Gulf Crisis Impinges on Pasadena Playhouse Plans

After two months of uncertainty following the departure of artistic director Susan Dietz, the Pasadena Playhouse has finally announced a major overhaul of the rest of the 1990-91 season.

The announcement isn’t a minute too soon--the playhouse’s next subscription offering is scheduled to begin previews Jan. 11 for a Jan. 20 opening.

That next play will now be Gary Bohlke’s “Double Cross,” described in a playhouse statement as “a scheming tale of lies and deceit set against the backdrop of affluent rural Virginia.”

It replaces Vincent McKewin’s “Ad Wars,” a satire about the advertising campaign for a new bomb. “With the situation in the Middle East,” the timing is inappropriate for “Ad Wars,” said the playhouse’s executive director, Lars Hansen. The now-canceled play expresses “a sense of humor that isn’t relevant any longer,” he said. “It’s not a good time to look at war from a satirical point of view.”

Last month, playwright McKewin told The Times that the Persian Gulf crisis created “all the more reason to do” his play and said he would be willing to incorporate topical references to the crisis in the script.

Earlier versions of the new play, “Double Cross,” were done at the Source Theatre in Washington and Birmingham Repertory in England under the title “The Perfect Defense.” The play was initially set in Virginia, then switched to England for the British production, and now is back in Virginia, said playwright Bohlke.

It will be staged by noted New York director A.J. Antoon, who is currently rehearsing it in New York. Broadway producer and former Kennedy Center chairman Roger Stevens and British producer Michael White have the rights to the play and assigned local rights to the playhouse. If the show is deemed successful, “we have an arrangement that allows us to look at the possibility” of future financial participation in the play, said Hansen.

“Double Cross” will play through Feb. 24.

Next up will be the local premiere of Jerry Sterner’s Wall Street/Main Street comedy, “Other People’s Money,” playing March 15-April 28, on the heels of an Old Globe Theatre production of the play in San Diego, which opens Jan. 12. A film version of the play is expected later in 1991.

The season will conclude with a revival of “You Never Know,” a 1937 Cole Porter musical farce, set in Paris. It will be staged by Paul Lazarus, a Stephen Sondheim associate who adapted the Porter show for runs at the Huntington Theatre in Boston in 1984 and the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut in 1985.

“You Never Know” will replace the return of “Mail,” the original musical that was a big hit for the playhouse in 1987. “We do very much want to bring (“Mail”) back, but with the same creative team that made it a success,” said Hansen, adding that three key members of that team--composer/star Michael Rupert, director Andrew Cadiff and choreographer Grover Dale--are busy with other projects.

Hansen has a new title, executive director, moving up from managing director. But the playhouse still lacks an artistic director. The playhouse will probably “add to the staff in the creative area in the late winter or early spring,” said Hansen, adding that he has been “inundated with resumes.”

Meanwhile, ex-artistic director Dietz has rented the playhouse’s smaller Balcony Theatre for a series of shows she had planned before her departure. Her series will open Jan. 29 with a three-week reprise of Ray Stricklyn’s Tennessee Williams show, “Confessions of a Nightingale,” and continue Feb. 26 with a run of Paul Linke’s one-man shows, “Time Flies When You’re Alive” and “Life After Time,” in repertory.

The Dietz series will conclude with Ronald Ribman’s “Rug Merchants of Chaos,” April 28-May 19. David Schramm, the star of the playhouse’s 1988 revival of “Born Yesterday,” will direct “Rug Merchants.”

Dietz has moved her Discovery series of readings, formerly based at the playhouse, to the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills. Next up in that series is Kieran Angelini’s “Praise and Sympathy,” Jan. 21 at 8 p.m.

Salonga Watch: Lea Salonga’s chance to be a Broadway baby will be decided by an arbitrator in the next few days.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh’s request for permission to employ the 19-year-old Filipina actress in the title role of the Broadway production of “Miss Saigon” will be debated at a hearing before arbitrator Daniel Collins, a professor of law at New York University, scheduled for Friday.

A decision is expected within two days after the hearing.

Under terms of the contract between Actors’ Equity and the League of American Theatres and Producers, foreigners who aspire to star in commercial productions in the United States must be either stars of international stature or uniquely qualified to fill the role. Mackintosh reportedly claimed that Salonga met both criteria, but Equity disagreed.

Big B.O.: Both of the current Center Theatre Group productions set box-office records last week. “The Heidi Chronicles” broke the Doolittle Theatre record with a gross of $256,959, and “The Lisbon Traviata” set a new Mark Taper Forum record with $114,705.

Tickets cost $10 for the Christmas Day performance of “Heidi,” starring Stephanie Dunnam (regular ticket price range: $29-$40). And because there will be no “Lisbon” on Christmas Day, a matinee has been added next Thursday at 1:30 p.m.

Prizes and People: John McMartin will co-star with Lee Remick in “A Little Night Music” next spring at the Doolittle. . . . Steven Mikulan of the LA Weekly has won this year’s George Jean Nathan Award for theater criticism. It comes with a $10,000 prize. . . . And from Carmen Zapata, who recently performed the title role in “Driving Miss Daisy” in Sacramento: “I was thrilled they didn’t change the title to ‘Driving Miss Juanita.’ ” Or, for that matter, “Driving la Senorita Daisy.”