‘Party’ Writer Is at One With the Single Life : Stage: Fullerton production is a lighthearted look at the trials and the tribulations of the unmarried.

Fifty-two year old Morris Bobrow, who has never been married, knows what it’s like to attend one of those odious singles mixers where everybody’s sweating bullets to look as if the last thing on their minds is getting a date.

“People generally congregate around the hors d’oeuvres and pretend not to be too interested” in anyone or anything else, Bobrow said in a recent phone interview from his office in San Francisco.

Bobrow, who now has a steady girlfriend, is relieved to be out of the “rat race,” the uncertain, often agonizing search for companionship. He’s put his past to good use, however, with “Party of One,” a comedy musical revue about the unmarried that’s run steadily for six years in San Francisco and will be staged Saturday at Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton.

“It’s a very lighthearted, primarily humorous look at the whole situation,” with poignant moments as well as laughs about the ups and downs of singledom, said Bobrow, who wrote the show’s book, music and lyrics.

With a two-man, two-woman cast, “Party” explores a range of topics with more than 20 songs. There’s “Single and in Love in America,” about states that prohibit cohabitation between unmarried couples and “Three Cheers,” which tips a hat to the nation’s only unwed President--James Buchanan. There also are songs and skits about safe sex, gay dating, singles who amass fancy kitchen gadgets and anxieties of the hunt, such as obsessing over fresh breath at those singles mixers.

Several numbers deal with the stigma of singlehood and societal pressure to marry, Bobrow said. One song asks why one has to be “un” something, as in unmarried or uninvolved, and poses the question “why don’t we call married folks ‘ un single?’ ” he said.

The show “essentially makes the point that being single is a perfectly fine, valid lifestyle for people who want to pursue that, and they should be allowed to pursue it in peace and quiet,” he said.

Bobrow, by day an attorney who specializes in estate planning and entertainment law, has written musicals since college. More recently, he penned “Mixed Nuts,” about contemporary lifestyles, and “With Relish,” about food, which were staged in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. He developed “Party,” presented Saturday as part of Cal State Fullerton’s PAIR Celebrity Series, because he discovered an untapped niche.

“It occurred to me that there was no musical strictly about being single,” he said.

The revue looks at the issue from both men’s and women’s point of view. Because, at base, it’s about relationships of any kind, it has universal appeal, said Bobrow, who drew on friends’ experiences as well as his own for lyrics.

“Everybody has been single at one time or experienced (relationship) communication problems.” Seniors particularly relate to a song about refusing to put life on hold until you’ve got a significant other to enjoy it with, he said.

Bobrow rejected the idea, posited by one critic, that the singular theme of being single is too narrow to sustain an entire musical. There’s no room for redundancy when there are so many different facets of singlehood to be examined, he said.

Additionally, the musical is in no way, well, dated, and won’t be passe in 100 years, he added.

“Men and women will still be men and women and the way the approach relationships won’t change,” Bobrow said.

“Party of One,” starring Patty Wolfe, Robert Mundy, Brett Owen and Amy Dondy, plays at 8 p.m. Saturday at Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. $10 to $15. (714) 773-3371.