Theater Notes : It Takes Spirit to Play a Part Blithely

With Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” opening tonight after a week ofpreviews at South Coast Repertory, we wondered how Nicholas Hormann was getting along in a comic role that almost never lets him leave the stage and yet is not the play’s main focus.

“Draining,” he said. “In a way it’s more demanding than some big, dramatic part like Cyrano or Hamlet. At least those have long solo passages that are self-regulating. You can take them at your own pace. But when you have lots of dialogue hanging on the reaction between characters and timing between actors, it takes more out of you.

“Coward himself said that when he played his own characters, the audience got a tremendous sense of ease and relaxation, but there wasn’t a night he didn’t come off stage when his shirt wasn’t drenched.”

Hormann relates the demands of the role to the art of conversation--some would say the lost art--”the harder part of which is listening.”

“If you’re not listening, sure as shooting you’ll be off in your next response. So you’re always concentrating.”

The tall, slim, elegant actor has been seen as a guest artist at SCR with welcome frequency over the past couple of years. He appeared in three consecutive plays--”Boundary Waters,” “Woman in Mind” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner”--then took a break before doing “The Company of Heaven,” “Hedda Gabler” and “Lips Together, Teeth Apart.”

Not coincidentally, one of Hormann’s guiding principles is “always to have more than one iron in the fire.” It keeps him alive artistically, he said, and helps keep his family in groceries.

Which is why he’s already in rehearsal with another play, “Bonhoeffer,” to open this summer at the Second Stage Theatre in New York, a top off-Broadway house.

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HAPPY DAYS: If David Emmes is smiling, perhaps it’s because SCR’s single-ticket sales this season have been the best he can remember in years. All of the productions so far have exceeded box-office projections, he said.

“Because of the recession we had to ratchet down our expectations over the last couple of years,” Emmes said, “and we barely made our projections.”

This season, however, even “Wit”--a new play about cancer and a hard one to like--did better than expected on the SCR Second Stage. But the big hit was “Green Icebergs,” a romantic new comedy on the SCR Mainstage that drew near-capacity houses through its entire run, exceeding box-office projections by more than a third.

Emmes, who directed “Green Icebergs,” is also smiling about prospects for next season. SCR got its act together and announced its 1995-96 schedule last week, earlier than it has in years.

The mainstage opener, “She Stoops to Folly,” in September “will have picaresque sweep and will use the full resources of the theater,” he said. So expect a large cast, elaborate set, period costumes and, presumably, a subject with meat on its bones.

The work is an adaptation of Oliver Goldsmith’s classic British novel “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Despite the 18th-Century setting, “it will deal with contemporary issues,” Emmes notes. “The vicar is a Job-like character who is trying to hold onto family and children in a society that is losing its values.”

Sounds like Southern California to me.

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LIGHTS OUT: For its third “Theatre-on-the-Green” outdoor summer series, the Fullerton Civic Light Opera will produce “I Do! I Do!” (June 7-July 1), “No Sex Please, We’re British” (July 6-29) and “Jerry’s Girls” (Aug. 3-27) at the city’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center.

“We changed the format slightly in an effort to boost attendance,” FCLO producer Griff Duncan said. “We’ve dropped the drama slot, which didn’t do very well, and we’re staging two musicals and a comedy.”

The trouble is, musicals require spotlights. And Duncan discovered last week that a pair of “follow spots”--owned by the Muckenthaler and valued at $4,500 each--have been stolen from storage at the cultural center. Somebody will have to come up with a hefty piece of cash to replace them before the season goes up. Also, the outdoor stage has to be re-floored for the dancing in “Jerry’s Girls.”

Meanwhile, the FCLO plans to unmask its Phantom with its next musical production, “Brigadoon,” at Plummer Auditorium (May 13-28). Robert Patteri, who recently starred in the title role of the Maury Yeston-Arthur Kopit “Phantom” for FCLO, will star this time without a mask on his face.

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COLLEGE TALENT: The kids from UC Irvine got 85 callbacks. We’re talking showcase callbacks at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre in New York, where several dozen talent agents came to see them do their stuff last week.

The kids are actors, of course, eight grad students and two undergrads from the UCI theater program, which has staged showcases in Los Angeles and New York for the past decade to give top students experience and a potential career boost.

Tyler Layton, who played Maggie in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” earlier this season, got 18 of those callbacks.

According to Robert Cohen, interim dean of the UCI School of Fine Arts, about half of the actors in last year’s showcase landed agent contracts and one of them, Joel Forsythe, came back to school with a bead on a Broadway role.

“He finished up classes,” Cohen said, “returned to New York and within a week was rehearsing at the Roundabout for ‘Philadelphia Here I Come.’ He had a pretty good part, too.”

UCI acting teacher and director Eli Simon staged this year’s production. It consisted of 10 two-character scenes from “Pterodactyls,” “The Sure Thing,” “All in the Timing” and other contemporary plays.

Martha McFarland--the South Coast Repertory casting director who also teaches acting at UCI--and UCI alumnus Jeff Greenberg--the casting director for NBC’s “Frazier,” “Wings” and “Cheers”--helped get the agents and the network talent scouts into the seats.