Harris to Headline at Laguna

The Laguna Playhouse will launch its 80th season in September with Julie Harris playing poet Emily Dickinson in “The Belle of Amherst,” directed by Charles Nelson Reilly, who also directed her in the original Broadway production in 1976. It also will give all six plays in 2000-01 a longer ride, expanding the run of each show from 31 to 39 performances.

Richard Stein, the playhouse’s executive director, said that “continuous audience growth” in recent years prompted the expanded schedule at the playhouse, which bills itself as the West Coast’s oldest continuously operating theater company.

Stein did not provide overall attendance figures, but said the current season’s most popular show, Steve Martin’s comedy “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” played to more than 95% capacity in November in the 420-seat Moulton Theater.

Harris, 74, starred in the 1955 film “East of Eden” with James Dean and had a recurring role on the television series “Knots Landing.” She will reprise “The Belle of Amherst,” by William Luce, which she first played on Broadway in one of her five Tony-winning performances. The turf, as well as the material, should be familiar: Harris played a two-show engagement of “Belle” at the Moulton Theater in 1986 as a special fund-raiser for the Laguna Playhouse.

The rest of the season offers vintage dramas by Arthur Miller (“The Price”) and David Mamet (“American Buffalo”), the West Coast premiere of a musical, “Enter the Guardsman,” and the world premiere of Laguna Beach writer Sherwood Kiraly’s stage adaptation of his 1998 novel, “Who’s Hot, Who’s Not.” A sixth play will be announced.

The theater’s connections figured in landing the Harris engagement as well as the two new shows, Stein said.

Stein said that Don Gregory, who produced the original Broadway run of “The Belle of Amherst,” lives in Newport Beach and frequently attends playhouse productions. “He owns the property and we worked with him in securing Julie’s services,” Stein said. There is talk of taking the show on the road, he added, but the Laguna run, starting Sept. 9, will be the launching pad for any sustained revival.

“Enter the Guardsman” features music by Craig Bohmler, lyrics by Marion Adler and a book by Scott Wentworth--the same team that created “Gunmetal Blues,” seen a year ago at the Moulton Theater and later released on CD in a cast recording. “Enter the Guardsman” is a musical adaptation of “The Guardsman,” a 1910 play by Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnar. The romantic comedy follows a recently married couple who are starring together in a play.

The Playhouse commissioned Kiraly’s adaptation of “Who’s Hot, Who’s Not”--the first time, to Stein’s knowledge, that the theater has commissioned a new work (artistic director Andrew Barnicle and his wife, Sara, translated and adapted an 18th century Italian play, “The Liar,” for a 1995 production at the playhouse). Kiraly and Barnicle go way back--in 1971, as an undergraduate at Morton College in Cicero, Ill., Barnicle starred in a campus production of a Kiraly play.

“We thought it was ideal, in an 80th anniversary season, to commission a local author to do a local work,” Stein said. “Who’s Hot, Who’s Not” is as local as it gets--the action takes off when a gossip magazine publisher kidnaps a homeless woman on Laguna Canyon Road, the street fronting the Moulton Theater, so he can use the carpool lane to win a rush-hour race to Los Angeles.

“American Buffalo,” a 1975 play about three crooks who bungle the theft of a rare nickel, is the first Mamet piece the Laguna Playhouse has produced.

“We look for holes in our historic repertoire and have filled them from time to time,” Stein said. “Sometimes when people think of David Mamet they think only of the darker edges to his work, but by the same token there’s a very strong vein of sardonic humor.”

Miller’s “The Price,” first staged in 1968, concerns two brothers whose paths have diverged, reuniting after many years to sift through their parents’ attic and dispose of its contents.

In expanding the run of each play, the playhouse will increase the number of previews from two to five, Tuesdays through Friday nights, with a Thursday matinee.

Most subscription prices will rise 8% to 20% (the hike is 43% for certain previews), depending on the performance schedule a subscriber chooses. Preview packages will cost $144 to $180, up from $126, regular performances will cost $192 to $246, up from $174 to $228, and opening nights will cost $456, up from $378. Shows will open on Saturdays--”a much nicer night for an opening night social,” Stein said--instead of Thursdays.

Also announced was a three-play Youth Theatre subscription series of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” “Babes in Toyland” and “James and the Giant Peach.” A fourth youth presentation, “And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the Word of Anne Frank,” plays Feb. 9-11.

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LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE

Playhouse season:

* “The Belle of Amherst,” Sept. 9-Oct. 8, previews

Sept. 5-8.

* “Enter the Guardsman,” Nov. 4-Dec. 3, previews

Oct. 31-Nov. 3.

* “The Price,” Jan. 6-Feb. 4, 2001, previews Jan. 2-5.

* “Who’s Hot, Who’s Not,” Feb. 24-March 25, previews Feb. 20-23.

* Show to be announced, April 21-May 20, previews April 17-20.

* “American Buffalo,”

June 2-July 1, previews

May 29-June 1.

Youth Theatre season:

* “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” Oct. 13-22.

* “Babes in Toyland,”

Dec. 8-17.

* “James and the Giant Peach,” March 30-April 8.

* “And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the Word of Anne Frank,” Feb. 9-11.

* Information: (949) 497-2787.