AIDS Fund-Raising Tour Kicks Off in San Diego

When basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson announced that he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, many predicted that AIDS victims would be seen differently. More compassionately. More sensitively. More as universal Everyman and Everywoman figures and not ostracized.

Much has changed and much hasn’t.

Johnson has helped galvanize support for fighting the disease. But today, Johnson finds himself being attacked for wanting to play in the NBA All-Star game Sunday in Orlando, Fla. And the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Potential teammates have reported to the press that they love the guy, but they don’t want to run the risk of mixing sweat--and perhaps blood--in a basketball game with him.

It’s symbolic of how much fear shrouds the disease and how much people fear physical contact--of any kind--with those who either test HIV-positive or have full-blown cases of AIDS.

That’s something that David Bell, who is directing the 1992 national tour of “Heart Strings,” knows about first hand. He has lost many people he has loved to the disease and this show, which starts its 35-city tour Saturday in San Diego at Copley Symphony Hall, is his way of telling them, belatedly, that he cares.

“I was in such denial when so many of my friends started dying that I withheld comfort because I wouldn’t admit to myself that they had the disease,” Bell said. “Now, I’m feeling more aware and a little cleansed of the guilt I felt toward some of the friends I didn’t minister to so well. In the script, I wrote some of their names in, which makes it particularly painful to watch.”

“Heart Strings” was created by David Sheppard in 1986 in Atlanta on a modest scale. The show’s first and only other tour played in San Diego in 1990 and became the city’s first AIDS fund-raiser to reach a mainstream audience of about 2,000. It raised $140,000 here and $3.2 million over the course of its tour. This year’s goal is to raise $300,000 here and $5 million on the tour.

The company, with a core of 19 entertainers from across the country, perform songs from hit shows, reinterpreted in the context of AIDS. The aim is to entertain, educate and raise money for AIDS organizations in each city it plays. All of the money raised in San Diego will stay in San Diego because the performers basic living expenses have been met by local hotels donating rooms. It has been estimated that San Diego has 30,000 individuals infected with HIV.

In the current production, one scene about caretakers of those with AIDS has Los Angeles-based actor Jeff Johnson singing “There’s Me” to New York-based Broadway dancer Eric Kaufman. The Andrew Lloyd Webber song was originally sung by one train car to another in “Starlight Express.” But put in a scene about a caregiver and a victim, the number becomes a powerful statement of one person’s pledge to always be there for someone who is suffering.

The cast (of top-notch quality as judging from a Monday rehearsal) is supplemented by two celebrity narrators as well as singers in each city. Here, Christopher Reeve and KNSD-TV anchorwoman Denise Yamada will narrate while the Southeast San Diego Community Choir (a 70-voice Gospel group) and another 70 voices from a variety of men’s choruses flesh out the musical numbers.

With the cooperation of Actors Equity, everyone works for less than union scale. What inspires the actors are the memories of those they have lost.

“So many of our colleagues are gone,” Kaufman said during a rehearsal break. “For me, it’s a way of being able to contribute by using my show business talents.”

Johnson, standing beside Kaufman at the piano, added: “When you have friends dying of AIDS, you put up some walls. This show makes you feel it again--the pain of losing friends and the joy of having known them.”

For Bell, one-time artistic director of the Ford’s Theatre in Washington, it is his first association with what is, essentially, an educational vehicle, designed to raise consciousness and funds for a cause.

Bell, a two-time Emmy winner, is known for his way with big musicals. He directed the original “Elmer Gantry” at Ford’s (he saw and liked the production at the La Jolla Playhouse) and will direct a show for the upcoming Summer Olympics.

But for now, he has thrown himself into “Heart Strings,” rewriting the original script, getting rights for a score full of new songs, redoing the choreography.

And he loves it.

“In many ways, this is the most rewarding thing I have ever done because the real issues are life and death,” he said after the rehearsal. “It’s all very painful, but that’s good. Because art needs to be raw and painful and come from a place of belief.”

Sixty percent of the proceeds from the Saturday show will go to the AIDS Foundation San Diego, the Center for Social Services and Being Alive. The other 40% will be divided among other local AIDS organizations that apply for the money.

The show will go to Palm Springs, Los Angeles and other cities and will be taped for ABC in late March or early April.

PROGRAM NOTES: Old Globe Associate Artist Katherine McGrath has been chosen to star in “Shirley Valentine” when it opens March 14 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. . . .

San Diego’s youngest performer will take a rest when the San Diego Repertory Theatre closes “Abingdon Square,” which has its last English performance Friday and final performance in Spanish Sunday. Young Anthony Wisneske, just 18 months old, a nephew of the actor Andres Monreal (who plays his father) earned kudos from the cast for cooing equally well in both the English and Spanish performances. . . .

Murder is alive and well in San Diego--and especially popular when it comes served with a four-course dinner. The popular Mystery Cafe is opening a new murder mystery, “The Boardwalk Melody Hour Murders,” at the Lake San Marcos Resort on Saturday, 544-1600. The Handlery Hotel makes its mystery debut Friday with “The Stardust Grill Room Murders” in Mission Valley. Its very appropriate box office number is 297-DEAD. . . .

And commenting on the murder-mystery craze is “A Rainy Night in Dago,” a new comedy by local playwright Maureen Anderson, opening at the Fritz Theater tonight. The show is about a theater group’s rehearsal of a murder mystery, 233-7505.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

MOONLIGHT WINTER FARE

Despite some shakiness in some key supporting roles, the delightful performances by Patti Goodwin, Roy Guenther Werner and Bets Malone as the Marquise, Valmont and naive young victim Cecile Volanges in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” lift this Moonlight Amphitheatre Winter Playhouse San Diego premiere into the realm of the memorable. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays with Sunday matinees at 2 through Feb. 16. At 1200 Vale Terrace Drive, Vista, 724-2110.