A toast to the coast

“One doesn’t want to act superior to Los Angeles and the theatrical hits that, from time to time, it sends us. Yet if these exports continue to be more or less in the class of ‘Zoot Suit,’ which is only slightly below the grisly norm, what else is one to do?” -- John Simon, New York magazine

When the Center Theatre Group’s “Zoot Suit” went to New York in 1979, Luis Valdez’s mythic musical drama about pachucos in ‘40s L.A. seemed to have everything -- everything Broadway didn’t like.

“We came with trumpets blaring,” says CTG artistic director Gordon Davidson. “It was an enormous hit here, but it’s not unbelievable that the critics might’ve been sharpening their knives over this big deal coming from the West Coast to occupy a Broadway theater.”

And, he adds, “no one understood the references, what a Chicano was. They didn’t know what to make of the whole thing.” The show closed in a month.

Plays arriving from California don’t get treated like strangers from a strange land anymore. They may be panned, of course, but not because of their roots. In fact, the relationship between East and West has grown increasingly close, a marriage of convenience having turned into an out-and-out romance.

New York initially looked to the Pacific for relief from skyrocketing costs, seeking artistic and financial opportunities a safe distance from Times Square. But in the quarter-century since “Zoot Suit,” the Golden State’s best regional companies -- following a national trend -- have gone from satellites to stars. They’ve amassed the talent, resources and clout to serve not only as attractive partners but as creative forces in their own right.

“California’s fairly fertile territory,” says Benjamin Mordecai, one of New York’s top producers. “Some of it is economics, but I believe it’s always really about artistic leadership. And there are a lot of leaders out there.”

As the 2004-05 season begins, stages across the country are filled with shows that were conceived, written, developed or given their debuts here. At least a dozen that originated in the state have plans of moving on or off Broadway, which may no longer represent the apex of American theater but retains a place in many hearts. Even more important, California audiences are getting the first look at some of the nation’s most exciting work, as years of investment in new voices are paying off.

“Something’s definitely going on out here,” says Jack O’Brien, artistic director of San Diego’s Old Globe since 1981, whose recent New York transplants include “The Full Monty” and the Tony-winning “Henry IV.” “We’re lucky because a theater like ours turns out no less than 14 productions a year, everything from Aeschylus to Stephen Sondheim. When you do so much, you’re going to get some stuff to Broadway.”

O’Brien and Des McAnuff, artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse, have made the region a hot corner, especially, though not exclusively, for musicals.

The Globe will mount two world premieres this season, including “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” based on the 1988 comedy film of the same name. The highly anticipated musical is scheduled to go to Broadway in March, with a cast led by John Lithgow and a creative team that reunites O’Brien with composer David Yazbek (“The Full Monty”) and scenic designer David Rockwell (“Hairspray”).

At La Jolla, McAnuff will direct “Jersey Boys,” the story behind the doo-wop sounds of the Four Seasons. “This is the quintessential American immigrant tale set to music we grew up with,” says McAnuff, who has led the Playhouse -- with one hiatus -- since 1983. In that time, a dozen productions have landed on Broadway, among them Frank Wildhorn’s “Dracula, the Musical,” which is playing now, albeit to disappointing reviews. La Jolla has helped to develop nonmusicals too. Alumni of its Page to Stage program include the 2004 Pulitzer and Tony winner “I Am My Own Wife” and Billy Crystal’s autobiographical “700 Sundays,” which will open in New York in December.

“We were the first to do a jump as big as La Jolla to Broadway,” says McAnuff. The breakthrough coming in the early ‘80s when producer Rocco Landesman came to the Playhouse with “Big River.” Landesman was sure that Huckleberry Finn’s story set to Roger Miller’s music could have a future in New York. It did -- winning seven Tonys, including one of McAnuff’s two directing awards. (The other was for “The Who’s Tommy” in 1993.)

“It was clear to Rocco that the resident theaters were better places to develop musicals,” McAnuff says. “The commercial theater was too expensive. Developing stuff on the road was too difficult. So these partnerships started forming.”

BROADWAY’S BOTTOM LINE

Gone are the days when a single impresario can green-light a show. Changing economics have changed the way plays are made.

“At a very crude level,” Mordecai says, “getting to Broadway comes down to being able to sell 6,000 to 10,000 seats for a year.” In 2003, the average cost to produce a play on Broadway was $1.6 million, and for a musical, $6.8 million.

Even for non-Broadway productions that can count on subsidies and subscriptions, tough times have forced an overreliance on co-productions and intricate layers of investors. For this and other reasons, many plays have a gestation period rivaling that of an elephant: commission to workshop(s), development and sometimes multiple productions. And after that, financing can fall apart, as happened with the musical “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” which had been scheduled to appear at the Pasadena Playhouse en route to Broadway.

The Bay Area is a favorite pre-New York stop because its audiences have the reputation of knowing good theater, thanks to companies such as the American Conservatory Theater, the Magic Theatre and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, which is presenting “The Secret in the Wings” by Mary Zimmerman, creator of the Tony-winning visual fantasy, “Metamorphoses.” TheatreWorks in Mountain View is offering the Broadway hopeful “A Little Princess,” which opened this month to lukewarm notices.

San Francisco’s Curran Theatre is the premier premiere spot, having hosted “Mamma Mia!,” “La Boheme” and “Wicked.” This season, at least two productions are booked on Broadway: “Dame Edna’s Back With a Vengeance” and “Lennon,” which will feature 10 performers embodying facets of the ex-Beatle’s persona and music. “We’re also keeping an eye on ‘Jerry Springer -- the Opera,’ which is sorting itself out,” Curran co-owner and producer Carole Shorenstein Hays says of the London transplant.

Shorenstein Hays and producing partner Scott Nederlander have kept the Curran out front, she says, by operating “like a fast-moving pirate ship.” It also helps that Shorenstein Hays, whose New York credits include Suzan-Lori Parks’ “Topdog/Underdog” and Tony Kushner’s “Caroline, or Change,” is an old-school producer interested, as she says, “in the show as well as the business.” Yet she is new-school enough to have mastered bicoastal deal-making. “We go where the great artists are,” she says. “Right now, the West Coast has the salsa.”

Most artistic directors will tell you that sending a show to Broadway is a bonus -- their main goal is to serve the home audience. South Coast Repertory goes even further. “We never look beyond opening night,” says David Emmes, producing artistic director. “We get the best possible production. After that it will have a life of its own.”

He says he and artistic director Martin Benson, with whom he founded the Costa Mesa company in 1964, “made conscious choices in past years” that have helped SCR become a playwrights’ haven and a play-making powerhouse.

South Coast is part of a California theater building boom, its 3-year-old Julianne Argyros Stage quickly emerging as a magnet for fresh voices. This year, La Jolla will unveil a $16.5-million complex that will eventually house six performance spaces, and in other cities, many in Southern California, midsized and alternative spaces are popping up.

“We’ve also built a relationship with our audience,” Emmes says. “They’ve come to understand what the work of the theater is.”

This season, four productions at South Coast will be world premieres, including two commissioned from artists with whom SCR has had long ties: the Richard Greenberg comedy “A Naked Girl on the Appian Way” and Donald Margulies’ “Brooklyn Boy,” which examines a writer’s self-identity crisis. As a co-production with the Manhattan Theatre Club, “Brooklyn Boy” will be only the second SCR production to go on to New York.

South Coast has supported Margulies, who won the Pulitzer in 2000, since he was a relative unknown in the ‘80s. “They plucked me out of the chorus line,” he says, giving him a commission that led to “Sight Unseen,” a turning point in his career. Margulies, who lives in Connecticut, is finishing a piece for SCR’s family series, as well as one for the Geffen Playhouse and Berkeley Rep. South Coast -- and California in general -- is “a very hospitable place to work,” he says. “Because it’s not in New York, there’s been a certain safety net in trying things out.”

PRIMING THE PIPELINE

The Center Theatre Group is opening its own new-play showcase, the 300-seat Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City. The inaugural season will include Jon Robin Baitz’s “The Paris Letter,” which will also be produced by New York’s Roundabout in the spring.

During his 37 years with the Taper and the Ahmanson theaters, Davidson has transferred more than 30 productions to New York, starting with “In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer” in 1969. Several works that CTG helped develop were risky ventures -- “Angels in America” and “The Kentucky Cycle” among them. “The fact ‘Angels’ got to Broadway was a miracle,” says Davidson, who is retiring at the end of the year. “Here’s a show that didn’t pay back its investors at the conclusion of its run there. But it is an example of the kind of theater that must not disappear.”

Mordecai has enlisted Davidson to help bring August Wilson works to the stage, most recently “Gem of the Ocean,” the penultimate in a 10-part cycle about African American life. It ran at the Taper in 2003 and will open on Broadway this fall. The finale, “Radio Golf,” will close the Taper season.

As good as things seem, California theater people know they may be riding a bubble. “You go through rhythms, and we’re in one now,” says Davidson’s successor, Michael Ritchie. Producing new works can be perilous as well as thrilling. Arts funding remains tight. Audiences can fade away, he says, “if there’s no forethought toward growing and not just maintaining them.”

Even if the state’s resident companies thrive, they must figure out how each can distinguish itself while minimizing overlap and strengthening not only East-West relationships but also collaborations among themselves.

Ritchie, who will become artistic director Jan. 1, headed the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, where he was known for having a celebrity-studded cast list and a pipeline to New York. He says he presumes that this is partly why he was brought here. However, as he prepares to assemble the 2005-06 season he insists his main goal will be “to continue the mission of developing new plays -- although there will be differences in personal tastes and contacts, changes in the amounts and the artists. I can’t imagine it will be the same. In fact, I seriously doubt that.”

When asked what will differ, he says only that he’ll bring in some people new to the area but adds that he plans to use existing CTG ties and will tap the local talent pool, including Hollywood. Mostly, he promises the proverbial mix of premieres, revivals and surprises -- homegrown and otherwise. “Good theater is good theater,” he says, “wherever it comes from.”