TELEVISION : It’s Not ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ : But ‘American Playhouse’ is less predictable, too, with an eclectic lineup ranging from Tony-winning drama to non-commercial gambles

When you walk into the offices of “American Playhouse”--the PBS anthology series that begins its 10th season Wednesday--the first thing you see is a poster extolling the program’s versatility: “No Two Are Alike!”

Therein lies both the legitimate boast, and perhaps the bane, of a series that has managed to stay true to its original goal of encompassing drama, theater and literature in an attempt to reflect things American. No other series is as widely varied, which means even if you hate one presentation, you might like something better next week.

But the name “American Playhouse” doesn’t have the impact and public recognition commensurate with a series that has served up 153 productions over the past nine years. It isn’t bandied about among critics and television aficionados the way that, say, “Playhouse 90” or “Studio One” are, even years after their demise. Much of the public doesn’t know that many of its productions have garnered top awards (including an Oscar nomination this year). How many other programs have given us the chance to see people such as Jason Robards, Geraldine Page, Jack Lemmon, Jessica Lange and Lillian Gish doing things they really care about? Actor Kevin Bacon points to his “American Playhouse” work (“Lemon Sky”) as his best . . . but regrets that so few knew it happened.

Somehow, when you hear “Masterpiece Theatre,” you know roughly what you’ll be getting (at least in style if not in quality). That is not the case with “American Playhouse.” But Lindsay Law, its executive producer and guiding force throughout the decade, refuses to see that as a sign of failure.

“I think it argues for the success of it,” says Law. “It shows we’ve been efficiently eclectic so as not to be defined as any one thing. Yes, with ‘Masterpiece Theatre’ you know what you’re getting; it’s always 60 minutes, it’s always polite, it’s of a certain kind. But that also limits the kind of material they can do. People may not always associate our shows with the umbrella title ‘American Playhouse,’ but at least we’re not prevented from doing anything.”

This season of “American Playhouse” is being touted as one of its best. The lineup, which runs through late July, is a superb mix of drama, comedy, music, offbeat feature films moving from large screen to small and theater productions moving from stage to screen.

This premiere week opens with two of the latter: Wednesday night, there is “Into the Woods,” the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical that takes some well-known fairy tales from the “happily ever after” point onward, and on Friday night (which thereafter will be the series’ regular night) comes the Tony Award-winning “The Grapes of Wrath.”

In coming weeks, Law hopes, there will be something for everyone. Among the offerings are: “The Sunset Gang,” a trilogy of one-hour stories set in a retirement community; “Signs of Life,” a feature film starring Arthur Kennedy and Beau Bridges that had a very limited release; “O Pioneers!,” a musical stage production based on Willa Cather’s novel and featuring Mary McDonnell (“Dances With Wolves”); “Darrow,” a biography of Clarence Darrow starring Kevin Spacey, and “Lethal Innocence,” a real-life story of a Cambodian boy in an American town.

While PBS is publicly treating “Playhouse’s” 10th season with jubilation (putting two on in one week is an attempt to draw special attention), privately there is concern. With PBS facing stiffer competition on all fronts--for funding, viewers and programming--one result may be that “Playhouse” has to get smaller and go for more traditional fare.

For starters, the series is being switched from its previous Wednesday-night berth to a new one on Friday, and that means, well, different things to different people.

“Friday is a terrible night,” says Law, though he is simultaneously trying to be optimistic: “It’s a smaller viewing audience (because more people go out for the evening) but at least there are fewer good choices also. And because they are often older viewers, they might respond to several of this season’s shows, especially those about old people and retirement.”

PBS programming chief Jennifer Lawson insists that there is a purpose behind the move.

“This is an attempt to establish Friday night as our cultural night,” says Lawson. “Half the year that spot is held by ‘Great Performances,’ then ‘American Playhouse’ takes over. It’s a way to help viewers know where to find that kind of program week after week.”

But there is suspicion that the shift portends less support at the top. “That’s one of the worst times on the schedule,” says Jack Willis, general manager of KTCA and KTCI, the PBS stations in Minneapolis-St. Paul. “It says PBS just doesn’t think ‘Playhouse’ is drawing enough of an audience.”

What some find more ominous is the fact that next year “American Playhouse” is being cut back to once a month. But Lawson points to that change with pride: “We’re going monthly with the idea of really promoting the series in a way to help viewers better find it. In a weekly slot, it just doesn’t get the kind of consideration it should. ‘Playhouse’ is still the only place where people can regularly find original American dramas, and we just feel we can draw more attention to them if they are on once a month.”

A truncated (there will be 14 next season as opposed to 18 this year) “Playhouse” will certainly disappoint, and affect, a lot of people--especially those who fill its hours. As Law says, “We may not be well known by the American public, but we are within the creative community. They are constantly watching us to discover new writers and directors. And for actors (who all work for scale), we’ve been a place they can show different colors.”

“It is the creative community!” exclaims Jane Alexander, who makes her second “Playhouse” appearance in this season’s “An American Place.” For her, “Playhouse” was the answer to a five-year dream of bringing the love story of artist Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz to the screen.

“Lindsay liked the idea when I first brought it to him, and I tried to find a way to film it on locations,” Alexander explains. “But we couldn’t come up with enough money. Finally, we found a way to scale it back and do it as a memory play, which works beautifully. Somehow, we found a way to bring New Mexico into a studio. And Lindsay hung in there the whole time with me.

“What I love is that there’s no compromising with ‘American Playhouse,’ ” continues Alexander, who previously starred in “Testament,” a 1983 “Playhouse” production that received a theatrical release and won her an Oscar nomination. “With its limited money, there’s little margin for error, but necessity can bring about great creativity. That’s why everyone does it. We do theater for the same reason.”

For pure theater creatures such as composer Stephen Sondheim and writer-director James Lapine, “American Playhouse” has been a particularly important vehicle. Public television may be small stuff compared to ABC, CBS and NBC, but it still reaches far wider than the stage.

“If people don’t live near a major venue, they most likely haven’t seen a stage show, regardless how successful it was,” says Lapine. “ ‘American Playhouse’ gives us a national audience and it also gives us a permanent record since theater is so ephemeral.”

“Into the Woods,” which stars Bernadette Peters, was filmed on stage before a paying audience. After doing “Sunday in the Park With George” on “American Playhouse” previously, Lapine was convinced this was the way to go.

“I learned from ‘Sunday’ how not to do it,” he explains. “That time we just did it onstage without an audience, but this way gives it a very special energy. Still, it was a brave thing for ‘American Playhouse’ to do.”

One of “Playhouse’s” biggest suppliers of programming, both staged productions and teleplays, is KCET Channel 28 in Los Angeles, which is also one of the four PBS stations that oversee the series. Because of its facilities and its proximity to Hollywood talent, KCET takes full advantage of the “Playhouse” outlet. And vice versa.

This year, four of the presentations were either entirely or jointly produced by KCET. “It’s a very exciting season for us,” says Ricki Franklin, director of cultural programs for the station. One that has special meaning for Californians is “Hot Summer Winds,” an original film about a 10-year-old Japanese-American girl being raised on a California farm. The film was adapted (from two short stories by Hiyase Yamamoto) and directed by Emiko Omori.

For people like Omori, who is a cinematographer by profession, “Playhouse” has been a place to break through all kinds of stereotypes. She started developing the idea six years ago and then connected with KCET, which in turn connected with “Playhouse.” “I’m very grateful to them,” says Omori, “because I had no track record as a writer-director, but they took a chance. And they were willing to do a pre-war, Japanese-American story, and there are so few of them.”

Omori is also appreciative that the “Playhouse” executives in New York gave her great creative freedom, though there were some disagreements. One was her initial hope of having the actors speak in their native language, since it deals with first-generation Japanese. “But after long discussions,” she says, “I was convinced that subtitles are not the most favorite thing for television.”

There was also the case of the bathing breast. Omori originally included a shot of an actress showing a bare breast while taking a bath. “ ‘Playhouse’ really asked so little of me,” she says, “that when they were leery about this, I took it out. But they also gave me permission to enter ‘Hot Summer Winds’ in festivals, and the breast is going right back in that version.”

“Playhouse’s” relationship with such independent writers and directors goes back almost to its beginnings, when Lindsay Law came up with the idea of helping to finance and produce feature films that could be exploited in theaters for a year and a half but would then appear on his series.

Among those features that carry the “Playhouse” name, and have appeared over the seasons, are “Testament,” “The Thin Blue Line,” “El Norte,” “Stand and Deliver” and this year’s “Longtime Companion.” For films with minuscule budgets (under $3 million), all have played to acclaim and received Oscar nominations. This year, actor Bruce Davison is nominated for “Companion.”

“It was a solution to many problems,” Law explains about the original concept. “One being that there were a lot of young filmmakers who were not specifically interested in creating works for television, yet they were some of the most interesting minds. And, of course, we thought it would help us both in ratings and in becoming a visible force in the community. And it was also a way to raise money from people, particularly overseas investors, who want to get into features.”

In the beginning, there was suspicion and resistance from PBS stations, which wondered why some of their money was going to make films that were out there garnering lots of attention. Who would want to see the movies when they finally arrived on their airwaves? Law pleaded for patience.

“When they started airing, they got relatively huge numbers for us,” says Law, “primarily because they had titles people were already somewhat familiar with. For a series whose biggest problem is getting our message out for the individual presentations, that’s no small thing.”

If there is any doubt that “Playhouse” and Law have established themselves as open to new voices, just look at the piles of roughly 2,000 scripts that come in every year. At least until now, selections have been based on putting together a good mix for the season and doing projects that were considered to have some relevance.

Decisions are not based on packaging (“Agents try,” Law says, “but that only makes things less interesting to me”) or on which star is available. (He’d love to get more prime-time names with desirable “TvQs” but hasn’t been willing to squeeze around their strict schedules.)

The program doesn’t get every project it goes after, such as “Love Letters, “The Long Walk Home” and “Crossing Delancey,” usually losing out because of such a limited budget. Law spends much of his time raising funds to meet an annual operating payroll of $10 million to $11 million, then has to go out to raise more on most of the individual projects--particularly the feature films.

That occasionally means coughing up more money than desired just to make something happen. With “Longtime Companion,” he says, “we failed completely in raising money from investors. No one wanted to make a movie about AIDS and they didn’t think anyone would go see one. So we put all the money in ourselves, and the film has already made more than it cost and it’s still in the theaters.”

Law is clearly the reason “American Playhouse” continues on the air. At 41, he is an intense man, a chain smoker who sounds remarkably like Peter Jennings, who has spent most of his career in public television.

“What I find truly phenomenal about Lindsay,” says Jane Alexander, “is his faith in the creative endeavor. If he believes someone has a strong vision, then it’s worth his getting involved.”

The pivotal question is whether Law can continue to push such endeavors, what with the parent corporation’s admitted new emphasis on reaching a bigger audience and getting the most for its hard-to-come-by bucks. Some in the creative community, such as Emiko Omori, already get the sense that things are changing.

“The feeling some of us are getting, just from discussions with them, is that they’re going to be looking for more mainstream things,” she says, “which is sad because ‘Playhouse’ really has been very courageous in the past.”

Ricki Franklin of KCET also mentions that “(PBS’) Jennifer Lawson is wanting to do miniseries,” but she quickly adds, “Look, all the networks are shrinking, and why should we be exempt from having to work harder for a piece of the pie?”

For now, Law insists that he’s trying to steer clear of all resemblances to real Hollywood. “As long as ‘American Playhouse’ is able to do good work, as long as we’re not repeating ourselves and remain flexible, and as long as there are filmmakers and writers with distinct voices that aren’t being heard anywhere else, I’ll be here,” he pledges.