S.D. Rep Hangs On, but Situation Called Fragile

Today is the date set by the San Diego Repertory Theatre as the deadline for its crisis campaign. In early October, the company said it needed to raise $150,000 toward its $350,000 end-of-the-year goal in order to stabilize and ensure the completion of the 1991-92 season.

There’s good and bad news.

The good news, according to managing director Adrian Stewart, is that the goal has been met. The bad news is that the company has raised the equivalent of $150,000 rather than the sum itself.

According to Stewart, the goal has been reached through a combination of fund raising, budget trimming (which includes cutting a few projects Stewart says “we thought about doing”) and revenues from the strong box office business of the critically acclaimed San Francisco Mime Troupe production of “I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist Version of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ ” which continues at the Lyceum Stage through Saturday.

“At this point, the situation is as fragile as it was, if not more so, and we’re fighting to keep the work on stage,” Stewart said.

The Rep’s “A Tale of Two Cities” is scheduled to open Wednesday at the Lyceum Space, and “A Christmas Carol” is set to open Dec. 5.

WHERE’S THE FIRE? The Old Globe Theatre will substitute the world premiere of Richard Wilbur’s new translation of Moliere’s “School for Husbands” in place of Jon Robin Baitz’s “The Substance of Fire,” which was to have had its West Coast premiere at the Globe on Jan. 23-March 1.

A former United States Poet Laureate and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Baitz has revived Moliere’s one-act about two brothers--one conservative and one liberal--each of whom plans to marry a young female ward whom he has reared according to his own beliefs.

The question of who--the Old Globe or the playwright--pulled the plug on Baitz’s play, which was critically acclaimed in New York, is still a matter of dispute.

It was pulled as a result of a conflict between the Dramatists Guild and the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), of which the Old Globe is a prominent member. In brief, the Dramatists Guild wants all LORT theaters working with Dramatist Guild members to sign a standard minimum contract. On the other hand, LORT, an organization of 64 nonprofit theaters, wants to negotiate individually with each playwright. It particularly objects to the guild’s limitation on a theater’s participation in, and profit from, future commercial productions of a play both on and off Broadway.

Because Thomas Hall, managing director of the Old Globe, is president of LORT, the Old Globe is a prime battle site. Old Globe artistic director Jack O’Brien said in a press release Oct. 31 that it was the Globe that voluntarily relinquished its rights to do the play “out of consideration for the playwright.”

O’Brien said the play will be rescheduled “as soon as the issues are resolved.”

Baitz, in an interview from his New York home, said last week that he pulled the rights because the Old Globe won’t sign the Dramatist Guild contract or enter into even an interim negotiation with the guild. Baitz made clear that the only way the issues could be resolved would be to have the Globe reach at least an agreement with the guild, which Hall has said on several occasions he will not do.

Neither O’Brien nor Hall was available for further comment.

As of Sunday, Lamb’s Players Theatre made its final mortgage payment on its resident stage at 500 E. Plaza Blvd. in National City. According to a spokeswoman, the 16-year-old company is slightly in the red, a common occurrence after their summer season. But Lamb’s is “catching up,” she said, and predicted that the company will be in the black again by the beginning of 1992. The current run of the musical “Quilters,” which has just been extended through Nov. 23, is helping at the box office, and just around the corner are the company’s Christmas shows, both of which were sellouts last year: “A Festival of Christmas,” which opens Dec. 6, and “Dickens, Dining and Song,” which opens Dec. 10.

The company expects to finish mortgage payments on an adjoining lot, on which it plans to build rehearsal and design space in 1997.

“The White Rose,” which had its world premiere at the Old Globe in January, got its petals plucked in its New York outing at the off-Broadway WPA Theatre last week.

Frank Rich of the New York Times called it “a terminally solemn example of . . . clodhopping . . . . Is there some inside joke kicking around at the WPA that the audience is not being let in on?”

Jonathan Mandell of Newsday was much kinder, crediting the show with “some fine dramatic moments, some great dialogue, some witty lines and an exciting production . . . . But a few of the playwright’s basic choices seem to sidestep the inherent drama in favor of abstract ideas and cleverness.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The London-based Players’ Theatre sails into town for one night only to present “London Follies,” a Victorian-style vaudeville Saturday at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts, 748-0505. . . .

Another British company, Aquila, will present Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon” at 8 p.m. Sunday in Mandeville Auditorium on the UC San Diego campus (call 534-3120). . . .

Attention would-be producers: The deadline is Nov. 22 for theater production proposals to be funded by the Chula Vista Parks and Recreation Department. Proposals should come from South Bay area theater groups that have ideas for either a children’s or adult theater production, or both. An adult show and a children’s show will be produced during the spring of 1992 at a Chula Vista location to be announced. Expenses should be limited to $2,000 for the productions, which will be offered free to the public. Call the Special Programs Section of the Parks and Recreation Department at 691-5140 for further information. . . .

The San Diego Actors Alliance, formerly the San Diego Actors Co-op, will continue its presentation of staged readings with “The Rivers and Ravines” by Heather McDonald at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Monday. The 16-person show, commissioned and presented by the Arena Stage in Washington, is a drama about farmers trying to hold on to their land in the wake of devastating government and banking policy. . . .