Presenting ‘Laughter’ Is Serious Stuff

A middle-aged actor is pursued by three women--his ex-wife, a debutante and the producer of his show--in Noel Coward’s “Present Laughter,” opening Thursday at the Melrose Theatre.

“I’ve been casting the play in my mind for a year now,” said Richard Kline, the actor-director who is staging the revival of the 1939 farce. “I’d see people and say, ‘Do you want to be in my show?’ ”

The cast of 11 features British actor Ian Ogilvy with Nancy Stafford and Stephanie Faracy as two of his admirers. The other characters include an “Eve Arden/Rosalind Russell-type” secretary, a Swedish housekeeper--who’s also a spiritualist--and an “unflappable, impertinent and very sassy” valet.

“Actually, it’s very autobiographical, although not entirely,” Kline said of “Present Laughter.” “Coward didn’t sleep with too many women.”

Although he opted to both produce and direct, acting was out of the question. “Suicide,” said Kline, a New York native most recognizable to TV audiences as Larry, the lecherous neighbor on “Three’s Company.” “But,” he added brightly, “I am the understudy.

THEATER BUZZ: Local audiences can probably look forward to seeing Gregory Hines as jazz great Jelly Roll Morton in George C. Wolfe’s “Mr. Jellylord,” at the Mark Taper Forum--but there is no assurance when the popular dancer/actor will join the show. Wolfe is currently in town developing the play’s second act; a workshop production of that is due this summer at Taper, Too, “but not necessarily with Greg,” said his wife, “Jellylord” co-producer Pam Koslow. When the show makes its anticipated mainstage debut in January, she added, “We’re hoping he’ll be in it--but that’s subject to his availability.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Relationships and barbells share the stage in Israel Horovitz’s new drama, “Strong-Man’s Weak Child,” playing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center under Horovitz’s direction.

In The Times, Don Shirley found “a potentially strong play with a weak center. The play’s weightlifters are beginning to buckle under the strain of conflicts with each other and themselves. But the conflicts resolve too easily.”

The Daily News’ Lawrence Enscoe saw “a muscular play that needs some wicked toning and cultivation. As it stands, the production bows under the weight of manipulation and easy, sentimental choices. What’s left is a pretty typical tale of male bonding.”

Said Drama-Logue’s Richard Scaffidi: “Clumsily directed, the talented but wasted actors are forced through a great deal of posturing and belabored emotionalism. Dialogue . . . alternates between ranting and quipping.”

Daily Variety’s Kathleen O’Steen was kinder: “While at times heavy-handed, the play is nonetheless a moving, almost traumatic journey into the heart of a family’s tragedy and into one man’s longing for a second chance. . . . Production values are first-rate.”