O. C. Theater : SCR Has Dramatic Answer to TV Quiz

South Coast Repertory playgoers got wind of the scandal last season, when Richard Greenberg’s “Night and Her Stars” had its world premiere on the SCR Mainstage. Now the rest of the country is about to be reminded of it with the arrival of Robert Redford’s new movie, “Quiz Show.”

The TV scandal of the ‘50s that shocked, yes, shocked a nation--drum roll, please--has made the sort of media splash reserved for dazzling cultural revelations. Blame it on the high-profile publicity campaign for “Quiz Show,” which shifted into gear several weeks back.

Yet no one has deigned to acknowledge “Night and Her Stars” or the fact that SCR got there first with a production that brought the scandal to dramatic life. That includes several stories in major news publications running thousands of words.

One magazine’s major takeout two weeks ago recalled the historic moment 36 years ago when Charles van Doren “bit his lip,” gave the correct answer to an arcane question on NBC’s “Twenty-One” and 30 million Americans cheered--except for Redford, then an acting student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan.

“Unlike most of America,” the article said, “Robert Redford watched Charles van Doren with a critical eye. He told his friends, ‘That guy is acting--and he’s not even very good at it!’ ”

And wouldn’t you know it? Van Doren was acting. He was not only acting, he was cheating. So were the producers, the sponsors, the network executives and the other contestants. Boy, what a sharp guy that Redford must have been to spot a phony when nobody else did. Whew!

These days he’s even keener. “The quiz show scandal was the end of our innocence, a collective shock to the consciousness of the moment,” Redford was quoted as saying. What’s more, he added, “You can trace the decline in American morality to that event.”

Then came a big newspaper story in which Redford sounded as sharp as ever. “Three decades of scandal after the quiz shows, the country has become numb,” he said. “There’s a moral ambiguity that has made us change our behavior, hopes and dreams.”

A third story last week informed us that the moral ambiguity extends to “Quiz Show” itself. The Redford-directed movie apparently dissects the scandal by taking great pains with small details but great liberties with large facts, such as who the real heroes were and how the scam unraveled.

The justification, of course, was to enhance the movie’s entertainment quotient--the same justification for the quiz-show cheating in the first place.

You can bet we’ll be hearing more about America’s lost innocence from reviewers over the next few weeks. The movie opens Wednesday in Los Angeles and New York, two days later in Newport Beach. Never mind that America’s lost innocence is one of those perennial themes beloved of cultural commentators, especially in the retro ‘90s.

You can also bet that none of the reviews are likely to mention Greenberg’s play, which was a funny, satirical take on the subject. Greenberg, who is widely recognized as one of the nation’s most promising young playwrights, evoked the ‘50s but did not wax nostalgic. He underscored the hypocrisy of the era, rather than its innocence, and captured all the Faustian ironies of Van Doren’s bargain with the devil.

Since that SCR staging last March, Greenberg has revised his play for another production in New York at the Manhattan Theatre Club. “Night and Her Stars” will open there next March, with its first and second acts pretty much intact. The third act has been streamlined, however, and a major protagonist dropped.

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Greenberg has eliminated the onstage role of the congressional staff investigator Richard Goodwin, whose real-life role is reportedly enlarged in Redford’s movie to make it seem that he uncovered the cheating scandal when, in fact, he learned of it from newspaper stories and grand jury records.

It’s hard to say what effect “Quiz Show” will have on “Night and Her Stars,” except that Greenberg probably won’t be fielding any Hollywood offers for a screen version of the play any time soon. But the playwright has said that he expected as much from the beginning.

Still, if Redford’s movie stirs wider interest in the subject, it could mean more theatergoers willing to take a chance on the play and more companies willing to mount it. That at least would be a welcome reversal of Hollywood’s generally pernicious effect on the theater.

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COOLING IT: When the Alternative Repertory Theatre opens its eighth season next month, playgoers won’t be feeling the heat. The Santa Ana troupe has decided to install an air-conditioning unit on the roof of its 61-seat storefront theater.

In recent years A.R.T. had raised $2,500 toward the estimated $5,000 needed for the project. It added another $500 late last month with funds raised at a series of new play readings, according to spokesman Gary Christensen. The troupe will dip into its operating budget to make up the rest, he said.

Air conditioning could prove to be one of A.R.T.’s wisest artistic choices--and not just for “Macbeth,” which opens Oct. 7, but for all future productions there.