Newman Musical Part of South Coast Repertory’s Season

A new Randy Newman musical will cap South Coast Repertory’s 1999-2000 season, which also will feature premieres by Howard Korder and Jose Rivera as well as the company’s first production of an August Wilson play.

The theater is announcing nine of the 11 shows that will make up the subscription season.

The main stage season so far:

* George Bernard Shaw’s “The Philanderer” (Sept. 10-Oct. 10), to be staged by SCR artistic director Martin Benson. This seldom seen comedy was first published as part of Shaw’s “Plays Unpleasant” in 1898 but wasn’t performed until 1905.

* Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” (Oct. 22-Nov. 21), the Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in the 1940s, about two siblings engaged in battle over a family heirloom.

* The premiere of Korder’s “The Hollow Lands” (Jan. 14-Feb. 13), which follows an Irish immigrant westward from Manhattan, beginning in 1815. Korder’s “Search and Destroy,” seen at SCR in 1990, won raves and awards for both the text and the staging by David Chambers, who’ll also direct this one.

* “All My Sons” (Feb. 25-April 2), Arthur Miller’s modern classic about a World War II aircraft manufacturer. Benson will direct.

* “The Education of Randy Newman” (June 2-July 2, 2000), with a mix of old and new songs by the sardonic Newman serving as the complete text, but also with a narrative overlay about a Newmanesque everyman, from a Louisiana childhood through adult life in Los Angeles. Newman, South Coast’s dramaturge Jerry Patch and composer Michael Roth share the “conceived by” credit.

* Sam Shepard’s “True West” (Sept. 24-Oct. 24).

* The California premiere of John Olive’s “The Summer Moon” (Nov. 5-Dec. 5), about a Japanese executive who visits Long Beach in 1960 to test the U.S. marketplace for Japanese cars. Mark Rucker will direct.

* The premiere of Jose Rivera’s “References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot” (March 10-April 9), a surrealistic fable about a soldier and his romantic wife, set in Barstow.

* The premiere of Tom Donaghy’s “The Beginning of August” (April 28-May 28, 2000), about an American family in transition.

Ticket information: (714) 708-5555.