The Old, News, Bard and Blues : 1992 THE YEAR IN REVIEW; O.C. Theatre: Our Critics Name This Year’s Heroes’s and Villains.

Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please.

The year 1992 was-- ta-dah!-- a year of unforgettable excitement, unsurpassed thrills and unprecedented achievement for Orange County theaters.

Sorry. Let’s take that over.

Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please.

The year 1992 was--if truth be told--mildly fascinating, occasionally thrilling and sometimes downright peculiar.

To start with, 1992 was a very big year for Shakespeare. Theaters large and small went out of their way to celebrate the Bard’s 400th anniversary as a playwright.

It was the year we got Caribbean-style Shakespeare, feminist-style Shakespeare, celebrity-style Shakespeare and even no-frills Shakespeare:

In Costa Mesa, South Coast Repertory gave us “Twelfth Night” with a splashy Carnival setting and a West African drum beat.

In Santa Ana, Alternative Repertory Theatre gave us “The Tempest” with a female Prospero and a mother-daughter twist.

In Garden Grove, GroveShakespeare gave us “Macbeth” with a pair of TV stars: Joan Van Ark and David Birney.

In Orange, Shakespeare Orange County gave us “Hamlet” straight, marking only the second time in 100 years that the Bard’s most famous play had been done locally by a professional company.

It was also the year we didn’t get “Richard III,” reportedly because its star, Sir Ian McKellan, preferred UCLA’s Royce Hall to the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

It was the year the Grove Shakespeare Festival renamed itself GroveShakespeare. (No, that is not a typo.)

It was the year GroveShakespeare named a new artistic director: W. Stuart McDowell, who hails from New Jersey. (Yes, the W stands for William.) It was the year GroveShakespeare accepted the resignation of Barbara Hammerman as managing director-executive vice president and, lest we forget, the company’s resident juris doctor (yes, Hammerman invariably listed her J.D. in the troupe’s playbills).

It was the year Shakespeare OC made its debut, headed by the Grove’s former artistic director, Thomas F. Bradac. (Everybody calls him Tom.)

And speaking of debuts . . .

It was the year South Coast Repertory gave us four world premieres--”Boundary Waters,” “Noah Johnson Had a Whore,” “Hospitality Suite” and “Let’s Play Two.”

It was the year three South Coast originals from previous years were restaged in New York--”Sight Unseen” (a smash hit), “The Extra Man” (not a hit) and “Search and Destroy” (a bomb).

It was the year “Prelude to a Kiss,” another South Coast original from a previous year, made it to the screen as a Hollywood movie (a bomb).

It was the year “Sight Unseen” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the closest any SCR-commissioned play has come to winning the award.

It was, not incidentally, the year of David Emmes. SCR’s producing artistic director staged the two most affecting dramas of 1992, “Woman in Mind” and “Odd Jobs.”

It was the year we got Larry Gelbart’s “Mastergate,” a scathing lampoon of Iran-Contra, where Washington meets Hollywood. Dudley Knight gave it a masterful staging at UC Irvine in a Southland premiere.

It was the year we got two new amateur companies: the Vanguard Theatre Ensemble in Fullerton and the Ensemble Theatre/Eastern Boys Productions in Orange.

It was the year the South Orange County Community Theatre got a new and permanent home--the Camino Real Playhouse in San Juan Capistrano.

It was the year Jonelle Allen and Mary Anne McGarry produced a sparkling series of staged readings, “Making Scenes,” in a Laguna Beach art gallery.

It was the year the Actors’ Equity Assn. killed a bid to allow professional performers at three small amateur companies--Alternative Rep, the Backstage Theatre in Costa Mesa and the Way Off Broadway Playhouse in Santa Ana. (The union declined to let them “showcase” union actors.)

It was the year I.M. Hobson, one of South Coast’s major longtime guest artists, said he would retire from the stage. (In his final SCR appearance he starred as Sheridan Whiteside in “The Man Who Came to Dinner.”)

It was the year the Irvine Civic Light Opera also decided to call it quits, at least for a while. (Its bare-bones revival of “Cabaret” at the Irvine Barclay Theatre just couldn’t draw a crowd.) It was the year Mark Twain refused to call it quits. (He came to the county not once but twice--first in Richard Hensel’s impersonation at the Barclay and then in Hal Holbrook’s impersonation at the Performing Arts Center.)

Similarly, “Les Miserables” may never call it quits. (A national touring version came to OCPAC for the second year in a row and set a box-office record.)

Nostalgia seemed to be a theatrical motif almost everywhere you turned.

It was the year we got “The Fantasticks,” a musical icon of the ‘60s, at GroveShakespeare’s Gem Theatre and the Newport Theatre Arts Center.

It was the year we got “The Philadelphia Story” and the aforementioned “Man Who Came to Dinner,” both swanky-looking visitations from the ‘30s and both at South Coast Rep.

It was the year we got “Bus Stop” from the ‘50s and “The 1940s Radio Hour,” both at the Laguna Playhouse.

It was the year we got “Me and My Girl,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” all at the Fullerton Civic Light Opera.

It was the year OCPAC came up with a Broadway subscription menu made to order for nostalgia buffs--again.

First there was “Buddy,” a fond but synthetic reprise of the life of ‘50s rocker Buddy Holly. Then there was a Tommy Tune-ful “Bye Bye Birdie,” spoofing the early Elvis Presley. Currently there’s “Camelot,” a chestnut made chestier by Robert Goulet.

Judging by its lush Victoriana, even “The Secret Garden”--the only really fresh Broadway musical to come to OCPAC this year--was steeped in an overwhelming nostalgia for the past.

It was also the year a few small theaters deserved a few small kudos:

Bravo to the Backstage and the Vanguard for each putting on six shoestring productions. Some were better than others, but all kept faith in the reality of make-believe.

Bravo to the Orange County Crazies for coming of age. Let’s hope they’re proof that a home-grown comedy troupe with something like an underground sensibility might actually survive here.

And it was the year a pair of small theaters deserved a pair of large kudos:

Bravissimo to Alternative Rep and Way Off Broadway for leading the way. Both are into their sixth seasons, for better or worse, and that’s nothing short of miraculous.

Finally, lest we forget, it was the year of the swastikas.

Bigots defaced Way Off Broadway when one of its productions depicted an interracial couple. The more things change (you know the rest) . . .

Blast of trumpets. Drum roll, please.

Curtain.