O.C. Theater / Jan Herman : Fame Steals Show in O.C. Broadway Series

Think of it: Carol Channing starring in “Hello, Dolly!” again, 30 years after she originated the title role. Now that’s chutzpah.

Next June, when she gets to the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which announced earlier this week that the musical will be part of its 1994-95 Broadway Series, she’ll be past 74.

More power to her. But do you really want to see a septuagenarian Dolly Levi?

I suppose there’s no law against one. Dolly doesn’t really have to dance in the show. She doesn’t even have to sing. Channing’s celebrated show-biz style owes more to talking her songs than singing them, anyway.

Still, it makes you wonder how old Horace Vandergelder will have to be. Surely not a day under 80. (You remember him. He’s the rich old boy she marries).

Other thoughts occur about the series.

For example, do theatergoers realize they’ll be seeing “Jelly’s Last Jam” with Maurice Hines in the starring role, not younger brother Gregory, who starred in the show on Broadway?

Maurice happens to be a very fine dancer, but he doesn’t quite have Gregory’s charisma as a performer.

But let’s face it: The center and every other theatrical venue booking these touring shows are playing a name game. It’s the proven way to draw an audience.

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Marie Osmond, coming next season in “The Sound of Music,” is another transparent instance of easy attraction, and a more dubious one.

Given her wholesome image, Osmond playing the postulant nun made famous by Mary Martin promises to be even less of an artistic reach than her brother Donny is making in the title role of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

He’s been such a smash hit in that touring show, first in Toronto and now in Chicago, that she’ll probably be a bigger hit in this show in Costa Mesa.

If you ask OCPAC executive director Tom Tomlinson for his thoughts on the name game, he says Channing “certainly owns the role” and that “the audience will look forward to seeing an established star who’s a legend in the business.”

Marie Osmond also gets his personal endorsement. “I went up to San Francisco to see her (performance),” he said earlier this week. “I was surprised--that’s the wrong word-- pleasantly pleased to see the good job she did. And the costumes and scenery were beautiful.”

All the same, it makes you grateful for the prospect of catching Petula Clark in “Blood Brothers.”

Despite the show’s mixed reviews as a downbeat musical, at least Clark will be coming to the center relatively fresh from her personal triumph on Broadway.

She helped save “Blood Brothers” from closing when she stepped into one of the starring roles almost a year ago. Clark, who plays a desperately poor mother of nine children, left the Broadway production only last week to be in the road version.

“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” also coming to the center, doesn’t have a name star--yet. But the producers are hinting strongly that it will. (Could it be Donny? Doubtful. He’s on a different tour.)

The “Joseph” we’ll be getting is the one coming from Broadway. It’s the same version that went to Broadway from the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles where it played last year for almost five months.

Which brings us to “Porgy and Bess.” No name stars here. Marquita Lister will play Bess in this import from the Houston Grand Opera. It’s doubtful you ever heard of her.

But if things go right with this new revival of George and Ira Gershwin’s classic folk opera, nothing else in next season’s Broadway Series will come close to touching it artistically.

A total of eight other opera companies have invested in the production, including the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.

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Tomlinson is justifiably proud of getting Costa Mesa on the show’s itinerary. To make it happen, he said, the center gladly invested $50,000 of its own.

“I wanted us to be part of its tour,” he said. “That kind of opportunity comes along very rarely.”

The money, which he regards less as an investment than as an added “cost-of-artist fee,” comes from a reserve fund the center has for programming (a fund now “in excess of $1 million,” Tomlinson said.)

The Houston Grand Opera has done “Porgy and Bess” before. Opera Pacific brought one of Houston’s earlier revivals to the center in 1987. But this one is said to be a revamp from top to bottom.

Though “Porgy and Bess” will play the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles a week before coming south, that still shouldn’t take the glory or the adventure out of the center’s involvement.