Emotion marks Taper exit

Edward Albee’s Tony-winning “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” and plays by Luis Alfaro and John Kani will appear at the Mark Taper Forum in the final season planned by the theater’s founder and outgoing artistic director, Gordon Davidson.

“It’s an emotional season, and why not? It’s my last,” said Davidson, who will hand over the artistic director title to Michael Ritchie on Jan. 1 and assume the title of founding artistic director.

Davidson is recruiting artists who have worked at the Taper under his 37-year reign to prepare the fare for the 38th season.

Kani, a South African actor and playwright who appeared at the Taper in 1975, will play the leading role in his “Nothing but the Truth” (Sept. 26-Nov. 7). A story about a South African who stayed during the apartheid years while his brother fled to London, it premiered at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, which Kani directs, in 2002 and played Lincoln Center in New York in 2003.

Brian Bedford, last seen in his staging of “The Moliere Comedies” in 2002, will direct Richard Sheridan’s 18th century comedy of manners, “The School for Scandal” (Dec. 9-Jan. 23), and play the role of Sir Peter Teazle. He did the same double duty at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 2000.

Albee’s “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” (Feb. 6-March 20) won the 2002 Tony for best play. Brian Kerwin will portray a happily married architect who falls in love with a goat, while Cynthia Mace plays his wife. They’ll repeat their roles from a Warner Shook staging in Seattle in 2003, and Shook will again direct.

Alfaro’s “Electricidad” (April 14-May 29) is an adaptation of Sophocles’ “Electra” set in a barrio. Lisa Peterson will direct. The play premiered in Tucson last year and will open later this month at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

Although Alfaro is director of new play development at the Taper, this will be the first of his own plays to make the Taper main stage. Davidson said that, given all the new work that passes through the Taper offices, if an Alfaro play makes the main stage, “it’s not because he has an inside track. It’s because of its value.”

Davidson will direct a production slated for June 16-July 24, 2005. He said he contemplated reviving “The Devils,” the controversial play that launched the Taper in 1967, but he decided “it had its time and place, and it’s not where I’m at.” He also noted that it had a cast of 32, which now would be prohibitively expensive. He needs to raise extra money if he is to direct one of the plays he has in mind for this slot, but he declined to identify which play. Another possibility is “Be Bold,” which was replaced in the current season because, Davidson said, the leading actress he wanted is tied up in a TV series.

As previously announced, August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” (Aug. 11-Sept. 18, 2005) will close Davidson’s final season and Wilson’s cycle of plays about 20th century African Americans.