Psst! Wanna Buy One ‘Phantom’ Ticket?

“The Phantom of the Opera” is raking in more bucks than ever.

When the new $15-$60 price scale began Jan. 6, the potential weekly gross for the show grew from $724,000 to $774,000. During the first week of the new price scale, the gross was $773,000.

“We were at 100% capacity,” said a spokeswoman for the show. She attributed the $1,000 discrepancy between the actual gross and the potential gross to group discounts.

The following week, the gross dipped slightly, to $761,750.

Last year, L.A.’s “Phantom” grossed $36 million, but that record could be topped if the show continues through 1992. While tickets are officially on sale only through May 10, “Phantom” star Davis Gaines just signed a new one-year contract.

Last week’s account of a man who had to go through contortions to obtain 11 adjoining “Phantom” tickets for his office party drew a response from a reader who contended that singles, too, face “discrimination” on the ticket line--if they show up for day-of-performance cancellations. Singles are told that pairs of tickets can’t be split. Couples in line behind them take precedence.

It’s true that ticket sellers “won’t break up a pair of tickets,” said the “Phantom” spokeswoman, “because most likely they’ll be stuck with a leftover ticket.” However, she said efforts are made to match singles who are standing in line with each other. The woman who called Stage Watch said that she finally resorted to this solution herself, finding another single ticket buyer in line to join her. Butshe denied that the box-office staff took the initiative to help her.

If all such matchmaking efforts are unsuccessful and a single is still standing in line just before curtain time, said the show’s spokeswoman, a pair of tickets will finally be split in order to sell a single ticket.

Apparently a single who’s waiting for that magic moment should just pray that a couple doesn’t arrive at the very last second.

PASADENA SOUTH?: The powers behind the Pasadena Playhouse are looking for a beachhead in San Diego. Among the possible venues are two downtown San Diego theaters: the Spreckels, where Pasadena sent its production of “Solitary Confinement,” and the Balboa, a 68-year-old theater in the Horton Plaza shopping center.

“We’re very happy with the experience of ‘Solitary Confinement’ at the Spreckels, which was a kind of test,” said David Houk, owner of the Pasadena Playhouse, in an interview with Times reporter Michael Granberry.

He wants to do more shows in San Diego. “We’ve had discussions on several fronts, and we’re pursuing it actively. I’m torn at the moment about where and when we might (open a local theater), but we are very interested.”

Houk recently met with San Diego redevelopment officials and examined the 1,500-seat Balboa, which has been dormant since 1986. The city plans to renovate the auditorium, then lease it to a permanent operator.

Other organizations that have expressed an interest in operating the Balboa are La Jolla Playhouse, Starlight Musical Theatre, the Visual Arts Foundation of San Diego and the city’s San Diego Concourse, which oversees the San Diego Civic Theatre, among other properties.

TAKING A “CHANCE”: John Fleck’s “A Snowball’s Chance in Hell,” which just opened at the Taper, Too, was commissioned by Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1990 along with a new piece from Tim Miller.

But Fleck didn’t get the entire $5,000 that LATC pledged. He got $2,000, then--after much “cajoling,” said Fleck--he got an additional $1,000. The amounts were confirmed by former LATC artistic director Bill Bushnell.

Miller got nothing beyond the initial $2,000. “Perhaps I should have been more persistent,” he said last week, “but I perceived the rest of it as a donation to the beleaguered theater.”

The theater company collapsed last October.

Fleck and Miller were two of the “NEA Four,” performers who were first approved and then rejected for National Endowment for the Arts grants, in a controversial episode that many saw as a case of censorship. LATC stepped in to recompense the two L.A.-based artists with the $5,000 commissions. They performed the pieces in workshops at LATC last spring, and LATC scheduled Fleck’s piece for an engagement in December. But the company folded first.

Fleck then approached the Mark Taper Forum, which arranged to present the piece at Taper, Too. In the meantime, however, he has done workshops of it elsewhere, including Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. “Hell” at the Taper, Too is more than twice as long as the version performed at the LATC workshop.

Miller, noting that he had received an earlier commission from the Taper, said he harbored no resentment that the Taper didn’t pick up his piece. “I have a space,” he said, referring to Highways, the performance salon he and Linda Burnham operate in Santa Monica. “I’d rather make money for Highways.”