A great view from his desk

Ah, “Enchanted April.” Surely the script for the recent Broadway staging of the 1922 novel, about four women on an Italian vacation, was written on some balmy seaside terrace.

Not quite. Much of the play was written in the Sherman Oaks office of Nationwide Advertising, where playwright Matthew Barber worked from 1994 to 2003 as a proofreader of corporate recruitment ads and, for six years, as office manager.

Barber’s employers knew he was working on a play. His fellow employees, he says, “all had some outside interest. Being surrounded by talented people who were paying their dues is what kept me going.” He quit his Sherman Oaks job last year, a week before rehearsals of “Enchanted April” began in New York.

The story of Barber’s success sounds rather enchanted itself. It’s his first full-length play. It premiered at Connecticut’s Hartford Stage in 2000 and spent about four months on Broadway, with a cast that included Molly Ringwald and Elizabeth Ashley. Barber was nominated for a Tony Award. On Friday, the play opens at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Barber’s grandparents moved from Nebraska to the Pasadena area in 1941, but Barber was raised farther south. At West Torrance High School, he wrote little plays and helped start a theater club “so I could get transportation to go see shows” in downtown L.A.

A 1985 UCLA graduate in English, he didn’t reconnect with theater until he moved to San Francisco a year later. He became the arts editor of the San Francisco Independent, a thrice-weekly newspaper. Later he was a marketer at Theatre Rhinoceros, a gay and lesbian company.

He “completely burned out on San Francisco” in 1994 and returned to L.A.. But on his way out, a director friend, Scott Williams, gave him Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel “The Enchanted April” with the suggestion that it might be stage-worthy.

This was two years after a BBC TV version of the story had been released theatrically in the United States, netting three Oscar nominations. Barber read and loved the novel, rented and liked the movie, and also exhumed the script of a 1925 stage version, which he found too “stagey and melodramatic.”

He wrote to the rights holders in London and managed to buy the stage rights for $1,500. As he began writing, he tried to focus more on the underlying drama and interaction of the characters and less on the scenery and unspoken thoughts, compared to the movie.

He also changed some of the characters’ names after an initial reading. Some were difficult for actors to enunciate, he says -- Arbuthnot became Arnott. Others were changed to emphasize the story’s gardening theme and its larger point that “nothing is ever going to stay the same.”

After finishing the first version of the script, Barber coincidentally was invited by a friend to spend a holiday on Ischia, an island off the Italian coast. Although it’s farther south than the Ligurian location of the story, “it was like I was living it,” he says.

He ultimately mailed 30 queries to New York agents. Only one, Peter Hagan, responded with a request to see the script. It turned out one was enough. Hagan enlisted Jeffrey Richards, who signed on as producer. Hartford Stage agreed to the premiere, with artistic director Michael Wilson directing, as he later would on Broadway and in Pasadena. The New York Times didn’t like the Broadway production, and other reviews were largely mixed. But, Barber says, “we knew it wouldn’t be everybody’s thing. It’s so old school.”

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with old-fashioned plays,” says Pasadena Playhouse artistic director Sheldon Epps. Something for the stereotypical little old lady from Pasadena?

“A large percentage of subscription audiences are little old ladies,” Epps replies, “but they’re passionate theatergoers who like well-made plays that tell good stories, with elements of romance, love and undertones of sexuality.” And, he adds, “it’s also great for couples” of any age.

Barber’s now working on an original, contemporary play, “The Counterpoint Rose.” He knows that using an established story helped his first effort. “People saw the title and they were interested. Now I hope they’ll see my name and be interested.”

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‘Enchanted April’

When: Tuesdays to Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m.

Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena

Ends: May 23

Price: $34.50-$49.50

Contact: (626) 356-7529