STAGE/NANCY CHURNIN : Old Globe’s O’Brien Has Pair of A.R. Gurney Plays on Tap

A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” makes its San Diego debut in the Old Globe Theatre Oct. 16 as a post-season addition. “Love Letters” is billed as a limited engagement, but could run until “White Rose” opens Jan. 17.

One of the interesting aspects of the show is that it is written as a series of letters penned over the years between two friends, a man and a woman. It is performed by two actors who read the parts on stage.

The format allows for rotating casts who can rehearse for one day and perform for a week. Jack O’Brien, the theater’s artistic director, said he is in the process of lining up actors and hinted that he has some stars in the works.

That means O’Brien, who will direct the production, will not only be directing the Gurney show on a weekly basis but he will go from one Gurney show to another, when he follows “Love Letters” with “The Snow Ball” at the Hartford Stage Company in mid-February and the Old Globe May 9.

Ironically, “Love Letters” debuted on the dark nights of Gurney’s “The Cocktail Hour,” which O’Brien directed at Off-Broadway’s Promenade Theatre.

It began running on the off-nights of “The Cocktail Hour,” and proved so popular that when “The Cocktail Hour” closed, “Love Letters” took over the theater.

The Ensemble Arts Theatre has returned from its second annual trek to the Edinburgh Fringe 1990, an international arts festival in Scotland, with good reviews for the two plays it produced there.

That’s good news for the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company, which had already committed to resuming its 1990 season with a co-production of one of those plays, “Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset,” with Ensemble Arts in the Elizabeth North Theatre from Oct. 19-Nov. 11.

“Dusk to Dawn at the Sunset,” a new version of the 5-year-old play by Denver playwright Terry Dodd (who travelled to Edinburgh with the company), focuses on the life of an American family from the 1940s to 1970s: mother, father, son and mother’s daughter from her first marriage.

Edinburgh’s leading newspaper, The Scotsman, quibbled with the language, which the reviewer said “occasionally descends into cliche,” but referred to it overall as an “excellent play . . . perfectly cast” which “deserves a large, appreciative audience.”

The Stage, Edinburgh’s version of Variety, gave the play an all-out rave, calling it “an intensely dramatic piece . . . a compelling kaleidoscope of emotions, yearnings, hopes and disappointments.”

As for the 18-month-old Ensemble Arts Theatre, Ginny-Lynn Safford, the artistic director who directed the piece and starred as the mother, reports that producing in Edinburgh was easier this time around:

“Last year, we spent a week and a half at least walking around with our heads buzzing trying to figure things out,” said Safford, who just returned from Edinburgh Tuesday.

Unlike last year, when the props for “Angel City” got misdirected with the luggage, necessitating an 11th-hour search in a strange city for timpani drums, the company arrived in plenty of time with all their gear intact.

Safford will reprise her performance at the Elizabeth North as will the rest of he cast: Lou Seitchik, the husband (a taxi driver Safford meets on a ride to what she thinks is going to be a career in ballroom dancing), Shana Ride as the daughter and Michael Huckaby as the son.

The Scotsman described the second play, “The Dark Confession Her Veins Spell,” a one-man show about the poet Hart Crane, as “a theatrical piece of magic.” The Stage called it “a superbly crafted piece . . . a contribution of high excellence to the Edinburgh Fringe 1990.”

“The Dark Confession Her Veins Spell” was written and directed by British playwright Mal Woolford--whom Safford met when Woolford managed the Ensemble Arts venue on its last Edinburgh visit.

Safford said she hopes to include “The Dark Confession Her Veins Spell” along with a half-dozen plays from the company’s staged reading series in a festival of one-acts she wants to produce in early 1991.

There are 47 children under 18 living in the St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center for the Homeless.

Today they will get a chance to sign up for free Saturday afternoon acting classes from Patricia Elmore, artistic director of the San Diego Actors Theatre.

It started out as the dream by one resident of shelter, Marva Leigh Smith, who has been living at St. Vincent de Paul with her 8-year-old son, Jeff, since February.

Smith, 34, took a workshop with Elmore when Smith was working at her last job, as an office manager at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company--she left when the theater shut down its season in May.

Smith talked Elmore into donating her time by telling her a story she read about a director who changed the lives of homeless people by opening up his theater to them.

“It described the transformation in these people’s lives and how very many of them went on to pursue jobs, some in acting. It was a very heartening experience. For children, I think it will give them a sense of self-expression and that can be a healing force,” Smith said.

“A lot of parents, including myself, a recovering alcoholic, were not the best parents when our children were young. Acting may give them a channel to act out their feelings. I’m learning to be there emotionally for my son. But there are a lot of people who are still not ready for sobriety and it’s a challenge for their children to maintain touch with themselves and learn ways to express themselves.”

PROGRAM NOTES: Diversionary Theatre, San Diego’s only gay and lesbian theater company, has signed a lease at the 200-seat Golden Hill Social Hall at 2222 Broadway and plans to present four shows there, beginning with “Remember My Name,” by David Lemos, a story about the men and women who helped create the Names Project AIDS Quilt. The show will have its Southern California premiere, Nov. 9. Executive director Reuel Olin is holding auditions for nine men and women playing the mothers, fathers, lovers, friends and health-care workers Monday through Wednesday in its Golden Hill space. The season will continue with three shows to be named, one with a lesbian theme, one a musical revue and the last a gay and lesbian festival of one-acts which Olin said he hopes to recruit from local writers.