STAGE / NANCY CHURNIN : ‘Forever Plaid’ Understudy’s Lucky Break

There is a San Diegan in the cast of “Forever Plaid”: Rick Meads.

No, not in the Old Globe production of “Forever Plaid.” Meads is performing in the open-ended run of the show in Detroit, Mich.

But he got his job because of the Old Globe’s production--along with a lucky break.

Meads understudied two parts in the Old Globe’s “Forever Plaid” last year, and while understudies rarely get the chance to go on for the stars at the Old Globe, Meads did get his one chance. That was enough to sell him as a Plaid for the production he’s starring in now.

No one--including Meads--ever thought he would get a chance to perform the show at the Old Globe. He was fitted for a costume, but he didn’t have a single rehearsal. He dutifully learned the moves and the complicated four-part harmony for two separate parts on his own.

According to the terms of his contract, he called 30 minutes before every performance to see if he was needed. And he went on with his life as a Lamb’s Players Theatre associate artist. While the sweet, square Plaids performed at the Old Globe in their first run in the summer of 1991, he played the deceitful reverend in Lamb’s Players Theatre’s “The Foreigner”--with his own understudy, just in case he was needed at the Globe. But he wasn’t.

When the Plaids returned to the Globe a year ago in November last year, he signed on with the Lamb’s production of “Dickens, Dining & Song.” He grew his hair long to give more of a Victorian flavor to his part--but then it happened.

“It was the day after Christmas,” in the middle of the run of “Dickens, Dining & Song,” Meads, 34, recalled on the phone from his Detroit apartment. “The show started at 5 and I called in. I was unshaven with long hair and they told me that the actor who plays Jinx hadn’t shown up yet, but not to worry because he had never missed a performance before.

“Then at 10 to 5 they called and said, ‘Jinx is still not here,’ so I raced to the Globe (from his home in La Mesa) at 85 m.p.h., fully expecting to see the guy who played Jinx.”

But he didn’t show up and they rushed Meads into makeup, chopped off his hair, opened the button holes that were still sewn shut on the costume no one had expected him to wear, and sent him out to perform at 5:20.

Meads was glad that he was playing Jinx: “Fortunately, the character I was playing was perfect because Jinx acts as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing anyway.”

And the show went well enough to get a standing ovation.

Still, Meads wasn’t able to stick around for congratulations or after-the-show drinks.

“I walked out of the Globe at 6:35 p.m., sprinted to ‘Dickens, Dining & Song,’ arriving at 7 p.m.” at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church downtown where the show was playing, “just in time to get into costume and sing a solo.”

Meads never got a chance to perform at the Globe again. It turned out that the actor who played Jinx had just completely forgotten about the day after Christmas performance--which had been added late in the schedule. That was the last performance anyone in the cast missed.

But the production manager was so impressed with Meads’ ability to carry off the show, unrehearsed, that when a two-week replacement for Frankie was needed in a “Forever Plaid” production at the Alley Theatre in Houston this summer, Meads was tapped for the job. He left Lamb’s production of “The Utter Glory of Morrissey Hall” near the end of its run to do it.

Stuart Ross, the creator and director of “Forever Plaid,” flew out to see his work and was impressed enough to offer him the part of Frankie in the new company he was putting together for Detroit. The show opened in October. Being in Detroit has been a special thrill for Meads because he grew up in Port Heron, Mich., just 45 minutes away from where he is now performing, and his family, who still lives in the area, has been able to see the show.

After Meads’ wife, Kerry Meads, the associate artistic director of Lamb’s, puts the finishing touches on Lamb’s “Festival of Christmas,” opening tomorrow, she will fly out to spend Christmas with him and their 3-year-old son, Matthew, whom Rick Meads is caring for when he’s not on stage eight times a week.

As for how long he will stay with “Forever Plaid,” Meads is not sure. The reviews were great and he’d like to stay, but he would also like to return to San Diego. Meads moved here in 1986 to work at Lamb’s Players Theatre (where he met his wife) and later to earn an MFA in Musical Theater from San Diego State University.

But ironically, the very first theater he went to look at in San Diego was the Old Globe.

“When I first went to San Diego, I went to the Old Globe Theatre and said I would work there. I wish my first performance at the Globe would have been a little less traumatic. But it happened.

“And I really love what I’m doing right now.”

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On Saturday at 11 a.m., about 50 children sat enthralled as the San Diego Actors Theatre presented “The Best of Dr. Seuss” at the Better Worlde Galeria in Hillcrest.

The program was a child-sized 30 minutes long with few props and only the simplest costumes, but all the six actors needed were the words of Dr. Seuss as they acted out “The Cat in the Hat,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” “Gertrude McFuzz” and “The Big Brag,” without changing a word.

The company’s final presentation of “The Best of Dr. Seuss” will be Dec. 19--”How The Grinch Stole Christmas” will be added to the program.

The company would like to do more of “The Best of Dr. Seuss,” but it doesn’t look as if the rights will be available for more performances.

Audrey Geisel, widow of Theodor Geisel--better known as Dr. Seuss--is continuing her late husband’s tight control on the rights to his creations. If the work is presented too frequently, it can fall into the public domain, she explained on the phone from her home. Once it is in the public domain, anyone can commercialize the material, changing words and characters as desired. As long as the Geisel estate controls the rights, nothing can be changed and nothing can be charged for performances.

“The more times we do it, the more it is in the jeopardy of being in the public domain,” Audrey Geisel said.

“We find it an absolute delight that the children loved it, but the greatest delight is that it remains ours and we can do it and not charge.”

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PROGRAM NOTES: Adrian Zmed, who replaced Michael Rupert as Marvin in the Broadway production of “Falsettos” Nov. 5-21, will star in the national tour of “Falsettos” that will start in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Dec. 1 and go to the Old Globe in March. . . .

Lamb’s Players Theatre will bring back its recently closed “Smoke on the Mountain” Jan. 15-Feb. 7, 1993 on its resident stage. Call 474-4542. . . .

The Fritz Theatre will present a Pay What You Can staged reading of “Eight Days in a Dumpster” by local playwright Cathryn Pisarski Dec. 7 at 8 p.m. The performers include Erin Kelly, Duane Daniels, Dana Hooley and Kevin Mann. Call 523-1549 for further information. . . .

Milton Berle will do a one-man show Dec. 12 at 8:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla. Call 452-1734 for further information.

CRITIC’S CHOICE MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING

Don’t miss La Jolla Playhouse’s “Much Ado About Nothing” closing Sunday at the Mandell Weiss Theatre. Under the direction of Playhouse artistic director Des McAnuff, the sins of Elizabethan times become our own without changing a word; the characters wear modern dress and the dirty tricksters spin their career-crushing rumors on cellular phones. At the same time the Playhouse doesn’t skimp on the fun.

At one point, during a masked ball, people come dressed up as everyone from Goofy to Marilyn Monroe, George Bush, Dan Quayle, Mike Tyson and Woody Allen. The cast is excellent, with Mark Harelik and Monique Fowler particularly fine as the quick-witted, love-flouting Beatrice and Benedick. And the effect of the whole is stunning in its portrayal of decadence, evil, love and hope everlasting.

Performances are 8 p.m. through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday with Saturday/Sunday matinees at 2. Tickets are $19.75-$29.75. At the Mandell Weiss Theatre on the UC San Diego campus on Torrey Pines Road and La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla, 534-3960.