ENTERTAINMENT NEWS : Man of Many Talents : He’s known for his zany style, but Charles Nelson Reilly’s credits are impressive. He directs ‘The Wives.’

A new comedy, “The Wives,” which opens next week at the Ventura Court Theatre in Studio City, is directed by television personality Charles Nelson Reilly.

Reilly is probably best-known as a celebrity game-show contestant on programs such as “The Match Game” and “Hollywood Squares.” His zany comic style makes it easy to forget that he also is an accomplished, award-winning actor and director.

Born in New York, Reilly studied acting with Uta Hagen. His early credits include featured roles in some of the biggest Broadway hits of the 1960s: “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Hello Dolly” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” for which he won a Tony Award.

In 1975, he conceived, produced and directed the Tony award-winning “The Belle of Amherst,” starring Julie Harris, based on the life and writings of poet Emily Dickinson. The production garnered a fifth acting Tony for Harris and was later produced on PBS. Reilly also won an Emmy for his work on the “Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” a 1960s television sitcom.

More recently, he has directed stage and television productions and teaches acting at his own school, The Faculty, in North Hollywood.

“The Wives” is an outgrowth of his workshop. All the performers are his students, and one of them, Rosie Taravella, wrote the play.

“It’s very good. It’s turning into a love letter to Los Angeles,” Reilly said. “Neil Simon’s milked New York to death for years, so now we’re doing this. Rosie’s a wonderful writer, and we’re having a good time.”

Taravella agreed that producing the two-act play has been fun.

“It’s an ensemble piece about five women who are not prepared to be friends,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it’s inspirational, but it’ll make you laugh and make you cry.”

“The Wives” opens 8 p.m. Thursday at the Ventura Court Theatre, 12417 Ventura Court, Studio City. Performances will be 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays. Closes Oct. 2. Tickets are $15; a percentage of the proceeds will benefit Haven Hills, a shelter for victims of domestic violence. Call (213) 660-TKTS.

*

THE SHOW WON’T GO ON: Michael Fairman will tell you that he’s seen kinder years than 1994.

First, his personal phone book was stolen. That’s bad news for anyone, but when you’re the artistic director of a theater group like the Actors’ Company (which has previously produced “Town Meeting” and “XTV”), that’s chaos.

Second--and just about the time Fairman managed to reconstruct his phone book--his company had to vacate the Little Theatre, nestled in Burbank’s George Izay Park.

Ironically, Fairman said, “we were doing fine artistically. The critics loved ‘XTV,’ ‘Coriolanus,’ and ‘Spoon River Anthology.’ But we were broke, both because we didn’t have enough people coming to the plays, and not enough income to support our projects.”

With an average per-production outlay of $3,000, expenses of more than $21,000 for the past year, and a lease arrangement with the city of Burbank expiring in July, Fairman--along with managing director M’Lisa MacLaren, company manager Mary Jo Kirwan and literary director Dennis Connor--decided to vacate the 98-seat, 42-year-old building.

The company had been buffeted by internal conflicts and members leaving for other pursuits, but Fairman insisted that it will continue as a producing entity, renting a theater space (not necessarily in the San Fernando Valley) when a production is ready. “We won’t be a 50- to 60-member group, as we were,” he added.

It also won’t have one of the Valley’s coziest theaters. As part of a deal struck with Burbank’s Parks and Recreation Department, the Actors’ Company had received what Fairman termed a “very generous” lease agreement with the city in exchange for the company’s replacing decades-old sound and light systems with new equipment obtained with a city grant. “It will make this one of the best-equipped small theaters in L.A.,” Fairman said.

MORE NOISE: A Noise Within, Glendale’s classical theater company, has announced its 1994 fall program and dubbed it the “Season of Relative Encounters.”

“We’re really looking at families: families of blood and families of choice,” said Julia Rodriguez Elliott, the company’s executive director. “The obvious like in ‘King Lear’ and the not-so-obvious in ‘School for Scandal.’ Or ‘Of Mice and Men,’ which deals with creating your own family.”

The company will present three classic plays in rotating repertory: Shakespeare’s “King Lear” previews Oct. 5, opens Oct. 8, and closes Dec. 11; Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 18th-Century comedy of manners, “The School for Scandal,” previews Oct. 19, opens Oct. 22 and closes Dec. 17, and John Steinbeck’s modern classic “Of Mice and Men” previews Nov. 2, opens Nov. 5 and closes Dec. 18.

Theater writer Robert Koehler contributed to this column.