STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : Globe to Offer the Premiere of ‘Purgatory’ : ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ director plans faithful re-creation of muscial at Civic Theatre.

The Old Globe Theatre will present the world premiere of “Out of Purgatory” by Carol Galligan in its final “to be announced” slot May 8-June 20 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage.

The play is about a young Irish Catholic woman torn between her loyalty to her Israeli husband, who wants her to convert to Judaism, and her dead father, whom she believes is depending on her to pray him out of purgatory.

UC San Diego MFA graduate Benny Sato Ambush, associate artistic director of the American Conservatory Theatre, will direct. Call 239-2255 for tickets.

Sammy Dallas Bayes, a one-time fiddler in the original Broadway “Fiddler on the Roof,” remembers when “Fiddler on the Roof,” now a staple of American musical theater, bombed in a pre-Broadway try-out in Detroit.

“When we came into New York, there were three versions of the show; we were playing different shows everyday,” he recalled of the effort to find a winning formula.

Bayes, who is directing “Fiddler on the Roof” for San Diego Civic Light Opera beginning tonight at the San Diego Civic Theatre, plans to faithfully re-create the version that worked so well.

So don’t expect to see any of the numbers that were cut on the road, like “Dear Sweet Sewing Machine,” sung by Motel the tailor.

Bayes also did the musical staging for the “Fiddler” revival on Broadway that starred Topol. There, as here, he said his goal was “to maintain the quality and intent and as much of the original as possible.”

He has directed the show in Japan in 1967 with the aid of a translator using Japanese actors performing in Japanese. It was a great success that has played in Japan every year since.

He found that the Japanese did not need a crash course in Jewish shtetl culture to get the show.

“The Jewish traditions and the Japanese traditions are very similar with the matchmakers, the marrying within the faith or the culture, the father being the head of the family, the mama taking care of the family, the sons going off to school to learn and daughter preparing to marry and be a good wife and a have a lot of children--they identified with all of that.” Call 544-7827 for reservations.

San Diego Civic Light Opera, in its ongoing search for new musicals, is looking very closely at “Matador,” a show based on the life of a bullfighter, opening in a workshop production at Southwestern College tonight and running through Nov. 21.

The San Diego Civic Light Opera co-artistic directors, Don and Bonnie Ward, have helped director William Virchis obtain the London costumes for the Peter Jukes musical. The Wards are also giving directing assistance and Bonnie Ward is doing the choreography.

San Diego Civic Light Opera is listing the show as part of its Prelude Series of new musicals and Southwestern is doing a benefit performance for the San Diego Civic Light Opera on Tuesday.

“Matador” began its life at the same Chicago theater that presented the new “Annie Warbucks.” It was successful in Chicago, but bombed in the London’s West End. The Wards suggested the show to Virchis when he was directing “Paint Your Wagon” at the San Diego Civic Light Opera this summer.

“Matador” is a fictionalized story of a man who chose bullfighting as a way to escape from poverty and a cruel childhood. Virchis and Marlene Marmanillo have revised the original book with permission from London producer Laurence Myers. The composer is Michael Leander and the lyricist is Edward Seago.

“I’ve been interested in it for a long time because it seems like the kind of a show that might have a life,” Don Ward said. “I thought Bill would do it and then we would take a look at it.” Call 482-6404 for further information or reservations.

For years, Michael and Joyce Axelrod played their worn-out record of Charles Aidman’s musical adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology,” hoping that someone in San Diego would stage the show they saw on Broadway in 1963.

Finally, they approached Sweetooth Comedy Theatre, with an offer that Sweetooth couldn’t refuse. If Sweetooth would stage the musical, the Axelrods would underwrite it.

Sweetooth agreed, and the show will open Friday the 13th at the Maryland Hotel at 630 F St.

“Spoon River Anthology” is made up of epitaphs--secrets the departed take with them to the grave--that Masters imagined for the dreamers, drunkards, saints and lechers that he knew in the small towns of Petersburg and Lewistown in Illinois along the Spoon River. Aidman’s adaptation was first performed at the UCLA Theater Group (now the Mark Taper Forum) and was presented on Broadway in 1963 by producer Joseph Cates.

The Axelrods are confessed theater fanatics. After Michael Axelrod saw “Oklahoma” in 1944, he made it a point to see everything on and off Broadway--at least until he moved from New York to San Diego in 1977.

While the Axelrods subscribed to a variety of theaters, they had a yearning to see “Spoon River Anthology” and finally decided it wouldn’t happen until they made it happen. When Margo Essman, Sweetooth’s founding and managing director gave them the OK, they immediately contacted Aidman’s agent, “assuming we would be ignored,” Michael Axelrod said.

“Shockingly, we got a call. We visited with him in Beverly Hills and he was animated and played some of the roles for us and gave us great insights.”

To the Axelrods’ delight, Aidman is coming down to see the show opening night. Call 544-9079 for tickets.

UC San Diego Professor Floyd Gaffney, the driving artistic force behind Southeast Community Theatre, will be honored by the Board of Directors of Southeast “for 20 years of outstanding service and dedication to the San Diego community” Saturday at the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado.

The event is a fund-raiser for the Southeast Community Theatre Program and Scholarship Fund.

Since 1963, Southeast Community Theatre, a grass-roots theater that floats from rented space to rented space, has staked out a unique voice in San Diego by presenting theater that reflects African American life.

For 20 of those years, Gaffney has been inspiring the community theater to greater professionalism--teaching and encouraging young black performers and designers.

Under his direction, Southeast Community Theatre was the first theater in town to present the work of August Wilson with “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”--that was before Wilson won his Pulitzers and Tonys. He also directed a black version of “Death of a Salesman”--a production that he recalls with great pride--and an excellent San Diego premiere of Wilson’s “Fences.”

One of Southeast’s more popular shows, “Black Nativity,” an African American gospel version of the Nativity story will be back for its fourth annual production, this time at the Lyceum Space Dec. 3-20.

Gaffney has expressed frustration in the past with the lack of attention paid to black subjects and local black talent in the community at large. At Southeast Community Theatre, he had the satisfaction of picking timely and contemporary plays of interest to him and nurturing the talents of local African American actors.

“I’m very thankful the theater was here,” Gaffney said. “I wish it was more solvent in terms of having a venue. But whatever I might have done in terms of putting it on the map has been great, and it’s been a venue where I’ve been able to work in the community.” The deadline for reservations is today. Call 262-2817, 264-3503 or 534-3104.

“Forever Plaid,” the tale of a mellifluous foursome who come back from the dead opens at the Old Globe Theatre (again!) on Friday the 13th. It’s also still running in New York City, where it opened at Steve McGraw’s Cabaret in May, 1990; Minneapolis, where it opened in September, 1991; Boston, where it opened October, 1991; Beverly Hills, where it opened March, 1992; Denver, where it opened April, 1992, and Detroit and Baltimore, where it opened last month in both places. Half-price single tickets are available for selected nights of “Forever Plaid” at the Times Arts Tix booth in Horton Plaza. Call 239-2255.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

TALES FOR CHILDREN

Brenda Wong Aoki, who weaves storytelling magic in “Obake!” and “The Queen’s Garden” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s Lyceum Space, will present a children’s show, “Tales of the Pacific Rim” at 2 p.m. Saturday and Nov. 21.

“Tales of the Pacific Rim” is a family show adapted from the adventures of the Chinese Monkey King, a traditional Japanese ghost story, the Japanese tale of the Crane maiden and the story of a Chinese immigrant in California.

Tickets are $18-$24 for “Obake!” and “The Queen’s Garden” depending on day and time of performance. Tickets for “Tales from the Pacific Rim” are $10 for adults and $5 for children. At the Lyceum Space, 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego. For show times, 235-8025.