Labor Crisis May Wipe Out SCR ‘Search and Destroy’

As the deadline nears for a strike by the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers against South Coast Repertory and other members of the League of Resident Theaters, leaders of the Costa Mesa company face an increasingly delicate situation.

South Coast has already taken ads announcing that David Chambers will direct the world premiere of Howard Korder’s “Search and Destroy” on the Mainstage next season, yet Chambers himself is unwilling to say that he will take the assignment--despite a long-term commitment to SCR and the playwright.

“Should push come to shove, I don’t know what I will do,” said Chambers, who regularly stages plays at Yale Repertory and teaches at the Yale Drama School.

“I do know that LORT’s refusal of SSDC’s last offer was an insult,” he said about the League of Resident Theaters and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. “I feel that way, and I know many other directors do, as well.”

The union has called for higher wages and greater coverage of small theaters than the league has been willing to accept. If a negotiated settlement is not reached by Aug. 8, the union has said it will promulgate its own contract and ask individual theaters to sign or face a strike.

David Emmes, South Coast Repertory’s producing artistic director, has said he will not accept a promulgated contract.

Chambers, who staged “Golden Girls” last season on the Mainstage, pointed out that he is active within the union and would have been on the union’s negotiating panel except for a scheduling conflict.

At the same time, he has forged such close ties to SCR that Emmes and artistic direct Martin Benson invited him to be one of their chief artistic advisers a few months ago.

“Nobody wants a strike,” Chambers said last week from his summer home in Maine. “It’s just not in anybody’s interest. But all you can say at this point is that I’m playing chicken. David and Martin and I have talked about this, and we’ve agreed it’s all pending.”

Although “Search and Destroy” is not scheduled to open until January, pre-production work would have to begin by October. Chambers directed a staged reading of the play at SCR earlier this year and has been helping playwright Korder develop the script.

THE LEGS HAVE IT: Any questions about the drawing power of “Gypsy” or the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s ability to sell single tickets to a Broadway show were answered by the box office gross for the revival’s two-week run, which closed Saturday.

“Gypsy” drew $707,000 in its first week and $494,000 in its second, for a total of $1.2 million, topping the show’s two-week gross of $781,000 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles by more than 50%.

Although the first week at the Center had a subscription audience, the second week did not. “Gypsy’s” run at the Pavilion had no subscriptions. The Center’s first-week gross was not only the highest on the road so far for “Gypsy,” but the second nearly matched the $501,000 second week in Los Angeles, despite a significant weakening factor.

Because “Gypsy” had to leave early for Houston, the show could not be programmed at the Center on Sunday. This meant substituting a Thursday matinee for the Sunday matinee, which is usually the second-strongest box office performance of the week after Saturday night, according to Center officials. It also meant programming the show for a normally dark Monday night, to substitute for Sunday night.

As expected, the two fill-in shows did the worst business of the engagement--40% of capacity for Monday and 38% for Thursday’s matinee.

“I think we could have done another $100,000 in the second week if we’d had our regular schedule,” Center President Thomas R. Kendrick said.

It didn’t help that Tyne Daly called in sick Monday, although it didn’t hurt much. Kendrick said there were just a handful of cancellations.

He said the Center sold $650,000 worth of single tickets over both weeks.

UNCOMMON MIZ: Just when you thought “Les Miz” was gone forever (after 59 weeks at the Schubert Theatre in Los Angeles), it will make an appearance in Orange County--but without the music.

That’s right, the Victor Hugo novel has been adapted as a stage play. Robert Michael Conrad is directing it at Corona del Mar’s Newport Beach Center, where it opens Friday, in a Coastline Community College production.

“I admit I chose ‘Les Miserables’ with trepidation,” he said. “But a non-musical allows us to get back to the whole point of the novel. It fills in many pieces of the story that the musical didn’t touch.”

Conrad, 34, an associate professor of theater arts, has been trying to focus attention on Coastline’s small theater department in the last year by mounting plays not commonly seen around the county.

Last summer he produced a stage adaptation of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” followed in the fall by Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles.” He also plans to have a non-musical version of “The Phantom of the Opera” up and running in December.

As for “Les Miserables,” he said the Coastline production will put a spin on the relationships of the principal characters--Jean Valjean, Cosette, Fantine, Inspector Givert and others--that may surprise theatergoers who have seen the Tony-winning musical.

“Much as I liked that show, it was sketchy,” Conrad said. “Our scenes are much stronger dramatically because we do not have to deal with songs.”

WILLKOMEN: It looks like the long-delayed UCI Cabaret to showcase the university’s hottest musical acts has finally found an off-campus home at the Hotel Laguna in Laguna Beach. Come October, you will be able to catch them Monday nights for nothing more than the price of a drink.

“This is unique for a School of Fine Arts,” said Eli Simon, a member of the UCI theater department who will run the cabaret with Dennis Castellano of the music department. “We’ll provide the entertainment, and the hotel will provide the space.”

Simon envisions the cabaret as a “real-world” forum for top student performers. It will be either in the hotel’s lounge or in Claes, the hotel restaurant.

“The performers will be able to audition material and get needed experience in front of a general audience,” Simon said. “Once people hear about us, this thing will fly. We’ve got some great talent.”

Pat Cunningham, sales director of the hotel, confirmed the cabaret plans: “It’s definitely going to happen.”

No specific date in October has been scheduled for the opening, however.

RETRO LAGUNA: Most people would not admit to aiming for “the graphic equivalent of ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse.’ ” But Jody Davidson, general manager of the Laguna Playhouse, said “that’s what kids are into now,” so she decided the new Youth Theatre catalogue should go retro.

The result, designed by Davidson and the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach, is a smash hit. It has pulled more than 500 subscription responses in three weeks. “That’s already half the number we had last year,” Davidson said.

The catalogue for the playhouse’s 1989-90 season has gone out as well. It ought to keep the theater company’s adult fans equally amused. The brochure is breezy, imaginative and fun to look at. Credit Greg Miller, who teaches at the institute.