Don Juan, Man for All Seasons

He’s hot. He’s sexy. He’s 400 years old. And in at least one case, he’s a she.

The comeback of Don Juan--the young, caped and fictional gigolo who made love to thousands of women but failed to conquer the love of his life, Donna Ana--continues on stage and screen.

John Barrymore starred in the original “Don Juan,” released in 1926. The best-known recent incarnation of the legendary Spanish lover is New Line Cinema’s current big-screen version, “Don Juan DeMarco,” which stars Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway. It’s a ‘90s update of the “Don Juan in Hell” segment of George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 play “Man and Superman.”

Still in the casting stage is “Don Juan in the Village” from producer Paul Pompian, who just wrapped “The Shooter” with Dolph Lundgren. The amorous libertine of this low-budget tale is a lesbian who traipses through New York’s Greenwich Village for her nightly sexual conquests.

David Ives’ “Don Juan in Chicago,” a comedic play currently being performed in New York, intertwines Faust and Don Juan, opening with the pact Don Juan made with the devil in 1599 to gain immortality by sleeping with a different woman every night. Flash forward to present-day Chicago and one worn-out Don Juan finds himself running into descendants of past lovers, not to mention a few descendants of his own.

“Don Juan in Hell,” another comedic spinoff of Shaw’s play, opened May 10 [can we verify whether it did?] in Evanston, Ill., for a planned five-week run. Richard Friedman, managing director of the play for the Northlight Theater Company, has Shaw’s mild-mannered milquetoast-turned-lady suitor accidentally killing Donna Ana’s father, the commander, when he tries to defend her honor after her fling with Don Juan.

Chicago may, in fact, be the birthplace of the current love affair with Don Juan. A series of seven plays--”The Don Juan Project”--ran in the Chicago area from January to March last year, says David Zack, spokesman for the project.

“Who knew all of these ‘Don Juans’ would follow!” he says jokingly. “It is really odd this fascination with the Don Juan character right now, with all of the films and plays. In the age of AIDS, maybe that’s the attraction . . . to live in this dangerous fantasy of sexual freedom that people can no longer take advantage of. The great sexual appetite of the ‘90s has been so restricted, maybe that has triggered this intrigue.”

Jeremy Leven, director of “Don Juan DeMarco,” says that the interest for him was to venture into the romantic, sensual side of a fascinating character and update it for the ‘90s. “There is so much in-your-face explicit sex with movies like ‘Basic Instinct’ and ‘Sliver’ that somehow we’ve lost the beauty of the lovemaking in movies.

“This character gives you a chance to bring some of that back and I think that is part of the interest as well . . . maybe sort of a backlash to what we’ve been seeing,” Leven adds. “And what better character to try that with than Don Juan?”