VALLEY WEEKEND : THEATER REVIEW : New Group Puts Emphasis on Entertainment : Ensemble Stage Company aims to please, not preach, with opening production of the English farce, ‘Run for Your Wife.’

Noel Coward once said he didn’t care what you did onstage, but if it bored him, he wanted to go home. Some modern theater artistic directors, in a desire for future grants, and with a fervent activism, insist on politically motivated, socially conscious work. Some, whether their choices are light and frothy, or dark and heavy, want to entertain, which was all that Noel Coward asked.

Michael Kelley, whose new Ensemble Stage Company is opening its first production in residence at Burbank’s Victory Theatre tonight, belongs to the latter group. Kelley, who was busy in theater in San Diego and Los Angeles during the 1980s, has been operating Seattle’s Edge of the World Theatre for the last six years. He has specific ideas about how to go about putting customers in theater seats.

“Beginning a new theater company,” Kelley says, “is next to impossible. . . . So you have to be a little bit conservative in what you do the first two times out.”

At his Seattle theater, Kelley asked the audiences what they wanted to see, and the unanimous answer was Ray Cooney’s “Run for Your Wife,” arguably one of the best-written and most popular English farces by a master of the form. Cooney is the author of more than 30 plays, many of which played in New York. His “Not Now, Darling” and “Move Over, Mrs. Markham” have become staples in local American theaters, and “Run for Your Wife” is on its way to being as popular in those royalty-rich venues.

Ironically, Valley audiences responded to Kelley’s question with the same title. Though the play has been done several times in Southern California, this may be the Valley’s first exposure to it. Cooney’s work, about a cabdriver with two wives living in adjacent suburbs, is enhanced by being played out in one apartment, which at times becomes both apartments, with characters in one relating to those in the other.

Slight as that premise is, the fact is that audiences are always drawn to the farce genre, and have been since theater began. American farce, as Kelley says, is based mostly on situations and resultant mix-ups. French farce finds its core in sly sexual innuendo. British farce is different.

“In British farce,” Kelley explains, “the characters are trying to hang on to their sense of dignity, which is a very big deal to them.”

What about those playwrights who have made their names in timely political and social arenas? Kelley wonders if they’re all not angling toward careers in television, where the money is.

“Somewhere along the line,” he says, “politics and theater got a little mixed up together. Right about then was when the theater audiences began deserting in droves. When you stop entertaining and start preaching, you’ve got yourself some problems.”

Kelley, whose company will be in residence at the Victory at least until the end of the year, says, “A sense of humor is what keeps you out of the grave. There’s too much pain floating around not to distance yourself from it. If laughter is the mechanism, then we need more of it.”

On Monday, the Valley Theatre League announced the nominations for its second annual Artistic Director Achievement Awards, to be presented Oct. 25 in a ceremony emceed by Tom Hatten, at the Academy Plaza Theatre located in North Hollywood’s Television Academy compound. Nominations include productions at the venues of all league members.

Prominent on the long list of nominees are Michael Holmes as author and director of “The Ring” at the Chandler Studio; direction nominations for Marcia Rodd (“Round Trip” at Ventura Court, produced by Cynthia Baer) and Betty Garrett (“The Dresser” at Theatre West). In writing categories, the late Oliver Hailey is nominated for his last play, “Round Trip,” and Victoria Thompson is nominated for “The Triumph of Maeve” at Theatre East.

* “Run for Your Wife,” Victory Theatre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 29. $16-$19. (818) 445-7529.

* Valley Theatre League ADA Awards, Academy Plaza Theatre, Television Academy, North Hollywood. Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m. Tickets: (213) 660-8587.