THEATER : From ‘Swan Lake’ to Santana, It’s a New Season : Everything From World Premieres to the Seldom Seen

If you want to know where Orange County’s best plays usually reside, look no further than South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. It is more than just Orange County’s premier theater: Its recent Tony Award helped confirm what many people have known for years--SCR is a prime-time playhouse on a national scale.

Next on the list comes the Grove Theatre Company in Garden Grove, the financially troubled troupe that has often achieved its artistic goals and, in many circles, is seen as SCR’s figurative offspring.

After these two, the quality varies. But one of the most intriguing possibilities is the tiny Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana, now preparing its second season. It is more than premature to include this unproven theater with SCR and the Grove. But there is no doubt that the group shows promise.

So here is a quick look at the coming seasons for all three:

-- South Coast Repertory: SCR’s season will include an array of world premieres hatched through the company’s playwright projects, other dramas new to the West Coast, and a revival or two.

Currently on the Mainstage, SCR is presenting “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s dramatization of the Salem witch trials. The play, seen as a condemnation of the Senate hearings on communism during the ‘50s, continues through Oct. 16.

The world premiere of Mark Stein’s “At Long Last Leo” will open on the Mainstage on Oct. 28. SCR says the comedy centers on “the sometimes painful, yet often humorous process of self-realization.”

Jerry Patch’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” returns Dec. 7 through 24. Then, opening Jan. 13, is Athol Fugard’s “The Road to Mecca.” Fugard, the white South African playwright known for his examinations of apartheid in such works as “Master Harold . . . and the Boys,” here examines “the genesis and consequences of creativity.”

George Bernard Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell” opens March 3. It will be followed on April 21 by the world premiere of Ellen McLaughlin’s “Infinity’s House,” a drama that looks at, among other things, the moments leading up to the first atom bomb test. The play will launch SCR’s first “California Play Festival” of works by California playwrights.

The final Mainstage offering will be Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” the 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical based on the life of pointilist artist George Seurat, opening June 9.

On the smaller Second Stage, SCR will present the West Coast premiere of Eric Overmyer’s “In Perpetuity Throughout the Universe,” described as “an existential comedy that sees life as one huge conspiracy, whose truth is held in the hands of an intrepid ghost writer.” It opens Sept. 23.

Another West Coast premiere, “Morocco” by Allan Havis (author of “Haut Gout,” which SCR presented last season), will open Nov. 11 on the Second Stage, followed in turn by Lanford Wilson’s “Talley’s Folly,” the 1980 Pulitzer Prize winner, which opens Jan. 27. Another West Coast premiere, Christopher Durang’s “Laughing Wild,” will be produced on the Second Stage beginning March 17. Two more “California Festival” plays, to alternate in “mini-repertory” from May 5 to June 4, will be announced.

-- Grove Theatre Company: The Grove faces its 10th anniversary season under a blanket of doubt over its financial future. Grove officials say they are optimistic, despite the uncertainty over whether the Garden Grove City Council will fund the theater as well as in past years.

In any case, the season opens Oct. 7 with “And a Nightingale Sang,” C.P. Taylor’s romantic drama set during World War II. The Grove’s annual holiday program, a revival of Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” will begin Nov. 18 and continue through Christmas Eve.

Next in line, opening Jan. 20, is “Lily Dale,” Horton Foote’s tale of a family reunited and the changing societal values in 1909 America. Rod Serling’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight” hits the stage March 17. The last production on the schedule is Joan Micklin Silver’s “A . . . My Name is Alice,” described as “a musical that celebrates the modern American woman.”

-- The Alternative Repertory Theatre: The company that staged such dark classics as Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” and Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” start its new season Sept. 30 with the equally grim “Ghosts,” Henrik Ibsen’s tale of venereal disease and corruption.

ART moves in a more humorous direction with its next offering--Arthur Kopit’s black comic “End of the World,” opening Dec 2. Its third production will be the “poetic mystery” by Jean Cocteau, “An Eagle With Two Heads,” beginning Feb. 10. A fourth production will be announced.

A season postponed: Plans for Rancho Santiago College’s new Professional Actors Conservatory Theatre Company have been delayed until sometime in 1989. PAC Theatre Company, which was to have featured professional actors working alongside students, hoped to begin its first season Oct. 12 with William Saroyan’s “The Time of Your Life.” The start-up, however, has been delayed to give the conservatory and college more time “to formalize its plans,” according to Jerry McGonigle, PAC artistic director.