Signs of Hope for La Jolla Playhouse : Theater: The season opens Sunday with a more optimistic Chekhov play and a new second theater.

The La Jolla Playhouse may be trying to tell us something with its choice of season openers in recent years.

Its 1990 season, which for financial reasons was almost canceled, began poignantly with a hauntingly lovely production of a Chekhov play--”The Cherry Orchard”--a story of a once-mighty house come to ruin because of financial excess.

This year is a time of greater optimism and the Playhouse again is beginning with Chekhov: “Three Sisters” opens Sunday at the Mandell Weiss Theatre under the direction of artistic director Des McAnuff. But, fittingly, although “Three Sisters” ends on a more hopeful note than “The Cherry Orchard,” with the sisters determined to survive no matter what, the story is threaded through with themes of suffering, hard work, longing and loss.

The Playhouse has come a long way since its crisis campaign of 1989. But not as far as it would like to have come.

“I don’t anticipate these next few years being easier,” McAnuff said during a rehearsal break in his office. “For a new institution such as ours, there is a certain fragility. Everyone is going to be struggling in these next few years. But we’re definitely in a stronger position than we were in last season.”

One striking difference in this season, which McAnuff and managing director Alan Levey point to with pride, is the company’s dazzling new state-of-the-art thrust theater, the 384-seat Mandell Weiss Forum, which it will share with the UC San Diego theater department beginning later this season. The Forum, which stands a scant 150 feet from the 492-seat Mandell Weiss Theatre (which the Playhouse also shares with UCSD) replaces the 248-seat Warren Theatre, which the playhouse used for a third of its season in past years.

Last year, the Playhouse had a run of plays that generated one of the greatest critical and popular successes in its history; audiences for its six shows filled its houses to an average 96% capacity. That record and the excitement generated by the new theater--as well as the additional seats that can be sold there--already have brought the Playhouse an increase in subscription sales, according to Levey.

At the same time, in these times of economic recession, the Playhouse continues to be burdened with a deficit, although Levey won’t say how much.

“Operationally, this hasn’t been an easy time,” Levey said. “The growth is enormous and the demands are huge. The reality of the recession is that raising contributions, which is always difficult, is more difficult now. And operating with a deficit is always a problem. It affects cash flow and operations. It’s a drain on the financial resources of the operation.”

Lagging donor support and single- ticket sales have not kept up with the financial demands of putting on the Playhouse’s ambitious season.

Still, like the main characters in “Three Sisters,” the Playhouse goes on dreaming of better times. There is a plan on the boards for a third theater near the other two--it would be a 500-seat flexible black box theater that would allow the Playhouse to produce year-round. That dream may be years away, but as early as 1992, McAnuff said he expects to be able to extend the season from late November, when it closes now, into December or early January. He said he is not sure whether that will mean extending the runs in the six-play season or putting on an additional show.

And, in these hard times, the Playhouse seems to cling more strongly than ever to its goal of defining itself as “a home” for artists, as McAnuff describes it.

“We’ve gone to artists we’ve really believed in, who have created some kind of body of work, and asked them what they wanted to do,” McAnuff said.

As a result, many of the writers, directors, performers and designers of this year’s season will be familiar faces. Starring in “Three Sisters” as two of the three sisters are Nancy Travis, who starred in “My Children! My Africa!” at the Playhouse last year, and Phoebe Cates, who last performed at the Playhouse in 1985 under McAnuff’s direction in Chekhov’s “The Sea Gull.”

Also, Michael Constantine--who won a San Diego Critics Circle Award for best actor for his work in the Playhouse production of “A Walk in the Woods”--will play Chebutykin in “Three Sisters. And film and stage actress Susan Berman, another Playhouse veteran who happens to be McAnuff’s wife, will play the sister-in-law, Natasha.

The next show, “Fortinbras”--a comic continuation of Hamlet that will inaugurate the Mandell Weiss Forum on June 23 to July 28--is by Lee Blessing, who wrote “A Walk in the Woods,” as well as three other plays produced by the Playhouse.

After that comes that famous clown Bill Irwin in his fourth Playhouse appearance, “The Regard of Flight” and “The Clown Bagatelles,” July 7 to Aug. 11, at Mandell Weiss Theatre. Then playwright Eric Overmyer will work with director Stan Wojewodski Jr., newly designated artistic director of Yale Repertory Theatre, on Overmyer’s newest play, “The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin” at the Forum, Aug. 11 to Sept. 15. The two collaborated last year on “Don Quixote de la Jolla” at the Warren Theatre.

“We felt we would invite people back as part of the celebration of the new theater,” McAnuff said. “We’ve gone to artists we’ve really believed in, who have created a body of work at a certain level and asked them what they wanted to do.

“The American theater is not that vast a landscape when you’re dealing with good artists,” McAnuff said. There’s only one Bill Irwin, one Athol Fugard, one Geoff Hoyle. So when you have a chance to develop a relationship with someone who is a leader in a field, you want them to feel as if they have a home.”

Fugard had talked about presenting the American premiere of his latest work at the Playhouse. But since the work wasn’t ready in time for this season, he opted to direct and perform in one of his earlier plays, “A Lesson From Aloes,” Aug. 25 to Sept. 29 at the Mandell Weiss Theatre. McAnuff said Fugard may allow the Playhouse to present the American premiere of the new work here next season.

The season will close with the musical “Elmer Gantry,” which was proposed to McAnuff by its composer, Mel Marvin, also one of the composers of the score for “The Cherry Orchard.” The show runs Oct. 20 to Nov. 24 at Mandell Weiss Theatre.