A Ridiculously Strong Comeback : Stage: After losing his partner in life and work to AIDS, Everett Quinton floundered at the helm of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Now he’s back on top with a one-man hit.

The worst of times became the best of times for Everett Quinton, the actor-writer-director who adapted Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” into a one-man show in 1989.

The show will have its West Coast premiere at the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Space tonight.

Quinton’s worst times began when his longtime lover and theater partner, Charles Ludlam, died in 1987 of pneumonia at age 44 after suffering from AIDS. Then, in the midst of his grief, Quinton was paralyzed by his fear that the theater company Ludlam had founded and led successfully for 20 years, the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in New York, would fold under his own direction.

His first year at the helm was “not good,” as he puts it. And, in his second season as artistic director, he spent all of the company’s money on a production of Ludlam’s “The Islands of the Hermaphrodites” that Quinton recalls as “a disaster” he refused to open.

With nothing left to pay anyone for rehearsal time, he came up with the idea of adapting “A Tale of Two Cities” as a 22-character piece to be played by one man--himself. He had never written anything before, and if it didn’t work, he told himself, he would leave the Ridiculous Theatrical Company--the only professional home he had ever known--for good.

The show not only worked, it drew rave reviews for both Quinton’s performances and the clever concept that kicks off the multiple characterizations: An aspiring drag queen named Jerry finds a crying baby on his doorstep, and, to quiet it, enacts “A Tale of Two Cities” while he bathes and gussies himself up for his drag queen debut.

The show played for seven months. That’s when Quinton knew he had a company, the company knew it had a director and thus began the best of times.

“My life is good. There has been a lot of sadness, but there is a lot of good. And I love being who I am,” Quinton said by phone from his apartment in New York.

The show’s success signaled a rebirth for him and Ridiculous Theatrical.

“What was great was that it forced me to stop relying on the work of Charles Ludlam, and it forced me to be myself. Charles was so powerful--he was such a great artist and a great actor and very respected--that I had to come to the realization that I never would be him and I never could be with him and I would have to go on with what about me is an artist. I’m very grateful for my life with Charles, and I feel very blessed to have had that, but I think it’s from that, his influence, that I’m able to find out what is my art and to go on from there.”

Quinton said he is thrilled that the San Diego Rep will be the third company (after his and one in Washington, D.C.) to do “A Tale of Two Cities.” He asked for the address of the theater so he could send the actor, Ron Campbell, who will perform in the show here, flowers.

“It makes me feel important. I never had a play that was published before. Now that these people are doing it, I feel almost responsible,” he said softly.

After 15 years as a professional performer, appearing in more than 40 shows with Ridiculous Theatrical and winning two Obie awards, the Brooklyn-born Quinton, who will be 40 in December, is still not used to being taken seriously.

He blames some of his self-doubts on being raised in an abusive household. His father, who was alcoholic when Quinton was young, beat him, he said. Both his parents are now dead.

Part, too, comes from growing up “queer”--a word Quinton prefers to gay--in a straight society.

“You become very frightened when you come from a place where there’s not much nurturing and then when you find out you’re queer in a society that hates queers,” he said.

“My problem is not being queer, it’s the reaction of the people who hate me for it. That’s my problem, that’s the thing that causes the fear. The kids picked on me in high school, and, coming from abuse, I didn’t know how to defend myself. I would get terrified and shrink.”

Meeting Ludlam changed his life.

“I met Charles on the street; it was a lucky night for me,” he said with dreamy reverence.

“I was a kid from Brooklyn. I met Charles and we became lovers and then I realized he was famous. I was still in school (his second year of Hunter College) and I was writing a paper while he was rehearsing a play and I was rude--I didn’t know why. Charles came up to me the day before the play opened and asked me if I wanted to do a small part.”

It was then that Quinton realized his rudeness stemmed from frustration; he wanted to perform--not write a paper. Though he had never acted professionally before, when Ludlam offered the role, he grabbed it--partly sensing and partly hoping that he would be reborn in the process.

The play was “Caprice,” and that 1976 production marked the beginning of Quinton’s theatrical career and the end of his college career.

The two men remained together until Ludlam died, performing in Ludlam’s original plays and adaptations in the company’s 144-seat theater at 1 Sheridan Square in New York.

Over the years, Quinton said, his sense of self-worth grew. He developed increasing pride and outspokenness about being gay.

It was all part of a life journey for a frightened kid who first read “A Tale of Two Cities” in a Brooklyn high school where he felt persecuted and lonely, to a man who could take over a company and star in his own solo show with a drag queen as the central hero.

For Quinton, it’s a journey that makes sense. Over the years, he began to relate Dickens’ tale of oppression--of the French poor by the French aristocrats that ultimately led to the French Revolution--to the oppression of gays in straight society.

“When you are queer, you realize what it is like to live in a culture that dehumanizes you. It makes you aware you have no rights, there’s no way to fit. You’re made to feel uncomfortable in school and in your home.”

Then, just as the oppressed in “A Tale of Two Cities” become oppressors, so too can other gays become oppressors--of drag queens like his central character, he said.

“The drag queens are oppressed within the gay community; they’re meant to feel less than what they are,” Quinton said.

“A Tale of Two Cities” has not solved all of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company’s problems. Because of New York state’s budgetary cuts, the company’s annual grant was slashed, and it is back in the red again. Quinton has responded with a new one-person show, “The Bells,” adapted from a 19th-Century play, which opened Friday.

But the success of “A Tale of Two Cities” has given him confidence to continue to develop new properties for Ridiculous Theatrical, including “The Wicked and the Bad Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Georg Osterman (in which Quinton played Jekyll and Hyde) and now “The Bells.”

“We’re just hand-to-mouth and you always wonder how the hell are we doing this,” he said. “That’s why I’m doing ‘The Bells.’

“But I feel great. I’m surrounded by people who are good enough to make me look good, and then I have some great friends in my life--some wonderful brothers and sisters. I’ve come to believe in God as a reliance on something that is benevolent, something that is good for me and not this unkind, rude, misinterpreted God that you hate because you fear it.

“There’s still residue (from my early life), but it’s not the thing that decides who I am. I feel as if I’m approaching my second youth.”