Tickets Are Hot but There’s Plenty of Seats Left : Fire: Moulton Theatre in Laguna barely escaped the flames. The show, ‘Oliver,’ will go on as scheduled.

Orange County’s oldest theater company, the Laguna Playhouse, survived the fire unscathed--but not by much.

Flames that engulfed hundreds of homes and businesses here came within 30 yards of the Playhouse’s 418-seat Moulton Theatre on Laguna Canyon Road in the city’s downtown area.

Richard Stein, executive director of the 74-year-old theater company, resorted Thursday to gallows humor to describe what happened: “We nearly had an unscheduled production of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ on our stage.”

Stein said staffers evacuated the building Wednesday as “a wall of fire moved across the canyon in front of us and swallowed homes overlooking the theater in a matter of minutes.”

“At one point,” he continued, “sparks ignited dry brush on the slope right behind us about 30 yards from our building. We were incredibly lucky. Our technical director and a technician--Jim Ryan and Scott Sheppard--put out that particular blaze.

“Firefighters were out there, too, fighting other flames further up the slope.”

The Moulton, a wood and stucco structure built by the Playhouse in 1969 at 606 Laguna Canyon Road, was deeded to the city and leased back to the theater company until 2010.

Stein said the theater’s staff packed a truck, a van and five cars with boxes of archives, artwork from the Playhouse’s lobby gallery and costumes for “Oliver,” a musical scheduled to begin previews on Tuesday. All of the materials were hauled off, but the scenery for the show, under construction in the theater, was left on stage.

“The fire put our technical crew behind schedule,” Stein said, “but, assuming we can get back into the building Friday, we’ll open on time. If we have glitches during performances because of the delay, we feel the audience will understand.”

The Moulton box office, which was closed Thursday, is expected to open today and will remain open through the weekend, he said. Stein noted that putting on a musical in the midst of the city’s devastation could help provide some semblance of normality or at least momentary relief from surrounding disaster.

“Sometimes the strangest things happen,” he added. “On Wednesday as we were covered with smoke, fighting the fire and evacuating the building, a lady came up to our box office wanting to know if we were open.”

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LOUNGING AROUND: Meanwhile, after a lengthy search for an original play, the Playhouse has decided to stage the world premiere of “Teachers’ Lounge” by John Twomey, a 31-year-old first-time playwright, as part of its 1993-94 season.

“Our staff read more than 200 manuscripts over the past year,” Stein said. “Teachers’ Lounge” will run Jan. 11-Feb. 6 at the Moulton Theatre in Laguna Beach.

He described Twomey’s comedy as “an amusing, poignant and timely play about teachers in a New York City high school, where every September they bet on which colleagues will last out the term.”

Playhouse artistic director Andrew Barnicle will stage “Teachers’ Lounge.”

Twomey, a New York City native, has been a public high school teacher for the last six years, Stein said.

The Playhouse also has reversed the order of the final two plays in the current season: Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” will run March 15-April 10; Charles Ludlam’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep” will run May 17-June 12.

Stein said the change in schedule from previously announced dates was to accommodate director Jules Aaron, who will stage the Ludlam comedy.