THEATER : Magazine Gives Moulton a Slicker Look

Despite the impending departure of its artistic director, Douglas Rowe, the 71-year-old Laguna Playhouse has acquired a slick new look this season, a sheen familiar to theatergoers at well-established California venues but never seen before at the Playhouse’s Moulton Theatre.

I am talking about the glossy Performing Arts magazines being handed out as playbills to patrons at the 418-seat Moulton, a welcome upgrade from the quaint homemade pamphlets that used to be the custom here.

Not that a professional-style playbill guarantees a better show or that the Performing Arts publication itself is beyond criticism.

In fact, the September issue is something of an editorial embarrassment, with its pair of outdated reprint articles hailing the arrival of Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” on Broadway.

The lead article in its lead paragraph claims: “We’re in the final countdown before “The Heidi Chronicles” takes its Great Leap Forward to the Plymouth Theatre. . . .” And it goes on at length to discuss Wasserstein’s newfound success, how much she dotes on finally getting to Broadway and how the star of the show, Joan Allen, will be a hard act to follow.

Unfortunately, Wasserstein herself wrote an expansive piece earlier this month--placed on the highly visible Op-Ed page of the New York Times, no less--lamenting the departure of “The Heidi Chronicles” from the Plymouth Theatre after a run of more than 18 months.

It might be added that Joan Allen had left long before, and that a succession of actresses, including Christine Lahti, had followed her in the lead role, with a fair share of great notices. But never mind.

The articles may have been meant to promote, or at least to coincide with, the imminent arrival of “The Heidi Chronicles” at the James A. Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood, where it leads off the 1990-91 Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson at the Doolittle subscription series. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play begins previews there Oct. 2 and will run through Dec. 23.

But you would never have known any of that from the current issue of Performing Arts. Mentions of either the Southern California tour stop, or its star, Amy Irving, are conspicuous by their absence.

Still, the mere appearance of the magazine at the Playhouse should enhance audience perception that Orange County’s largest amateur theater is trying to move forward by improving service for its patrons. And the perception will be right, especially since getting the magazine service is not an easy task, according to Playhouse executive director Richard A. Stein.

Stein, who came to the Playhouse in February from his previous post as managing director of the Grove Shakespeare Festival, said he tried for months to persuade Performing Arts to take on the Playhouse as one of its clients, partly because he was appalled to discover that the troupe lost $16,000 last year printing its own programs.

Performing Arts prints and inserts a theater’s programs at no charge, earning its revenue from the advertisements that appear in the magazine portion of the publication. The only other Orange County venues similarly served are South Coast Repertory and the Orange County Performing Arts Center, both in Costa Mesa.

Stein recounts that he had tried for nearly two years to obtain the service for the Grove, but with no success. “The magazine was just not interested,” he said. The reasons, Stein added, were several: Garden Grove, where the Grove troupe is situated, was seen as infertile ground for Performing Arts to sell ads. The audience also was deemed insufficiently affluent and, in any case, not large enough to go to the trouble of serving.

But by the time Stein had arrived at the Laguna Playhouse, the cultural scene in Orange County had begun to change, as had the posture of Performing Arts. For one thing, Stein said, it was his impression that the magazine not only wanted to boost its circulation but also to shore it up in compensation for a slight decline in circulation at the Center, which is its biggest customer in the county.

Gilman Kraft, president of Performing Arts, denies that there has been any circulation decline. But Center president Thomas R. Kendrick has been stating virtually since the Center opened in 1986 that attendance figures are well above the norm and would be expected to decline over the long run.

Moreover, several major bookings this summer did not come anywhere near filling the Center’s 2,996 seats. The Australian Ballet drew 65% paid attendance. “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” drew 33%. And “Starlight Express,” which had set a record the first time around last season, drew 60%.

The Performing Arts contract with the Playhouse calls for an annual circulation of 60,000 programs, a fraction of the Center’s circulation of between 600,000 and 700,000 and the 180,000 or so programs provided each year to SCR for its Mainstage and Second Stage productions.

But every little bit helps, especially when the average Playhouse circulation comes to 10,000 a month during its six-month season. That constitutes a not-inconsiderable 10% of the magazine’s monthly combined circulation of about 100,000 for the Center, SCR and the La Mirada Civic Theatre just north of the county line.

For his part, Kraft said in a recent interview from his Los Angeles office that he and his staff have become “more aggressive” about serving the county’s major theatrical venues since first speaking with Stein when he was at the Grove.

“Our impulse to go into Laguna is simply to expand our services there,” he said. “Rick approached us, and we saw an opportunity to work with a congenial management. It was as simple as that.”

Although Kraft still seems less than eager to take on the Grove Shakespeare Festival as a client--in fact, he hardly seemed aware of its identity--he has offered his service to the Irvine Barclay Theatre, which is to open Sunday and to launch its 1990-91 season Oct. 7.

“We feel the future of the Irvine theater is very important to the Orange County cultural scene,” Kraft said. “That’s why we offered it our service, even though providing it would be very expensive for us because of so many one-nights.”

The Irvine Barclay season consists in large part of short-run offerings that would require Performing Arts to change its program inserts more often than it does with lengthier engagements, thus driving up printing, binding and delivery costs.

Ironically, the Irvine Barclay management has turned Kraft down for the moment, opting to produce its own programs in the hope that it can turn a profit on them through advertising revenues.

BACKGROUND: Performing Arts, which serves the major California theaters from San Francisco to San Diego, is one of the principal publishers of program magazines for arts facilities nationwide. The other two are Playbill and Stagebill.

Playbill serves Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters in New York, Avery Fisher Hall and two other venues at New York’s Lincoln Center and also theaters in Boston, Philadelphia and Miami, among other places.

Stagebill serves the Metropolitan Opera House and two other venues at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center in Washington, most of the theaters in the Chicago area and a variety of classical music venues in cities such as Dallas, St. Louis and San Francisco.