South Coast Rep Offers Something Old, Something New Next Season

South Coast Repertory has a 1992-93 season heavy with nostalgia for stage classics but also flecked with new plays and recent imports.

SCR Mainstage subscription offerings will be dominated by revivals, commencing with the 1939 Broadway comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, which will open the theater’s 29th season.

Other revivals in the six-play SCR Mainstage season will include Timberlake Wertenbaker’s “Our Country’s Good,” a drama about Australian convicts and the liberating power of theater; Moliere’s 1688 farce “The Miser,” a morality tale about greed and matrimony; and Noel Coward’s 1925 comedy “Hay Fever.”

The only announced new play on the SCR Mainstage will be the world premiere of Thomas Babe’s “Great Day in the Morning.”

The five-play SCR Second Stage season will provide most of the contemporary offerings as well as a revival of another classic, “Waiting for Godot,” Samuel Beckett’s bleakly comic 1955 play about the existential absurdity of life.

Also on the Second Stage: the world premiere of Anthony Clarvoe’s “Let’s Play Two,” an SCR-commissioned comedy about the singles scene; Allan Cubitt’s “The Pool of Bethesda,” a 1991 British drama about a doctor with a brain tumor who imagines meeting the 18th-Century painter Hogarth, and the West Coast premiere of Frank Moher’s “Odd Jobs,” a mid-’80s Canadian serio-comedy about the relationship between an unemployed welder and a widowed former teacher.

Closing plays on the Mainstage and Second Stage will be announced later. “A Christmas Carol” will again be offered on a non-subscription basis.

The 1992-93 SCR season:

* Mainstage: Sept. 4-Oct. 11, “The Man Who Came to Dinner”; Oct. 16-Nov. 22, “Our Country’s Good”; Dec. 1-27, “A Christmas Carol,” adapted from Charles Dickens; Jan. 8-Feb. 14, “The Miser”; Feb. 19-March 28, “Great Day in the Morning”; April 2-May 9, “Hay Fever”; May 21-June 27, to be announced.

* Second Stage: Sept. 22-Oct. 25, “Let’s Play Two”; Nov. 3-Dec. 6, “The Pool of Bethesda”; Jan. 26-Feb. 28, “Waiting for Godot”; March 9-April 11, “Odd Jobs”; April 20-May 23, to be announced.