Director Finds Special Solace in UCSD Production

When director Andrei Serban left his native Romania 20 years ago, it was because censorship made it too difficult for art to flourish, he said in a break between a rehearsal and a preview performance of “Our Country’s Good” at the Mandell Weiss Theatre, produced by the UCSD drama department.

Recently, he was offered the position of director of the National Theatre in Bucharest by the new regime; if he takes the job, “Our Country’s Good” is one of the plays he would like to produce there, he said.

Timberlake Wertenbaker’s play, which runs through Sunday, is a fictionalized story about a play performed on the first prison ship arriving at the Botany Bay Colony in Australia in 1789.

Based on Thomas Keneally’s novel, “The Playmakers,” the play’s message is dear to Serban because of what it says about the potential for art to heal, to redeem and to transform, he explained.

“The convicts, most of whom are to be hanged, get an identity of their own as human beings through doing the play,” said Serban. “Through acting comes a force, a strength, an inner power that they use to resist censorship and the political and social pressure of the officers.”

In its two previous productions under other directors, “Our Country’s Good” was lauded in London, where it received an Olivier award for best play, and criticized at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles for its limited vision.

Serban said he believes he has a better overall production here with his UC San Diego graduate school cast than Los Angeles or London did, though he didn’t see the L.A. production.

“I hope people will not be put off by the fact that it was not done well in Los Angeles. It’s full of a very special energy here,” he said.

Serban acknowledges that the play speaks to him in part because of his frustrations with artistic repression in his native land. For the same reason, he thinks the play would have a great impact in Romania now.

“I would like to do this play in Romania because I think people will savor every single line. It talked to me very much. I think it will be extremely telling there.”

But he won’t take the directing position if it requires full-time residence in Romania. Serban, who came to the United States in 1970 at the invitation of New York’s La Mama Experimental Theatre, is now a U.S. citizen for whom globe-trotting is second nature. He set out Tuesday morning for London to direct “Desire,” a new play by David Lan set in Zimbabwe.

Lily Tomlin began “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” as a workshop production at the Old Globe Theatre’s Cassius Carter Centre Stage. It went on to much critical acclaim in Los Angeles and on Broadway.

Now Tomlin said she plans to do the final version of her one-woman show, written by Jane Wagner, at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills on April 14-29 before filming the show.

Although no return engagement is planned for San Diego, Tomlin recently told The Times, “I should go back and do some benefits for (the Old Globe). Jack O’Brien (artistic director of the theater) has always been so terrific.”

PROGRAM NOTES: If “Suds,” the San Diego-created musical about love in a Laundromat, were to appear on Maury Povich’s “A Current Affair,” the theme of the show would probably be dirty laundry. But “Suds” is slated for exposure by Povich’s spouse on “Saturday Night with Connie Chung” Saturday night, and the mood of the segment sounds as if it will be right in tune with the light-hearted spirit of the nostalgic pastiche of ‘60s pop tunes.

Chung’s show this week includes a segment about singles finding love in laundries; she decided that clips from “Suds,” playing at San Francisco’s Waterfront Theatre, would be perfect to intercut with the reporting. The show airs at 10 p.m. on KFMB-TV (Channel 8). . . . William Ball, founder and former artistic director of the American Conservatory Theatre, will come to San Diego with a double assignment: he will perform in “The Cherry Orchard” at the La Jolla Playhouse in May and direct Moliere’s “Scapan,” which he translated and adapted, for the Del Mar Theatre Ensemble in July.

Bonnie Tarwater, founder and artistic director of the Del Mar Theatre Ensemble, a children’s theater group, once worked for Ball as an actress at ACT. Tarwater will be reuniting with him--now at her theater; she will play Zerbinette--the part Moliere’s wife played when “Scapan” was originally done. . . .

The new 800-seat $8.4-million Poway Center for the Performing Arts, which opens officially in the middle of May, will feature the Seattle Repertory Theatre production of “Playboy of the Western World” on June 1, and The Magical Moonshine Theatre, a children’s company, June 3. “Pippin” veteran Ben Vereen will perform at a gala there June 23. . . .

Loretta Devine, star of the new CBS-TV comedy series “Sugar and Spice,” and a Broadway veteran of “Dreamgirls” and “Hair,” will make her Old Globe debut starring as singer Billie Holiday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill,” April 28-June 10 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. . . . Old Globe veterans Kandis Chappell, Katherine McGrath and Jonathan McMurtry will perform in “And A Nightingale Sang,” May 3-June 10, on the Globe’s main stage. . . .

Joining forces: Lambs’s Players Theatre, the Old Globe Theatre and the San Diego Repertory Theatre will present a showcase of their touring productions available for the 1990-91 school year from 9-11:30 a.m. Tuesday at Lamb’s resident stage in National City. The shows range from an examination of Beowulf to Shakespeare to the high toll of chemical dependency. . . .

“Rebel Without a Car,” a one-man show about growing up gay and Catholic in a small Maryland town, has been extended through April 14. It’s an independent production at Sushi Performance Gallery. . . . Local author Charlene Baldridge (better known as national media director at the Old Globe) will read and perform selections from her work “Winter Roses,” Monday at the Lyceum Space at 7:30 p.m. Proceeds will benefit Rachel’s Women’s Center, a downtown shelter for homeless women.