STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : McNally’s Middle Ground

Looking back at his three most recent plays, Terrence McNally believes that “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” “The Lisbon Traviata” and “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” are “a trilogy after the fact.”

“I couldn’t see the connection while I was writing it,” McNally, 53, said by phone from his home in Long Island. “But I was looking at relationships, from the beginning, middle and end points of view.”

“Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” which will have its West Coast premiere at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company’s Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre tonight, is about love in the middle of a relationship. “Frankie and Johnny,” a story about a waitress and a short-order cook that was one of the Gaslamp’s biggest hits, is about love at the beginning. “The Lisbon Traviata,” a tale of love, betrayal and revenge presented by the North Coast Repertory Theatre last year, is about love at the end.

“This is about married people who are going to stick together,” McNally said of the two couples in “Lips Together.” “It’s about the humdrum, but it’s also about the fragility of life.”

“Lips Together” takes place in a beach house on Fire Island that Sally has inherited from a gay brother who died of AIDS. Sally is married to Sam, and they have invited Sam’s sister Chloe and her husband, John, to stay with them for the Fourth of July weekend.

Over the course of the weekend, the tensions between the couples are exposed, along with tensions within the individuals--sometimes through monologues addressed to the audience in the midst of the dialogue. The couples deal with their fear of death and dying, of being parents, of not being parents, of love and desire both for their partners and for others.

Surrounding them, invisibly, is the gay community in which Sally’s brother lived: There is a pool in the house that no one wants to go into because of of an unfounded fear of catching AIDS--something no one wants to admit.

But McNally rejects the idea that the play is about AIDS.

“I think the play addresses homophobia and a fear and ignorance about AIDS, but I don’t think it’s an AIDS play or a play about homophobia,” he said. “It’s about intimacy and how we do need each other to get through. We are little specks on this magnificent planet, and life is a very overwhelming thing, and I try to reflect that in the play.”

McNally said he is happy the Gaslamp is presenting the West Coast premiere of this play under the direction of Will Roberson. He had come to San Diego to see the Gaslamp’s “Frankie and Johnny,” also under Roberson’s direction, and was very pleased.

“I thought it was a terrific production,” McNally said. “I like that theater enormously, and I thought they produced ‘Frankie and Johnny’ enormously well.”

He’s not sure he’ll be able to catch this production, however. He’s busy working on the musical version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” which opened to favorable reviews in London in October and is being talked about for Broadway next year. He’s also working on a new play, “A Perfect Ganesh,” about two middle-aged American women touring India. The show is set to open in the Manhattan Theatre Club in the spring.

McNally has never given up on “Up in Saratoga,” a period farce that opened to disastrous reviews at the Old Globe a few years ago. He still believes there’s a future for it--after more rewrites.

“I never abandon a play, and that’s why I’m determined for ‘Saratoga’ to happen,” he said. “There might be one that’s stillborn, and I hope I’m wise enough to know when that happens. But I really believe in ‘Up in Saratoga,’ and I think it’s going to happen again one day.”

When benefactor Mandell Weiss sees “Love in the Shadow of the Bamboo” at one of the two theaters that bears his name--the Mandell Weiss Theatre--he expects the play to bring back memories.

It should.

Playwright Oana-Maria Hock, a friend of Weiss, wrote it for and dedicated it to him.

The show, a UC San Diego production continuing through Sunday, is subtitled “A Memory Performance” and is based on Weiss’ own memory of a little girl he once knew in his native Romania, before he left at age 7.

“It’s just like it happened yesterday,” Weiss said, sitting in his apartment with its breathtaking view of Balboa Park and downtown.

“It was my first love. I was 4, 4 1/2. The town that I was in, they had a band that played every other day. I went to hear them play and I remember seeing a young girl with her father. She had a beach ball. And the ball rolled over to where I sat and I fell in love with her.

“Nothing happened. I never learned her name. But I still remember her.”

The play had its East Coast premiere in 1990 at Company-One Theatre in Hartford, Conn., and was also produced in 1991 by the Blue Heron Theatre in New York.

It should also give Weiss a chance to view himself as a younger man. His character in the play is a mere 100 years old. Weiss, who gave $2 million to complete the Mandell Weiss Theatre and the Mandell Weiss Forum, the two facilities shared by the La Jolla Playhouse and UCSD, turned 101 on April 22. 534-3793 .

Guillermo Gomez-Pena, winner of the national McArthur Foundation Award for “genius,” will offer his take on the Columbus quincentennial with his latest performance-art monologue, “New World (B)order,” at at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 in Mesa College’s Apolliad Theatre.

“These are very polarizing times,” Gomez-Pena said by phone from Colorado, where he is presenting this work. “I’m attempting to articulate some of these polarizations. How can we have a global consumer culture, free trade and art, and on the other hand have the resurgence of nationalism, secessionist movements and a militant return to tradition?”

The Mexican-born Gomez-Pena has won recognition with his work on border issues, beginning with an examination of the U.S.-Mexico border, much of which he developed in San Diego at Sushi Performance Gallery and the Centro Cultural de la Raza.

Now, Gomez-Pena says, since he moved to New York in 1991 (he plans to move to Los Angeles in February), he looks at all the borders that separate people--cultural, psychological, historical, emotional.

Like earlier works, he performs “New World (B)order” in English, Spanish and Spanglish.

“I go in and out of characters on a cultural, psychological and political journey,” he said. “The main character is a cross-cultural salesman and an undercover political activist, whose job it is to persuade people to sign a free art agreement between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.”

Gomez-Pena’s set design includes a dead chicken hanging on stage, a ghetto blaster, masks, hats and a lot of candles.

Life, he says, has gotten both easier and more difficult since he won the MacArthur--also known as the “genius grant”--in 1991.

Easier because “it has given me the freedom to do work that is more politically committed, and it has given me more negotiation power to press institutions for change.”

“On the other hand, it hasn’t been that good, because it put me in the delicate position of being carefully scrutinized as the first Chicano artist to receive a MacArthur.”

In other words, Gomez-Pena said, he is constantly haunted by people who see is work and then ask, “Is he really a genius?”

It’s a small world. While Harry Goz and wife Maggie are co-starring as Tevye and Golde in the San Diego Civic Light Opera’s “Fiddler on the Roof” with Priscilla Allen as Yenta, the Gozes’ son and Allen’s daughter are appearing on Broadway in “Guys and Dolls.” Michael Goz is playing Angie the Ox and Jennifer Allen is a member of the Salvation Army Band, understudying Sister Sarah Brown, Adelaide and General Cartwright.

For a touch more coincidence, the last time Michael Goz and Jennifer Allen performed together in San Diego was in the San Diego Civic Light Opera’s 1982 production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” also starring Harry and Maggie Goz.

The upcoming production of “Fiddler on the Roof” opens Nov. 12 at the San Diego Civic Theatre.

PROGRAM NOTES: “Letters From the Yellow Chair,” a two-man show based on the correspondence between Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo, will be presented at the San Diego Museum of Art at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, 6 p.m. Wednesday and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13. The show premiered at the National Gallery in London in 1987 and was written specifically for presentation in museums. 232-7931 .

Local playwright J. Riker’s “Pinhook” draws upon African-American folk tales to tell the story of a 126-year-old woman, Tuesday at the Ruse at the Marquis Theatre. 444-3744 .

Moonlight Playhouse, the indoor winter home of the Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista, will present a youth production of “Little Mary Sunshine” Jan. 28 and the Ken Ludwig farce “Lend Me a Tenor” beginning Feb. 18. 724-2110 .

CRITIC’S CHOICE

‘SPUNK’ ENDS SUNDAY

Don’t miss “Spunk,” closing Sunday at the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Stage. The Rep’s exhilarating rendition of three Zora Neale Hurston stories of African-American life is passionately performed with dance, song and an abiding love and respect for the complications of bad marriages, good marriages and the single life. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $21-$24 depending on the day. At the Lyceum Stage, 79 Horton Plaza. 235-8025 .