STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : Gaslamp Theatre Considers Major Internal Changes

Hard times lead to hard self-scrutiny.

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company is not the only theater in town reeling from a rough financial season last year, but it is the only one discussing major internal changes.

The San Diego Repertory Theatre took its lumps with its 1989 premiere-laden season. But the Rep seems to be going on with business as usual, bearing in mind a clear message in its upcoming season selections: only one premiere this year.

The La Jolla Playhouse announced that it might close its doors if it didn’t raise $500,000 by Dec. 31. But the playhouse--which still needs to raise $390,000 by June 30 to meet its $1-million stabilization goal--raised enough by December to keep its doors open.

But at the Gaslamp, everything is still up for discussion, including Will Simpson’s future as artistic director. Simpson, who 10 years ago co-founded the theater with Kit Goldman, managing producer, and Robert Earl, scenic designer, made his reputation for the genteel, intelligent staging that is epitomized by his direction of Noel Coward works, a staple at the theater.

Goldman confirmed that “there are a lot of things being discussed.”

“We started as a little family doing theater down on lower 4th Avenue, where nobody was 10 years ago, and now we have to change appropriately,” she said. “But how do you grow and maintain the heart and soul of who you are and yet embrace change? It’s very challenging.”

The new president of the theater’s board of trustees, George Saadeh, president and owner of Wurts Interiors, said a statement, following a study of the theater’s artistic and financial goals, will be forthcoming within the next month.

Whatever happens with Simpson, Goldman promised there will be many new guest directors at the Gaslamp this year, a decidedly different approach for a theater in which nearly all the productions were directed by Simpson or other staff members.

Simpson said he is not worried about his job and that he believes that the changes that may come will probably be adminstrative rather than artistic ones. He said he supports the increased presence of guest directors this season: “You need that fresh blood. Finances were always the reason we didn’t bring in new people in the past.”

He called the Gaslamp’s self-examination “healthy,” but brushed aside any questions as to what might result from the analysis. “I don’t think it would be constructive to talk about it. It would be premature to comment,” he said.

The new policy actually began this season with Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” the Gaslamp’s season opener directed by Larry Arrick, which filled the Hahn Cosmopolitan at 70% capacity--a high figure for the Gaslamp. Simpson will direct Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” opening at the Hahn on Wednesday. A guest director, Al Rossi, has already been lined up for “The Best of Sex and Violence,” opening at The Elizabeth North Theatre on May 23.

Tickets, too, are being sold differently--on a membership rather than a subscription plan. For $25, one can buy the right to purchase half-price tickets to any or all Gaslamp shows in the course of the year.

The idea is to provide a more flexible schedule for theatergoers, who can plan their visits on impulse as opposed to the subscription schedule. At the same time, the theater, instead of being locked in to a set run because of subscription sales, can extend hits and close less popular shows more quickly.

Other changes: The theater will continue its policy, which started with “Broadway Bound,” of adding a Tuesday night performance to its former Wednesday-Sunday schedule; “The Debutante,” the new African American musical commissioned independently by Goldman for a run at the Gaslamp, has been moved from a 1990 slot to January, 1991, coinciding with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and Black History Month.

Despite the highly publicized cancellation of the Broadway production of “Jake’s Women,” Neil Simon’s first Broadway-bound play not to go to Broadway, the show was still a success for the Old Globe Theatre, where it closes a sellout run Sunday, said Thomas Hall, managing director of the theater.

“Much as it is a disappointment” that the show is not going on to Broadway, “ ‘Jake’s Women’ will probably do better than anything else in the winter season by 10% to 20%,” said Hall. “We had no risk in this instance. We lose the potential for down-the-road royalties. But we don’t budget for those royalties for this very reason.”

If the show had gone on, Hall confirmed, Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the Old Globe who replaced Ron Link as director of the play shortly before opening night, would have directed the show on Broadway and Hall would have been an associate producer.

Hall and O’Brien were united in their assertion that the play was a success for them not only financially but artistically, even if it didn’t meet the standards of Simon, who canceled the Broadway run despite two months’ worth of advance Broadway sales.

Hall echoed the sentiment O’Brien expressed to The Times before the show opened: that they were doing the show because they believed in it and not because they were trying to become a Broadway tryout house. They said the positive response of the audiences supported their decision.

“One has to be very careful not to confuse what is a commercial success with what is a successful play,” Hall said. “When you have someone like Neil, sometimes the whole process seems to be skewed toward going to New York, and that takes away some of the pleasure of going to the Globe, where you can escape commercial pressures. It puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on him.

“I hope Neil will take it out of his drawer and look at it again, because I still think it will be one of his best,” Hall said.

PROGRAM NOTES: Mark Harelik, author of “The Immigrant,” joins Lynn Redgrave, William Ball, Peter Frechette, Mia Dillon, Dion Anderson, Cheryl Giannini, William Youmans and Robert Cornthwaite in the cast of “The Cherry Orchard,” opening May 13 at the La Jolla Playhouse. Heidi Landesman, who won a Tony Award for her set design for “Big River,” will design the show. . . .

Milton Greene, who did the original musical arrangements for “Fiddler on the Roof,” has left Starlight Musical Theatre, where he conducted for four seasons, to conduct the East Coast tour of “Fiddler on the Roof,” starring Topol. The show is scheduled to go to Broadway, but Greene has so far committed himself only to the tour. Lloyd Cooper, musical director of the San Bernardino Civic Light Opera Assn., will conduct four out of five shows for Starlight this year. . . .

Up and coming: Howard Bickle, a United States International University actor starring in “To Gillian on her 37th Birthday” at The Theatre in Old Town through April 29, just signed a three-year contract with the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. The 22-year-old will pursue his master’s in fine arts at the University of Minnesota. . . .

Starlight Musical Theatre will open up its new musical readings project free to the public at San Diego City College in August and September. The likely candidates from the three they have already tried out in private readings are “Kiss Me Quick Before the Lava Reaches My Lips” and “Alias Jimmy Valentine.” The third, “Abyssinia,” is under consideration for a full production; the staff considers it to be so polished that a workshop production would be a waste of time. . . .

The San Diego Theatre Foundation will continue its Interpreted Theatre Performances for the third consecutive year with 10 signed shows, beginning with a performance of “Out All Night and Lost My Shoes” by hearing-impaired actress Terry Galloway at Sushi Performance Gallery on April 26.