Welk Theater Goes Out on a Limb With ‘Chorus Line’

You can see their eyes light up as they approach the bronze, life-size statue of Lawrence Welk. You can hear the excitement grow as they walk into the Lawrence Welk Resort Theatre, its entry packed with Welk memorabilia--from the giant champagne glass to the cutout of Welk (a favorite for snapshot takers) to the series of photographs and words that tell the story of his life.

Most Lawrence Welk Resort Theatre patrons are senior citizens who’ve spent decades watching the Lawrence Welk television show. And when they go to the theater, they are not going just to see “The Sound of Music” or “Carousel,” they are going because they want to be enveloped in the Welk atmosphere, which includes a sumptuous buffet before a clean-cut show in which the women’s dresses remain below the knee, bad language is never spoken, true love triumphs and everything is, well, wunnerful.

The Welk Resort Theatre’s audience is a sentimental, nostalgic crowd. At this 11-year-old, 331-seat theater, it’s not unusual to

have a couple celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary seated on one side of you, or to hear the elderly man on the other side gasp “Oh, no!” when Molly walks out on her husband in the “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”

Therefore, artistic director Frank Wayne was understandably nervous when he introduced the Welk audience to “A Chorus Line” last week.

On the surface, “A Chorus Line” doesn’t seem controversial. It was an immediate smash after it opened in New York in 1975, and it went on to become the longest-running musical on Broadway. Starlight Musical Theatre has done it. Several touring productions have passed through San Diego. Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista will do it this September.

But this frank musical about dancers auditioning for a Broadway chorus line contains some strong themes and strong language for the Welk crowd. This, after all, is the audience that complained to Wayne because the gangster in “Anything Goes” was dressed as a priest (as he has been in every other production of the show).

Wayne took the liberty of cutting all the curse words from the dialogue in “A Chorus Line.” But he left the songs intact.

So far the results have left him “very pleasantly surprised,” he reports. Box office was about 100% for the first week and about 80% the second week, which is better than last year at this time.

The Welk, a for-profit Equity theater, aims to please rather than challenge: It hands out response cards regularly to see how it’s doing. So far, 90% of the audience has given this show high marks.

Interviewed two weeks before the musical opened, Wayne was very nervous. After five years as artistic director at the Welk, he was looking for “A Chorus Line” to be his breakthrough show to more contemporary musicals. He had been pushing to get it on the schedule for two years before the Welk family agreed.

“We’re running out of plays,” Wayne said. “If this works well, I can do ‘Baby’ or ‘Jelly’s Last Jam.’ ”

Despite the initial positive response from both audience and the Welk management, Wayne said Tuesday that future shows are still up for discussion.

He’s already gotten approval for “Nunsense.” And the audience has further surprised him by slipping in requests for “Evita,” along with the more customary choices of “Oklahoma!” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Still, the ever-cautious Welk philosophy is one of wait and see: “We’ll wait until the end of the run and see the total reaction and then make the decision,” Wayne said.

“Ziegfeld: A Night at the Follies” has been dropped from Nederlander’s San Diego Playgoers series, officials announced Tuesday. The show, which was scheduled to open here July 21, is produced by the Troika Organization based in Rockville, Md., and has been a box office hit despite being picketed by Actors Equity for being non-union.

Also canceled are performances at Los Angeles’s Pantages Theatre on July 27 and, in Hawaii, Troika’s “Meet Me in St. Louis,” which continues through Monday at the San Diego Civic Theatre.

The touring company’s general manager, Stephen Kane, attributed the cancellation to a “dollars and cents” disagreement with the Nederlander Organization, which books the two theaters.

However, San Diego Playgoers has just announced it will present “Love Letters,” starring Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers, Aug. 4-9 at the Civic and “The World Goes ‘Round,” a revue focusing on the works of John Kander and Fred Ebb, which in New York was titled “And the World Goes Round,” Nov. 24-29. The latter comes here following an eight-week run at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood. The five-member cast will include three of the original off-Broadway cast members.

Playgoers may also bring “Aspects of Love” to San Diego in 1993, although dates have not been confirmed.

PROGRAM NOTES: The San Diego Actors Theatre has scored three San Diego premieres for its monthly staged reading series at the Athens Market restaurant downtown. Terrence McNally’s “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” a story about a brother and sister celebrating the Fourth of July in the gay community of Fire Island, kicks off the series Monday, with Marti Emerald of Channel 10 news performing a role. John Patrick Shanley’s “The Dreamer Examines His Pillow,” a story about love, will be presented July 27. Paul Rudnick’s “I Hate Hamlet,” a comedy about a television actor who takes on the role of Hamlet, will be read Aug. 24. All performances are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 for performance only; dinner packages (including tax and gratuity) are $25. Call 268-4494 for information and 234-1955 for tickets. . . .

A new magazine, TheatreForum, is subtitled an International Theatre Journal, but readers will find this UC San Diego magazine packed with items of local interest: a cover story on Sledgehammer and an interview by UCSD Professor Floyd Gaffney with playwright Athol Fugard, whose “Playland” opens at the La Jolla Playhouse on Aug. 30. Call 534-2062. . . .

Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista has created some new costumes for “The Wiz,” its youth theater production running through Saturday. The Tin Man has been reconceived as a salvaged auto part and the Scarecrow is stuffed with trash. Call 724-2110. . . .

Diversionary Theatre’s latest, “Healin’ Dirt Diner,” billed as a “country-Western lesbian comedy,” opens Friday and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. through July at 2222 Broadway in Golden Hill. There will be no show this Saturday. Call 574-1060.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

ENSEMBLE ARTS’ RIVETING ‘TOUCH’ ENDS THIS WEEKEND

Three lonely women find help--or do they?--at the hands of a man who says he is a faith healer. Ensemble Arts Theatre, one of San Diego’s fine homeless theaters, does a riveting job with a low-budget production of Peter Lloyd’s “The Touch” at the Fritz Theatre through Sunday. This show, like most Ensemble Arts efforts, poses questions rather than answers them. No splashy effects or fancy lighting in this tiny, semi-primitive space, but “The Touch” is performed movingly in a fine ensemble effort. Performances are at 8 p.m. through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Fritz Theatre, 338 7th Ave. Call 696-0458.