Center, La Jolla Theater to Co-Produce ‘Forum’

Two major Southern California arts organizations--a well-heeled rental hall and a financially troubled resident theater--have decided to become co-producers.

Officials of the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the La Jolla Playhouse announced Tuesday that they will collaborate on a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

The 1962 musical comedy with score and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart will play for six weeks at the Playhouse’s 492-seat Mandell Weiss Theatre, July 3 to Aug. 12, followed by two weeks at the 2,996-seat Center, Aug. 17 to 26.

“This bond we’re forging with the Center is the wave of the future,” Playhouse artistic director Des McAnuff, who will stage the revival, said in a prepared statement. “We need inventive partnerships to produce (musicals because) they’re beyond the scale of most theaters.”

The nonprofit Playhouse had to raise $500,000 by last December to ensure that it could mount its six-play 1990 season. It managed $560,000 in donations and pledges but still must secure an additional $500,000 by June to achieve stability.

The Center, though it too has nonprofit status and must raise funds to offset operating expenses, has been so financially successful by contrast that two years ago it was able to set aside $500,000 in a special account reserved just for investment in musical and/or dance productions.

The Center presents a five-play subscription offering called the Broadway Series, and officials there long have complained of a scarcity of well-produced touring shows. Previous investments with other organizations have included such revivals as “Strike Up the Band,” “Anything Goes” and “Babes in Toyland,” although not necessarily for subscription. “Forum” will be presented outside the Broadway Series.

Neither McAnuff nor Center President Thomas R. Kendrick would disclose the anticipated cost of the the upcoming revival, but Kendrick said the Playhouse and the Center would be “50-50 partners in the capitalization of the production.” The show is being designed only for the stages at La Jolla and Costa Mesa, they added, noting that a tour is “not under consideration.”

McAnuff, who has yet to cast “Forum,” is no stranger to musicals. He staged the original “Big River” at the Playhouse in 1985 and won a Tony for directing it on Broadway, where it garnered five other Tonys including the one for best musical.

The original “Forum,” starring Zero Mostel, opened on Broadway on May 8, 1962 and ran for 967 performances. It won six Tonys in 1963, including best musical and best actor. Ironically, Sondheim wasn’t even nominated for the score and lyrics.

Shevelove’s and Gelbart’s farcical book, very loosely inspired by the comic Roman writer Plautus, revolves around a slave trying to obtain his freedom by procuring a courtesan for his master. The most famous song associated with the show is the opening number, “Comedy Tonight.” “Forum” was made into a movie in 1966, also starring Mostel, and was revived on Broadway in 1972 with Phil Silvers.

Since then, productions frequently have been done in California and across the country at all levels of expertise. When San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre took a version to Stratford, Conn., last August, the troupe discovered three summer stock revivals being done in Connecticut alone. A professional version was staged at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium last June, and a touring revival starring Mickey Rooney played both the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles and the Civic Theatre in San Diego in 1987.

The burgeoning interest in “Forum” has coincided with Sondheim’s increased acclaim, particularly in recent years. The show is not only one of his earliest--the first to have both his score and his lyrics--but is also one of his most accessible. Moreover, a production can be staged relatively economically for a musical because it requires just one set.

McAnuff said that he was unaware of the recent Southern California productions but that he doesn’t think that they will hurt the appeal of the Playhouse’s production because “we’ll do the physical comedy 1990-style.” Further, he said that he would be doing “serious dramaturgical work” on the play--which he rated as “one of the top 10 musicals” of the American theater--and claimed that Sondheim, though not formally participating in the production, was “already giving advice” by telephone.

At South Coast Repertory--which is located across the street from the Center and is Orange County’s only professional resident theater--producing artistic director David Emmes said the Center’s partnership with the La Jolla Playhouse makes sense because it fulfills their mutual needs but that SCR has no plans for a similar involvement.

“There would be no logical reason for us to work on a cooperative production with the Center,” Emmes said. “Obviously, something that we would produce would first play our theater. The idea that it would then move across the street wouldn’t make sense.

“We certainly do musicals from time to time. But that’s not our major mission. Nor is our focus on moving productions beyond our theater. Whatever life a play has after its production at SCR will take care of itself.”