming, O’Brien and Hall said. Shakespeare, still the Globe’s resident playwright, will return in the summer with “Hamlet” and “As You Like It.” “Jake’s Women” steps onto the same space vacated by Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”

Simon’s play, on the main stage, will run simultaneously with a new play by journalist-turned-playwright Mark Lee. “Rebel Armies Deep Into Chad” opened Saturday at the adjoining Cassius Carter Centre Stage.

The director of Lee’s play, Adrian Hall, one of the founders of the regional theater movement and former artistic director of both the Trinity Square Theatre and Dallas Theater Center, sees no problem in the Globe producing shows with commercial potential. For Adrian Hall, the key to the Globe’s firm sense of identity lies in the fact that the show he is directing, by a relatively unknown writer, is getting as much time and attention as Simon’s.

“I think the days of worrying about the corruption of Broadway are over,” he said during a rehearsal break. “Twenty years ago, it worried us all because were were all in such desperate straits, we would do anything. As we found a wider audience, it’s changed.”

What has changed is that regional theaters no longer need Broadway for their bread and butter. Regional theater doesn’t wait for Broadway to send it shows--it can generate its own--and depends not on royalties but on the loyalty of a firm subscription base. One of the ironies about the nonprofit vs. commercial theater question is how laughable it would have been just four years ago.

But then, 1986 was a pivotal year for the Old Globe. The nadir of 1986 came when O’Brien could not get a single producer to check out the world premiere of Stephen Metcalfe’s “Emily” for a possible New York production.

Never mind that Time magazine had called the play one of the best of the year. Never mind that the Globe had won a special Tony as an outstanding regional theater in 1984. Producers did not go there to scout commercial projects in 1986.

They would go to the La Jolla Playhouse to see shows such as “Big River,” a West Coast premiere for the Playhouse that went on to win seven Tony awards including one for best direction by artistic director Des McAnuff. La Jolla had attracted national attention since its inception, perhaps because McAnuff was still working in the East for the better part of the year. (New York producers came as early as 1983 to check out “A Mad World My Masters,” according to managing director Alan Levey.)

But the Old Globe in 1986? Not yet. Not until Rocco Landesman, whose initial producing effort was “Big River,” decided to work with the Old Globe on his second venture, Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” in December 1986. The next year, Sondheim’s musical went on to become a hit Broadway show, to be followed by the Old Globe premieres of “Rumors,” another Broadway hit, and “The Cocktail Hour,” an Off-Broadway hit.

All of a sudden the theater that, for all of its huffing and puffing, could only push “Emily” to a swift opening and closing at Playwrights Horizons in New York was hot stuff--a leader in the burgeoning field of regional theater/commercial theater partnerships. But the theater’s leadership kept in mind what had made it hot stuff: providing a low-key atmosphere that gave artists the time and safe harbor to develop the work.

When “Rumors” opened at the Old Globe, Simon was penning revisions every night. That didn’t trouble the overflowing subscription audiences. But Azenberg, noting that the day of the out-of-town tryout was dead, said that the volume of changes encouraged here would not have been feasible in a non-regional theater, where there is pressure to make money.

As could be expected, the headiness of 1988’s successes resulted in a deluge of original scripts submitted for the 1989 season.

But in 1989, the Old Globe only went with two new projects, neither of which went on to New York runs: Tom Dulack’s “Breaking Legs,” an extended hit with local audiences, and the much ballyhooed “Up in Saratoga,” a new adaptation of a Bronson Howard farce by Terrence McNally under the direction of O’Brien that flopped in a major way (the production cost was $400,000), despite the advance blessings of New York producer Elizabeth McCann.

The Old Globe played its hand with customary prudence, while other theaters like the San Diego Repertory Theatre, which produced a season of premieres, took a financial drubbing (the subscription renewal rate plummeted to 32% this year from 53% last year) and the nationally acclaimed La Jolla Playhouse, still struggling for a firm and dependable local following, announced that it would cancel its 1990 season if $500,000 was not raised by Dec. 31. (The Playhouse subsequently raised the money.)

“Jake’s Women” is the only world premiere of the 1990 winter or summer season at the Globe. “Cobb,” a Yale Repertory Theatre production of Lee Blessing’s play about Ty Cobb, will have its West Coast premiere here in June and if that goes on to New York, the Old Globe will be a limited partner sharing in the royalties in much the same way that they did when the theater produced the West Coast premieres of the Yale Rep’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and “The Piano Lesson.”

Understanding the virtues and limits of the regional to Broadway theater connection will continue to be a key skill in coming years, but financial realities dictate that the nonprofit/commercial partnerships are here to stay.

Two years ago Landesman said it costs $1 million to $2 million to develop a show by the traditional out-of-town route, and only $100,000 to $200,000 to start them up in regional theaters. That makes what “Cocktail Hour” producer Thomas Viertel called “a natural coupling.”

“San Diego has got the hot theater hand,” Viertel said. “It’s likely to continue. The regional theater, because of its built-in subscription base, has the ability to withstand failure. But only the commercial producer can realize a show’s financial potential.”

“When I came to San Diego in 1981, with few exceptions, it was still worth a laugh to my friends from the East Coast,” O’Brien recalled in his Old Globe office before the opening of “Uncle Vanya” two months ago.

O’Brien spent the next nine years creating serious theater. And now that his New York friends are taking him seriously again, he feels he has the best of both worlds: working with top artists that once only associated with Broadway producers and working with them under conditions that emphasize the art over the financial bottom line. That had been one of the attractions of the Old Globe. While hits are as much in demand in a regional theater as anywhere else, a 12-play season gives an artistic director room to take a chance.

One of the most potent symbols of the relationship between nonprofit and commercial theater lies in the relationship between O’Brien and Simon.

In 1980, Simon fired O’Brien from his job as director of both the Los Angeles and Broadway productions of “I Ought to Be in Pictures.” O’Brien says of the altercation, since resolved, that “it was as boring as you might imagine. He was digging in. I was digging out . . . I believe that Neil loves me as a colleague but doesn’t think I can play his music. As a director, I believe I can direct anything. To be successful, you’ve got to have enough chutzpah to say, ‘I can do anything.’ ”

O’Brien’s disappointment with the firing, as well as with the fate of the revival of “Most Happy Fella” (a musical he directed in 1980 that closed after just six weeks on Broadway), were key factors in his decision to turn his back on the commercial theater.

Eight years later, Simon, too, found faults with the conventional out-of-town tryout. Even premiering new work in Los Angeles put too much pressure on a new script, he explained. The movie producers and stars who turned up inevitably judged his works in progress as being finished while he saw them as just getting started.

“Being facile is impossible,” said Simon before the opening of “Rumors.” “I think every successful play I’ve had is successful because it was rewritten well.”

Simon and O’Brien had begun by talking, tentatively at first, about the possibility of producing Simon’s newest project, “Jake’s Women,” at the Old Globe. Then when the play wasn’t finished in time, Simon offered “A Foggy Day,” a show to be built around a collection of Gershwin songs. When he got stalled on “Foggy Day,” he offered “Rumors.”

O’Brien took “Rumors.” Not a favorite with critics, it proved to be a hit with the public, playing to record numbers of patrons for a six-week run.

Simon still hasn’t asked O’Brien to direct any of his plays (Gene Saks staged “Rumors” and Ron Link is staging “Jake’s Women,” budgeted at $400,000), but O’Brien ranked high enough as a friend to merit an invitation to Simon’s wedding.

Similarly, the relationship between nonprofit and commercial theater is one O’Brien sees as deepening over time.

“Green plants grow toward the sun,” said O’Brien. “The sun in this case is a healthy theatrical climate. The healthy theatrical climate used to be the road and Broadway. Now you have to prove your stripes in a regional theater production.

“These used to be dangerous woods and now they are only dangerous if you are unclear about who you are and what your mission is,” he added. “Sometimes in the case of ‘Breaking Legs’ or ‘Emily,’ you don’t get a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but no one would say those shows weren’t successes. Sometimes successes go their own way. And sometimes you get invited uptown to dinner.”