Irvine Civic Light Opera to Postpone ‘Cabaret’ : Theater: After failing to find corporate underwriter, the company makes a substitution for ‘A Little Night Music.’

After a fruitless search for corporate underwriting, Irvine Civic Light Opera has decided to postpone until summer a production of “Cabaret” scheduled for February at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. “Cabaret” will be offered in July in place of “A Little Night Music,” which has been canceled.

The group is still smarting from its poorly attended September run of “The Music Man,” which saddled the organization with a $50,000 deficit. “People just did not come out to see the show, period,” said Dan Trevino, founder and artistic director of Irvine Civic Light Opera.

Attempting to avoid further debt, Trevino had sought a major corporate grant for “Cabaret.” After a hoped-for $25,000 grant from one unidentified corporation fell through two weeks ago, Irvine Barclay Theatre general manager Douglas C. Rankin joined in a last-minute search for funding that failed to pan out.

“We gave it our best shot,” Rankin said. The decision to postpone “Cabaret” and cancel “A Little Night Music” was made Wednesday, Trevino said. “Cabaret” will play for three weeks beginning July 9. “A Little Night Music” had been slated for a two-week run.

“In these tough times, it’s been horribly difficult to get any kind of (corporate) support,” Trevino said. Audiences have slipped also, from a near sellout for the group’s debut with “Evita” last February, to lower numbers for a critically well-received production of “Pacific Overtures” last July and finally to the dismal run of “The Music Man.”

Part of the problem, for both the box office and fund raising, is identity, according to Trevino. “We’ve had a tough road getting identification with the Barclay Theatre and getting people to know it’s there.” Because it is on the UC Irvine campus, Trevino said, some people assume that Irvine CLO offerings are university productions, Trevino said.

The group is now scheduling its 1992-93 season at the Irvine Barclay and still hopes to offer three productions, Trevino said. The decision to postpone one production and cancel another in its current season throws a measure of doubt onto the group’s future, he conceded.

“We think it’s going to make it even more difficult to raise money,” Trevino said. “We’re going on with the planning process and we hope to go on (as an organization), but we don’t know.” The current trouble could affect “how future subscribers will perceive us,” he added.

Rankin said it is too early to tell how the current season shuffling will affect the theater’s future relationship with Irvine CLO.

Trevino founded South Coast Musical Theater in 1983 with the idea of moving into the Irvine Barclay when it opened. The group first performed in a 100-seat Irvine theater before making its debut as the renamed Irvine Civic Light Opera in 1991 at the newly opened Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Other local groups have had trouble drawing audiences at the Irvine Barclay in the lingering recession. The Irvine-based Mozart Camerata and the Costa Mesa-based Orange County Chamber Orchestra have canceled most of their scheduled 1991-92 seasons at the theater because of financial difficulties, caused at least partly by poor attendance.

Current Irvine CLO subscribers will be offered free tickets to one production next season because of the cancellation, Trevino said. Refunds are available at the Irvine Barclay box office on any single tickets sold for “Cabaret.”