New Works, Old Faces at ’91 Playhouse

A mix of new works and old faces will make up the La Jolla Playhouse’s 1991 season, announced Wednesday, including the world premiere of a Lee Blessing play, “Fortinbras,” billed as a comic sequel to “Hamlet.”

“Fortinbras,” the season’s second of six plays, will also inaugurate the Playhouse’s 400-seat Mandell Weiss Forum, still under construction. It will run June 23 to July 28.

A new play with music, “The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin” by Eric Overmyer, will follow at the Forum from Aug. 11 to Sept. 15.

A reworking of a recent musical, “Elmer Gantry,” based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis, will conclude the season at the 492-seat Mandell Weiss Theatre from Oct. 20 to Nov. 24.

The Mandell Weiss Forum, which is to be a state-of-the-art thrust stage, will replace the 248-seat Warren Theatre, which the Playhouse used as a companion to the Mandell Weiss Theatre.

Opening the season, at the Mandell Weiss Theatre, will be Anton Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters,” from May 12 to June 16.

Also at that venue will be Bill Irwin’s “The Regard of Flight” and “The Clown Bagatelles,” July 7 to Aug. 11, and Athol Fugard’s “A Lesson From Aloes,” which will mark the South African playwright’s West Coast acting debut, Aug. 25 to Sept. 29. Fugard will also direct.

“The Heliotrope Bouquet” and “Elmer Gantry” are West Coast premieres, and “The Regard of Flight” and “A Lesson From Aloes” are San Diego premieres.

One element that won’t be new will be the artists.

Most of the writers and all of the directors will be familiar faces.

“Fortinbras” marks Blessing’s fourth job at the Playhouse, his third time with a play commissioned by the theater.

Irwin’s visit, too, is his fourth. He previously performed in “The Sea Gull,” “A Man’s a Man” and “The Three Cuckolds.”

Fugard directed “My Children! My Africa!” last year.

And composer Mel Marvin, who is doing the score for “Elmer Gantry,” composed the music for “The Cherry Orchard” last year.

Stan Wojewodski Jr., who directed Overmyer’s “Don Quixote de La Jolla” last year, will also direct his “Heliotrope Bouquet.”

Wojewodski, the artistic director of Baltimore’s Center Stage, is the designated dean of Yale Drama School and the newly named artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre.

The familiarity of these faces is no accident.

Artistic director Des McAnuff--who will, for the first time, direct three shows in the season, “The Three Sisters,” “Fortinbras” and “Elmer Gantry”--said the season came about as other Playhouse seasons do: by putting choices in the hands of the artists.

“The pattern is that we got to the artists and say, ‘What do you want to do?’ That’s certainly true with Lee, Athol, Eric, Stan and Bill for this season. These are the projects that they wanted to do,” McAnuff said on the phone from Los Angeles, where he was starting to cast the shows.

He said Fugard has indicated to him that he should direct the American premiere of his newest show, as yet untitled, at the Playhouse in 1992.

“We hope that happens,” McAnuff said. “We’re hoping that he sees this as his American home.”

Fugard, who is filming the movie version of his play “The Road to Mecca”--starring himself, Kathy Bates and Yvonne Bryceland in South Africa--was unavailable for comment.

One of the selections, “Elmer Gantry,” a story about a con man turned evangelist who falls in love with a charismatic, slightly crazed but genuinely believing evangelist woman, comes with an odd history.

The musical, with a book by John Bishop and lyrics by Bishop and John Satuloff, ran at Ford’s Theatre in Washington for 17 weeks in 1988 to excellent reviews and enthusiastic audiences. There was talk of the show going to Broadway, but it never got there. The director, David H. Bell, quit the project after citing artistic differences with Ford’s executive producer, Frankie Hewitt.

The play sat untouched until Marvin, the composer, brought up the idea of McAnuff taking it on, during the production of “The Cherry Orchard.”

“It’s a promising work,” said McAnuff. “We’ve already been meeting on changes in the score and the book. There will be a new cast and a new physical production.”

Does that mean the hope for Broadway production is still alive?

“We try not to think about that until we at least get the thing opened,” McAnuff said. “I would expect, as with most musicals, the authors have dreams of seeing a life for it. Whether that means Broadway, I don’t know.”